I decide to leave somehow getting information out of Adria for another time. I have an opportunity right now to find Vesper, and I don’t intend to miss it.
I wait until Stella arrives in the alley, and then I creep along the shadows to her.
“Shit!” she says when I drop them. She has her sword halfway drawn before she realizes it’s me. “Sorry, ma’am. I lost you somewhere back there.”
“They went in that doorway,” I whisper. “I’m going to follow.”
“Who did?” she asks. “What are we doing out here?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just wait a few minutes, and if I don’t come back out, come in after me. Or let Ronan know where I went.”
“No,” she says. She sheathes the sword and stands in front of me, defiant. “The king would never allow it. Either you take me in there with you, or I’ll take you back to the palace myself.”
She’s bold for someone so young, much bolder than she was with Ronan. She’ll learn her lesson about defying nobility at some point, but right now, I’m actually glad she wants to go in there with me. I’m a little scared of what’s inside.
“Come on then,” I say, leading her to the doorway.
I listen through the door before we enter. Silence on the other side. I wish Ronan were here, and not just because he could tell how many people were waiting in the room.
I try the handle. Locked.
“Let’s go,” says Stella, looking around the alley anxiously.
I don’t have my rake with me, but I do have some pins in my hair from where the laurel crown was placed. I take them out and begin fumbling with the lock.
After a moment, Stella takes the pins from my hands. But rather than lead me away from the door, she begins to pick it.She makes quick work of it, even quicker than I typically manage with better tools.
“Where’d you learn that?” I ask her as the door pops open.
“I grew up in the palace,” she says, as if that explains it.
I swing the door in slowly. It creaks a bit, which makes me wince, but if Hermes and whoever he was meeting are still there, they don’t come to investigate.
“I’ll just go in first in shadow—”
“No,” says Stella, brushing past me. She draws her sword and looks around, the dim moonlight coming through the door the only light to guide her.
The room is small and sparsely furnished, with no doorways in sight. Shelves cling to the walls at odd angles, their contents long since removed. Between two battered desks with drawers hanging open and empty, a cluster of crates sits beneath moth-eaten fabric. A few frames linger on the walls, their pictures gone. Everything is coated in a layer of dust.
There’s no sign anyone has been here at all.
“There must be some kind of trap door. Some kind of passage. See if you can find anything.”
“Can I light a candle?” Stella asks, pulling one from her pocket.
“No.” It’s too much of a risk. If a candle is seen from within, they may realize we’re onto them. “Take this side.” I let her search the side of the room nearest to the door while I look in the dark corners.
It’s tense for the first few minutes, but we eventually relax somewhat once we realize no one is coming.
“How did you become a guard?” I ask her as we’re each combing over the walls for gaps or secret buttons. “You don’t seem much like one.”
“I grew up in the palace, as I said. My mother was one of Queen Calia’s chambermaids.”
Queen Calia, Ronan’s mother. “Was?”
“Until Queen Calia died. King Aurelian dismissed all of her staff a few months after her passing. I was eight years old. It was just before the war began. The harvest had been poor that year, and there wasn’t much work around. We struggled for about a month before Ronan found us.”
“Found you where?”
