Major Ledor didn’t wait for questions. “All cadets are on leave until I’ve had words with the prince regent. You’re dismissed.”
He turned on his heel and walked off the grounds.
I moved toward Zander, the air buzzing around us like a storm waiting to break. He leaned close, voice a hush in my ear.
“I may have found something.”
My pulse quickened. “What kind of something?”
He looked at me, eyes darker than normal. Focused.
“One that could change everything.”
Chapter
Twenty-Three
Zander took my hand. His grip was firm, not hurried, but intentional, like every second counted. We passed through the castle corridors with an efficiency that startled the guards, two of whom stiffened when they caught sight of the prince striding toward the lower chambers. They exchanged a glance, uncertain whether to stop him.
He didn’t break stride.
“We won’t have much time,” he said lowly as we descended the stone staircase that spiraled toward the royal vault. “The guards will report my presence. Theron will know I came here.”
The air grew colder the deeper we went. The sconces on the walls dimmed the further we descended, casting flickering light over crumbling tapestries and shelves of ancient records. The vault door was an iron monster, etched with sigils and magic wards I could almost feel hum beneath my skin.
Zander pressed his palm to a carved panel.
It clicked open without ceremony, and I stepped inside behind him.
It was more library than treasure hoard—rows of sealed boxes, velvet-covered ledgers, half-faded paintings of ancestors too proud to be remembered. But at the far end of the narrowaisle, set on a pedestal as if it were something alive, sat a small wooden chest no larger than a loaf of bread.
Zander moved to it, reverent but determined. “Nobody’s been able to open this,” he said. “It was tucked away with records from the Fae Accords. I found a line in a Blood Fae ledger that called it His Memory Vessel. I think it belonged to the Blood King himself.”
I stared at the chest. It didn’t look like much—just a simple box carved from dusky, knot-ridden wood. But the magic radiating off of it curled in my gut like smoke.
“How do we open it?” I asked.
“I was hoping…” he turned to me, eyes flicking down to the chain at my throat, “your key would work.”
I looked down. The golden key, warm against my skin, hung beside the pendant I’d worn since I put Kaelith’s scale around my neck.
I slipped the chain over my head and took the key in trembling fingers.
“It’s worth a try,” I whispered, stepping forward and kneeling before the chest.
Zander stayed close behind me, but he didn’t touch me. Just waited, breath steady, as I slowly brought the key to the lock carved in the center of the wood.
The moment the teeth met the slot, magic rippled through the air.
The key pulsed like it had a heartbeat, and the lock unraveled—not clicked, not opened—but unraveled like threads of silver light tugged free by invisible hands.
The lid creaked.
Zander and I held our breath as the chest began to open.
The chest opened with a whisper, not a sound, like the box exhaled its secrets for the first time in centuries.
Inside, nestled on a bed of crimson velvet that looked strangely untouched by time, was a single book.
