The kettle went on. Bread was sliced. There was butter this morning, which was a rare and delicious treat. Finn insisted on walking outside with us while we checked our gear, his mother’s hand firm on his shoulder.
“Don’t forget,” she said to Tamsin. “You come back this way if you ever need to.”
“We will,” Tamsin smiled. “Thank you. Very much.”
Finn hugged her around the waist, then looked up at me. “I’m going to miss you,” he blurted out.
“Me too, little man,” I grinned.
He nodded solemnly, then stepped back, satisfied.
We shouldered our packs as the sun peeked over the horizon and set off.
London waited for no one.
CHAPTER 21
Tamsin
We walked away from the farmhouse as the sun was beginning its ascent into the sky.
The grass outside the farmhouse still wet with night. I didn’t look back, not because I didn’t care, but because looking made it feel like a goodbye.
Eamon walked last, as he always did, making sure no one left a bag behind or a boot print too obvious in the mud. Nox moved like the wind along the path, checking sightlines and always listening. Bishop and Griff flanked me, and Elias stayed close enough that I could always sense that he was near.
We just walked. We didn’t talk. We were just shapes moving through damp fields toward the next point on a route I’d traced and retraced until it was permanently seared into mybrain. We walked miles like that, through roads swallowed by weeds, through a strip of thin woodland, along the edge of a collapsed industrial park that smelled of rust and damp concrete.
By mid-morning, the land got flatter. The horizon was lined with towers, cranes, and several broken spires. The edge of London’s influence, even if the city itself still sat miles away.
We stopped at a shallow drainage ditch half-hidden by brambles.
Bishop crouched beside me. “This is it?”
I nodded. “Yeah. This is one of the entrances.”
Elias’s gaze swept the surrounding fields. “Any chance it’s being watched?”
“Probably,” Nox said. He was already moving, circling wider, his eyes tracking the long lines of sight. “But I don’t see or sense anything or anyone right now.”
The entrance was ugly and unremarkable, with a concrete mouth half-choked with debris, weeds growing out of cracks, the faint stink of stagnant water and rot drifting up. A rusted grate hung crooked, half torn away.
With a deep breath, I gestured for them to descend into the tunnels.
Nox went first. Griff second, because he could break anything that needed breaking. Bishop third, blade already in hand. Elias after, ever watchful. Eamon and me last.
The air was cooler as we went down, carrying the wet mineral smell of old stone and standing water. Our footsteps echoed softly, then were swallowed by the endless tunnel ahead. A slow drip marked time somewhere in the dark.
We moved in silence at first, letting our eyes adjust. I didn’t bother with a flashlight until we reached a junction, then clicked it on low, keeping the beam close to the ground.
“This way,” I said.
Elias fell into step beside me. “You’ve been here before.”
I nodded once. “Not recently, but yeah.”
We walked a long way. The tunnel narrowed, then widened. We crossed a shallow stream of runoff that smelled like industrial waste. Pipes ran overhead like ribs.
After a while, I began to notice subtle signs that people had been through here. A rope tied around a pipe as a handhold. A chalk line on the wall, faint, not fresh but not very old either. A rusted ladder that had been reinforced with new bolts. Someone had stitched a path through this filth.
