“How far away is the great hall?” Merek asked.
Emma pointed one finger at the ceiling. “Two floors.”
“And the girl's room?” Imeyna asked.
Rayne held her breath. To her surprise, Emma's finger pointed down. So it was true. The girl was as good as a prisoner and it was all Rayne's fault. Rayne had been young and foolish when she'd left, not fully understanding the consequences of her departure. But the last five years had taught her well, and Edlyn’s suffering would soon be over, while her father’s would just be beginning. They deserved it, both of them tyrants and slavers.
This was what she told herself, even when her nerves betrayed her. Even when her mind fed her pictures of Edlyn as she had last seen her—young and slight, beautiful even in youth with her big, brown eyes and smooth curls. Some days, when her emotions were raw, betraying her wretched family seemed like the easiest thing in the world. But on the other days, she didn't know how she would work up the nerve. No matter what he had done, he was still her father. Edlyn was still her sister. This palace or one like it was supposed to be her home, not some ramshackle cottage in Bricboro, where the air was so dirty she was constantly coated with a fine layer of black soot.
Merek tugged at one of her dark curls, raising an eyebrow. They were all looking at her with tight, pinched faces. If they knew about her hesitation, it would be a strike against her. How quickly she could become their enemy instead of their ally, a fact she had been painfully aware of for the last five years.
She lifted her shoulders and met Imeyna's eyes. “Down,” she said. “Got it.”
Imeyna didn't look convinced, and when the rest of the group dispersed, she stayed behind.
“Are you okay?” Imeyna asked. Rayne resisted the urge to sink into the older girl’s arms as she had done when she was younger. It was Imeyna who had found her in the Silver Hills between Dusk and Shade when Rayne was a twelve-year-old with no place to go, and Imeyna who had taken her in even after finding out what had happened to Madlin. Even as she grieved over her little sister’s death, it was Imeyna who had kept Wido from killing Rayne in revenge. And it was Imeyna who taught Rayne how to fight, how to stay alive. If there was anyone that Rayne truly wished to be worthy of, it was Imeyna.
“It's just strange,” she said, “to be this close to them after so long. I don't even know them anymore.”
“And they don't know you,” Imeyna said as if that was meant to be reassuring. “I do. You can do this.”
Feeling bolstered by Imeyna's confidence, Rayne left the alcove alone. While the others were to go create the distraction, Rayne was the main event. The corridor was crowded and loud, and she was able to blend in effortlessly with the flow of the servants. Even among those working the party, Rayne felt that almost-forgotten sensation of anticipation and excitement.
Of course, she could never admit it, but she missed the parties and the dresses and the five-course meals. She missed her family's dais, where her place as the youngest was always beside Edlyn and their brother, Rin. Rin with the stern set of his mouth, his smile betrayed by the crinkle in the corners of his eyes. Edlyn who laughed with her mouth closed and would put a tiny, gentle hand on Rayne's shoulder to get her attention. Sometimes Rayne remembered these little details and felt the pang of homesickness. That was when she would have to call up the memories she had pushed down deep inside of her. Madlin's screams, her father's hand white-knuckled around a whip's handle. Blood and torn flesh and salty tears.
The way down was not easy to find but after trying several doors, she finally came upon a circular staircase that descended into the darkness. As she lowered herself into the narrow stairway, the sounds of the party drifted away and the air grew even colder. There were no windows and no natural light, and not even a breath of wind. Had this been her sister's life for five years? Where Rayne's days had been full of sweat and swords and fresh air, Edlyn had been trapped in the dark. Their father had let his rash decisions ruin both of his daughters' lives.
There was a torch in a bracket on the wall at the bottom of the stairs. The stone walls rose into arches high overhead, so high that the torchlight barely reached, leaving the pinnacles cast in shadows. There were multiple doorways, the corridors beyond them all dark. She stood at the entrance to each, and when she got to the third, she felt something tingle in the pit of her stomach. She took another step forward and a torch flared to life in the distance, its light steady in the stillness. This was the one.
It had been this way since leaving Dusk, though she couldn’t say why. She felt magic even though she couldn’t use it. It was like being trapped in a glass box with something she wanted just on the other side—visible and very nearly within reach, but utterly inaccessible. She ran up against the glass wall every time she reached for it. It was unheard of in Casuin for a woman to have any control over magic; wielders were exclusively men, blessed by Enos. Imeyna thought it was because she was a direct descendant of Casuin Crowheart. Merek thought it was indigestion. Rayne didn’t know what she thought about it, and so she tried to ignore it.
Rayne wrapped a scarf around her mouth and nose and pulled her hood down low so that only her eyes were visible. She would have covered those, too, if she didn't need to use them. The going was slow and careful—she didn't know what kind of traps the wielder might have set and whether or not her Crowheart blood would protect her from them. It should, since, according to Imeyna’s source in Dusk, the enchantments allowed only Edlyn’s family to enter her rooms. In spite of her absence and betrayal, Rayne was still family. She allowed herself only a moment’s thought to wonder what could have happened if she hadn’t been a Crowheart and had approached these tunnels. Would a false torch have led her down the wrong path, leaving her to wander the labyrinth beneath the city until the end of her days? Would she have been crushed or trapped or hunted by some beast?
She kept her fingers on the walls, the icy cold biting into her hands. The corridor stretched long and dark both in front of her and behind her, lit sparsely by intermittent torches. Every time she reached a torch without incident, she hoped to be at her destination, but there was never any sign of her sister's cell, so she continued, the air growing colder as she went. She had to be outside of the palace now, maybe beneath the town's cobblestone streets.
It was as she approached one of the darkest parts of the corridor, where no light from any torch reached, that her nose registered the smell of a smoldering fire. She froze, barely breathing, her hand sliding along the wall until her fingers felt an invisible gap in the stone. Reaching up and over, she stretched to gauge what she believed to be the outline of a stone door, and though she could feel its edges, there was no handle. What she did find was a smooth piece of stone covered in engraved lines in the center of the door.
She had seen this before. Merek was a spellwielder, able to imbue items with magic by etching the right words or runes into its surface. Her father kept a whole regiment of spellwielders, called the Sons of Enos, who imbued their weapons with spells for strength and accuracy and agility. Merek did that for the Knights, but he also enjoyed its more frivolous uses, the most common of which was locking doors so that only certain people could enter, guaranteeing Rayne and Merek a bit of privacy in their overcrowded town. She squinted in the dark, studying the door in front of her and trying to decide if this was the same spell.
Taking a chance, she pressed her hand flat against the engraved disc. In her other hand, she gripped the hilt of one of her daggers still at her hip. They had been gifts from Imeyna's own forge, presented to Rayne when she had completed her training and been inducted into the Knights last year. The wooden handles were designed to look like crows' wings and reminded her so much of her father's sword, with its crow hilt, that Rayne had treasured these blades, cleaning them and sharpening them nightly after practice. The handle was cold but familiar in her hand.
At first, nothing happened. The door was just a door, and then her stomach twisted in pain. She tried to jerk
her hand away but was horrified when it wouldn't move. It hadn't worked and now she was going to die by some wielder's deviant spell. But then the pain that had her doubled over ended and her hand fell away easily, nearly sending her to the floor. She regained her balance and watched the door creak open.
“My prince?” called a small voice inside. “Is that you?”
CHAPTER FOUR
Rayne
She wrapped her fingers around the edge of the door, her heart pounding in her chest. The dagger slid soundlessly free of its sheath, but before she could step around the heavy stone door, another voice called out, this one from behind her.
“You there! Stop!”
She should have slipped inside and finished the job but instead, she stopped and turned to face the guard who had called her. But it was no normal guard in iron-plated armor.
It was a man in full royal wielder's regalia—a high-collared red coat that came up nearly to his ears, and a golden mask across his eyes. Fire blazed in one of his hands, but not from a torch. It was cupped in his palm, an unmoving ball of flame in the still air of the corridor. If spell wielders were rare in Shade, elemental wielders were nothing but a myth. Even in Dusk, Rayne had not known any growing up, though she was sure her father would have had some in his employ, men that could control fire, wind, water, and air. That could steal the breath from someone’s lungs or pull them beneath the water with a flick of a hand. The only thing she knew about their strange magic was that they could only control one element at a time—and that was even if they could control more than one—and that the element had to be present for them to manipulate it.
Rayne hadn’t thought to meet such a wielder, but of course, her father would have spared no expense, gone after the best in the land to make sure his daughter and the future queen of his stolen country was safely ensconced within his walls.
“Danyll?” Edlyn called again and Rayne turned to her, catching a glimpse of a dark brown eye and slender shoulders in the firelight.
“Get back,” the wielder called, whether to Edlyn or Rayne she couldn’t be sure.
“Danyll?” Rayne mouthed the name, her head bouncing back and forth between the wielder and her sister before realization dawned on her.
The wielder was no mere soldier. He was the Ashsky prince. Edlyn had been nine, and Rayne eight, when Edlyn’s engagement had been announced. The girls had been both disgusted and intrigued at the thought of marriage. Rayne remembered the young prince as he had been then at that year’s gathering, awkward and gangly, all limbs and a narrow face covered in red spots. He had not played with the other children but sat always with the adults, listening to strategies and battle plans with a smirk on his lips as if the whole thing had been his idea. The marriage arrangement had been mutually beneficial, granting Edlyn and Danyll, who were both second-in-line for their respective thrones, a country of their own, and secured the Ashsky family as a Crowheart ally.
Her stomach flipped as he manipulated the fire, rolling it between his fingers. “Who are you?” he asked. That would be the question, wouldn’t it? Only someone allowed by his spellwork would be able to open that door, and she wasn’t one of them, as far as he knew. She felt a strange mix of fear and anticipation and tried to call on that false bravado that she had used so often the last five years.
Though his face was partially hidden by his mask, there was wariness in the way he pursed his lips and tensed his shoulders, holding the fire at his side as if ready to throw it at her. It occurred to her then that she would have to kill him now, too, or he would be just another barrier to Imeyna’s father taking the throne. Add his death to her long list of treacheries.
“Surrender now and I’ll make sure you have a fast death,” the prince said, raising the fire so that it cast eerie shadows on his face, making him seem skeleton-like. Rayne pulled both of her daggers from their sheaths and held them at her side, keeping herself utterly still, her fingers pressing almost painfully into the engraved crow-feather hilts.
“I’m not afraid,” Rayne said because it seemed like something he would hate to hear. And she was right. Beneath his golden half-mask, his face twisted from wariness to rage in the blink of an eye, his jaw twitching as he ground his teeth together, his eyes hard, black orbs.
He took a step toward her as if to grab her. She gathered herself to attack, crouching and raising her daggers, but he stopped mid-stride, an arm’s length away from her, and the tunnel plunged back into darkness. For one terrifying moment, the darkness seemed to smother her. It was as if she had fallen away from the world, utterly alone in the middle of a vast nothingness. Then her eyes began to adjust and she realized what this meant—he had lost the fire.
She recovered before he did, but fire hadn’t been his only weapon. Her dagger met his with a fierce clatter that echoed against the stone walls. He was fast, but she met him in speed and skill, feeling his movements in the dark, listening to the high-pitched swish of blades as they cut the air. Block, swing, block, swing. She aimed for his wrists, his arms, his exposed face. They both drew blood. Small cuts stung her arms and neck but didn’t slow her down.
All the while, she felt something tugging at her in that deep, indescribable place inside. The air seemed unstable and the ground trembled beneath her feet. It was as if the prince was reaching for his magic and not finding it. But there was no time for her to revel in the fact that someone else was finally feeling what she had felt for the last several years. As she went in for a block, he grabbed her knife-arm and twisted, then kicked her feet out from under her before she could even react. She stumbled against the stone door, her fingers brushing not just stone but fabric, too. On her hands and knees, Rayne looked up the length of a woman’s body to her face, and finally to a pair of deep brown eyes framed by thick lashes.
It was as if no time had passed at all. Her sister was still the same tall, proud girl with wide eyes, thick lips, and a straight nose that was a little too large for the rest of her face. She looked down it now, at her sister on the floor, though hopefully not realizing who it was that she was scowling at with such contempt. Rayne felt a brief surge of pride in her sister’s bravery before hot hands wrapped around her ankles.
“Get back!” Danyll shouted, dragging Rayne away from Edlyn. He swung a boot at her stomach and even through the sudden pain, she caught his foot and twisted, sending him sprawling beside her. They were both on their knees then, swinging wildly in the dark. She knocked his arm to the side and he lost his balance so she swung low, her dagger burying itself in his leg. He grunted but still swung for her, his own knife slicing through her leather jerkin and opening a shallow gash in her abdomen.
They were both pulling themselves to their feet when a wordless cry echoed down the hall and another figure launched itself out of the darkness at the prince, knocking him back off his feet. Both figures skidded across the ground, far enough away to be out of sight. There was grunting and then the loud crunching sound of a body against stone. Torn between going after her sister and defending herself, she hesitated before swinging around, thrusting her knife in the direction of the noise.
A tall form lurched out of the darkness, but when he spoke, Rayne relaxed. “What are you doing?” came the familiar voice.
“What are you doing?” Rayne snapped back at Merek. She pressed one hand to the cut on her stomach. It was warm and wet with blood.
“You should have been done by now.”
“Oh, is that right?” Rayne quipped.
Merek squinted at her and then over her shoulder at the stone door. She didn’t know what he saw on her face, but he puffed out his chest and said, “Fine, I’ll do it.” The door was still open, though Edlyn was out of sight. Before she could stop him, Merek had shouldered his way past her and put one foot across the threshold.
That was all it took. The spellwork protecting her sister threw Merek backward as if he weighed nothing. He landed a few feet in front of the door and collapsed to his back. The tunnel trembled, not like it
had when she had been fighting Danyll, but something deeper, as if the walls were crumbling from the inside out. At the very edge of her vision, Prince Danyll was emerging from the darkness, stumbling and rubbing his head.
“What have you done, you idiot?” He was bracing himself against the wall, blood oozing from the gash in his thigh. His mask was gone and he looked human for the first time.
“Danyll? What’s happening?” Edlyn’s voice came from behind the door. Rayne longed to push him aside and go to her, but she was losing a lot of blood and barely able to keep her feet.
“Die knowing that you have failed, rebel.” His voice was as hard and as cruel as his eyes that held her pinned in place, panting, bent over with her hand clutched to her middle. She watched him, her mouth open as if to speak but finding no words, as he disappeared behind the stone door. It closed behind him with an audible click. Edlyn’s room must have protection on it that would keep her safe from the collapse. Rayne looked between Merek and the door. She could open the door again. The prince was wounded and weak, but so was she. And if she did that, Merek would die, crushed in these tunnels.
Making her decision, she dropped to her knees and slapped Merek's cheeks to rouse him. He was unresponsive.
“Merek, please,” she begged. He stirred at the sound of her voice. He easily had fifty pounds on her, and she would never be able to carry him in this condition. “Merek!”
Just as she was struggling to pull him to his feet, there was a tremendous cracking overhead and she flung herself backward just in time to avoid a massive boulder which fell just where she had been standing, right in front of the stone door. Merek screamed and in the light of the snow clouds that filtered in through the new hole in the ceiling, she saw why. The boulder had landed on his legs, trapping him. A smaller stone pelted her in the shoulder, but she hardly felt it.
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