My lips twisted with a smirk of satisfaction. The movement felt uncomfortable, like the muscles were out of practice.
Good thing I knew this castle better than anyone.
Vincent had been a very cautious man. He’d renovated this castle to add passageways and tunnels and confusing hallways that led nowhere—infinitely aware of the possibility that, one day, his fortress could be turned against him.
He’d showed me some of these hallways when I was young, making me memorize the paths to his wing. Even when I was only a child, he never sugarcoated why it was so important that I knew this. “This is a dangerous world, little serpent,” he’d said. “I’ll teach you how to fight, but I’ll also teach you how to flee.”
He never showed me all the passageways, of course—he didn’t want to give me too much freedom. But I’d explored the other ones, too, in secret.
Today, though, I followed the path my father had left for me. It was downright stupid to run straight for the outdoors. Yes, it was daylight, and that might help me—but guards would be watching everywhere. I needed to know what I was getting into. I needed a weapon—
My step faltered as I remembered what I had done the last time I’d held a blade. The last heart I’d pierced.
I shook away the memory of Raihn’s dead face, narrowly escaped the image of Vincent’s, and continued down the hall.
I could hear distant voices near the stairwell. One of the entrances to Vincent’s web of hallways was nearby. No one had discovered it yet, it seemed. It was well hidden, the seams of the door covered by strategically placed tapestries. Sometimes these passageways were locked, but today, I was lucky. The door opened easily to my touch.
The tunnels were narrow, lit by forever-fueled Nightfire torches. They had been constructed around the existing layout of the castle, so they were convoluted and awkward to navigate. Many of the doors inside were locked, leaving me little option but to push forward and down several sets of stairs. Most of the other exits here would lead into hidden passages within various bedchambers—the last thing I wanted was to end up in some Rishan general’s room. Instead, I traveled down several sets of tight, winding stairs. Farther still, until I reached the ground floor—until I passed it.
I had rarely been allowed to come here as a child, but I still remembered exactly where it was. Vincent treasured his privacy, and he got very little of it. So, near the beginning of his reign, he’d had a new basement dug out beneath the easternmost tower of the castle—an underground wing that was specifically for him.
It had two access points. One led right up to the ground floor—I could escape through there. But more importantly, Vincent had often kept weapons and supplies in his rooms. I could arm myself before I left.
The wing’s entrance was closed—a set of oak double doors, stained black, that seemed to melt right into the shadows save for their silver handles. I held my breath as I eased them open, very slowly, very silently. I didn’t know for sure that the Rishan hadn’t discovered this place. Vincent’s wing was private, but not a secret.
But my luck, it seemed, held out a little longer. Not a soul.
An empty hallway stood before me. This one, unlike the dark, poorly maintained paths I’d come from, looked like it belonged in this castle. Indigo blue tile floors. Black doors. Silver knobs. Hiaj art framed in gilded presentations on the walls. Eight doors lay ahead of me, four on each side, and then a stairwell that led up, cradled by swooping silver rails.
I hadn’t been here in so long. I didn’t know or remember what all these rooms contained. I tried the first two doors to find them locked. The third. The fourth. Fuck. Maybe they were all locked, and I wasted my precious freedom to come down here for—
The fifth door opened.
I froze. Stopped breathing. Stopped moving.
I stood in the open doorway, my hand still on the knob.
Oh, Goddess.
Vincent’s study.
It smelled like him. For a moment, it felt agonizingly like my father hadn’t died. Like he was in this room somewhere, a book cradled in his hands, a serious line between his brows.
The past barreled over me like splintered steel, just as sharp and just as painful.
It was a small room, smaller than Vincent’s other offices. A large wooden desk sat at its center, and two velvet armchairs in the corner near the fireplace. Bookcases lined the walls, boasting hundreds of black and burgundy and silver and blue spines of old but well-kept books. The desk was covered with clutter—open tomes, papers, notes, and what looked like a pile of broken glass at its center.
When I could make myself move again, I went to the desk.
It was far more cluttered than Vincent usually left things. Then again… at the end, he’d been…
Well. I avoided thinking about the way he’d been in those last few months.
My eyes fell to a wine glass sitting among the notes, dried red caked at its bottom. If I looked closely, I could see little smudges near its stem—fingerprints. I reached out to touch it, then pulled away just short, not wanting to mar those remnants of him.
Even losing Ilana hadn’t prepared me for this. The sheer degree of fucking obsession that grief forces upon you. It took everything I had to force my mind to think about something other than him—it had exhausted me so completely.
But now that I was here, surrounded by him, I never wanted to leave. I wanted to curl up in this chair. I wanted to cocoon myself in the coat left casually slung over one of the armchairs. I wanted to wrap this wine glass in silk and preserve his fingerprints forever.
I picked through the papers on the table. He’d been working hard. Inventories. Maps. Reports about the attack on the Moon Palace. I rifled through the stack of letters, and paused, my hand shaking, at a piece of parchment.
Debrief, the top read. Salinae.
It was written in very matter of fact, straightforward language. A simple accounting of resources and outcome.
The city of Salinae and its surrounding districts have been eliminated.
One sentence, and I was once again standing in the dead remnants of Salinae. The dust. The toxic mist. The fucking smell.
The way Raihn’s voice had wavered when he held that street sign. This is Salinae.
And now here on my father’s desk was this brief, one-page report, outlining so drily how he had destroyed my homeland. Murdered any family I’d had left.
Lied to me about it.
You weren’t going to tell me, I’d spat at him.
You are not like them, he’d snarled at me.
The parchment quivered in my hands. I put it down quickly, pushing it to the back of the pile.
As I did, I glimpsed a faint silver glint. I pushed aside an open tome. Buried beneath it was a tiny, crudely made dagger.