"You smell of Kara Cehennem." She said it flatly. Not a guess. A fact. "Sulfur and ash and old screaming. It's in your clothes, your hair, your skin." Her turquoise eyes found mine. "Someone opened a door to the Dark Hell and threw him back through it."
Milan's face confirmed it before his mouth did.
"Erlik," I said. The name sat in my throat like something sharp. "Hakan's father. He has them."
Milan's face went even paler. "If Erlik has them..."
"Then we have to search for them." I stood, pulling Milan up with me. He swayed but stayed on his feet. "You said you opened a portal to take them somewhere safe. Can you trace where the magic diverted?"
"I can try. But the shadow paths are treacherous, and if Erlik is involved..." He trailed off, shaking his head. "I should have been more careful. I should have checked the paths before we stepped through."
"Self-flagellation later," Melo interrupted. "Planning now. Ada, your father's condition has the council circling like vultures. If you disappear into the shadow realms chasing your boyfriend, they'll use it against you."
"I am not going to just leave him?—"
"I'm not saying leave him. I'm saying be smart about it." The fox's eyes met mine. "You can't fight every battle at once. Youneed allies. Information. A plan that doesn't involve charging blindly into the underworld and hoping for the best."
"She's right." Milan straightened, some color returning to his face. "Give me time to trace the path. A few hours, maybe a day. I'll find where they were taken."
"And in the meantime?"
"In the meantime, you go back to the palace and make sure those vultures don't strip your inheritance while you're not looking." Melo's tail swished. "Your father gave you his blessing. Now make sure you have a throne to share when you get your shadow boy back."
I wanted to argue. I wanted to tear open a portal myself and charge into the darkness after Hakan. But Melo was right. Even before she'd found her voice, she'd been right — every warning look, every flattened ear, every time she'd placed herself between me and danger when I was too stubborn to see it coming. I'd spent my whole life reading her silences. Hearing her speak didn't change the fact that I'd always understood what she meant.
"Fine." I looked at Milan. "Find them. Whatever it takes."
"I will." He met my eyes, and beneath the exhaustion, I saw determination. "I've protected that family for two hundred years. I'm not going to stop now."
I nodded, then turned toward the door. Melo fell into step beside me, her small body a warm presence against my ankles.
"You know," she said as we stepped out into the darkening street, "for someone whose entire world just got turned upside down, you're handling this remarkably well."
"I am screaming internally."
"Ah. That's more like it." She glanced up at me. "For what it's worth, we'll get him back. The boy's too stubborn to stay captured for long."
Despite everything, I felt my lips twitch. "Is that supposed to be comforting?"
"It's supposed to be accurate. Comfort is extra." Her tail brushed my leg. "Now walk faster. Those vultures aren't going to intimidate themselves."
I turned toward the palace, toward the dying light and the gathering dark, toward the thousand battles that waited in the shadows.
And I began to walk.
CHAPTER 22
DAWN
Hakan
The screaming never stopped.
I had cataloged the gallery of sounds over the course of what I estimated was several hours—the distant tenors, the mid-register shrieking that had long since become white noise, the occasional low moan that cut through the rest simply by being different. I had counted the columns in the obsidian hall. Thirty-two, stretching up into darkness so complete the ceiling might as well not exist. I had examined every inch of floor within my reach, looking for a seam, a weakness, anything at all.
There was nothing.
My mother slept against my side, her breathing finally evened into something almost restful. Whatever he had done to her in those first moments—rifling through her memories like a man emptying drawers—had exhausted her completely. I had arranged her as carefully as I could on the cold floor, taken off my coat and folded it beneath her head, and spent the hourssince cataloging the room and hating myself for not finding a way out of it.
