Renegades (Hotbloods #3)

A small smile lifted the corners of Queen Brisha’s lips.

“Speaking of glue, Your Highness, please accept my heartiest apologies. I was trying to show off my flying moves, and I may have broken a few things in the process. An ice sculpture here, a priceless vase there, a couple of chandeliers… but who’s counting? It’s all in the name of a good time, right?” he blabbered, dropping to his knees in front of the queen. “Say you forgive me, Your Highness. Say I’m not for the executioner! Say you’ll let me see another dawn!” he begged, hiccupping through his words.

Queen Brisha chuckled, patting Navan on the back of the head like he was an unruly child. “I forgive you, Navan. I imagine the headache you’ll have tomorrow will be punishment enough,” she said kindly, before turning to me. “Perhaps you should get him to bed?” she suggested, most of her former animosity gone. I could still see the hurt in her eyes, and a heartbreak that would be difficult to shake, but she was a strong woman. She would get through it. I hoped so, anyway. There had to be someone truly worthy of her out there.

I nodded. “Of course, Your Highness.”

With that, I put my arm under Navan’s and pretended to help him to his feet, his body leaning against mine as I led him back toward the palace. He was still grinning like an idiot, his eyes unfocused, his wings flapping mindlessly behind him. I had to hand it to him. He was a convincing drunk.

“You are so shiny, like a bright star,” he murmured, keeping up the pretense as he smothered me in kisses.

I snorted. “Come on, let’s get you to bed.”

“Yes, please!” he whooped.

Peering over my shoulder to check on the others, I saw that Pandora was still watching me. There was uncertainty in her eyes, but she made no move to follow us. That was the strange thing about her: no matter what lies we told, or what we got up to, it never seemed to go any further, or find its way back to Queen Brisha. As the queen’s most trusted advisor, I would have expected Pandora to interrogate us, or confront us outright about our behavior, but she never did. Each time, she let it pass. And that, in and of itself, left me with a tingle of suspicion.





Chapter Fifteen





As I led Navan back into the palace, I realized that an opportunity lay before us. I couldn’t believe it hadn’t come to me sooner. Then again, all we’d been thinking about was getting the information out of Yorrek. Getting the information to Orion had been the next step, a bridge to cross, when we came to it. But now, it seemed the ideal moment had arisen.

“We need to go to the control room,” I whispered to Navan, who was still making a show of being drunk.

He frowned, his face turning serious for a moment. “Now?”

“Not many guards should be there. At the very least, it’ll be a reduced team, considering everyone is at the party,” I explained hurriedly. I was still thinking about the notebook Yorrek had mentioned, which was in the queen’s possession, but that would have to wait. I mean, we didn’t want to feed Orion everything at once. If we did, what further use would we be?

Navan smiled. “I love your mind,” he murmured, kissing me passionately on the lips. For a moment, I wondered if he might actually be drunk.

“We can do this later,” I whispered, pulling away from him.

Navan released me and took my hand with a sigh. “If I didn’t already despise Orion, I’d hate him for his uncanny ability to ruin a romantic moment, even from the other side of the universe.”

We hurried down the network of palace corridors, seeking out a doorway that would lead us down to the queen’s underground control bunker. The secret entrance on the top floor, where Pandora had exerted her impressive might upon the emergency exit, had already been closed back up again. If we busted it open, someone would undoubtedly find it and let the queen know, which was something we couldn’t risk—not after the close call we’d just had. Pandora might not have reported anything suspicious so far, but I doubted she’d be able to ignore a gaping hole in the wall of a palace corridor. No, we were already walking on a knife edge where Brisha was concerned; we needed to tread carefully.

An idea came to me. The wing of the palace that held the ancient galleria, and all the artifacts of the former royals, was abandoned. Nobody went there. Even if we had to kick down a door, we could always cover it up and nobody would notice. A guard doing a routine check would hardly bother to look too closely.

“The old part, with the galleria,” I whispered. “We should check for bunker entrances there.”

“Good idea,” Navan replied as we turned a corner into the main hallway of the palace. Guards were standing around, but they paid us no heed as we passed, evidently expecting us to go up in the elevator to our chambers. By now, our faces were well known in the palace, giving us the freedom to walk around relatively unhindered.

We darted down one of the side corridors, out of sight of the guards. A short while later, we entered the dusty halls of the abandoned wing. It seemed a shame that all of this had fallen into ruin, when it must have been spectacular once, but I could see how it might trouble the queen. On the walls, the old images were of united royal families, not two sisters tearing a nation apart.

“There,” Navan said, pointing to a blank wall at the end of the long hallway. There was something strange about the way it had been painted, making it look almost false.

I crept forward, following Navan toward the peculiar, bare patch of wall. My eye was drawn to the galleria a short distance away, the shrouded statues and covered paintings just visible through a gap in the door. A creeping sensation shivered up my spine at the sight of the ghostly figures. I found myself half expecting one to swoop out and attack us.

Reaching the patch of wall, Navan tapped it lightly. The sound was oddly hollow, confirming our suspicions: something was hidden behind the fa?ade. Casting a nervous glance backward, Navan turned and smashed his leg through the wall. An enormous hole crumbled inward, revealing a door beyond. With his muscles bulging, Navan tore the rest of the stone and plaster away, before kicking the door open. It swung wide, with a spiral set of stairs leading down into the dark unknown.

“Let’s hope this leads to the right place,” Navan said.

“Where else could it possibly lead?” I reached for a golden tassel that held back a flowing velvet curtain, dyed blood red. The curtain swung across the hole Navan had created. Whether it was a remnant from when the doorway hadn’t been shrouded by plaster, I wasn’t sure, but it had clearly been custom-made to cover this section of wall.

Ducking behind the curtain, we made our way down the steep spiral staircase, our path lit by the dim glow of emergency lighting. The metal was shaky, each step rustier than the last, crumbs of stone falling away with every move we made.