Thomas shakes his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t know it meant anything until now.”
Together we move toward the high iron gates that used to stand between the palace and the world but now stand open for all to see.
Thomas and I each take a gate and try to pull them closed, to move them in any way, but they don’t budge.
“They’re stuck,” Thomas says. “They probably haven’t moved in two hundred years, remember.”
I push harder. I pull with all my might. But then I stop and look closer at the gate before me, the old scrollwork and handles and the way the gate has swung back to perfectly block a tiny alcove in the wall. The bolt is extended, keeping the gate in place.
“They’re not stuck,” I tell him. “They’re locked.”
I opened the puzzle box this morning and pulled out the key that the king had been searching for almost his entire life. It hangs around my neck now, tucked beneath my T-shirt. When I bend down to examine the gate more closely, I can feel the cold metal against my skin, swinging on its chain and rubbing against me. Suddenly, I have to wonder.
“Could it be this easy?”
I pull the key from my shirt and hold it to the keyhole and give Thomas a look that says wish me luck.
Then I insert the key into the lock.
And turn.
And the gate swings.
The alcove beyond is shallow and damp. It was probably something of a guardhouse once upon a time, just room enough to keep a few provisions.
There’s a brazier where they probably kept a fire in winter, some hooks on the wall.
There’s a long, narrow window in the wall, and the sun is shining bright outside. Dust dances in a beam of light that slices through the dim room and then down a tiny, narrow staircase that doesn’t belong in this century or even the last.
“‘The sunlight shines where the truth is laid,’” I sing in disbelief. Thomas looks at me.
“Grace, is that … ?” Thomas starts. I can’t blame him for not being able to finish.
“Maybe.”
I inch toward the old stone stairs. The mortar is crumbling and the space is dreary and damp. This room belongs in a castle in the old, medieval sense of the word. The stone around me looks like the same kind that they used to build the wall a thousand years ago. This part of the palace is old. Ancient.
And the future king of Adria is beside me.
“What do we do now? We can’t just go down there. Can we?” Thomas asks—and he’s got a point. Now is not the time to rush. It’s not the time to panic. Old Grace would have rushed in where angels feared to tread, but the last person to come here may have been my dead mother and that makes even me cautious.
I tell myself that the bodies have been hidden for two hundred years. Twenty minutes more won’t matter.
So I turn to Thomas. “Now we go find Dominic.”
“Who?”
The question stuns me. For a second, I stand, gaping, and I have to remind myself that this boy doesn’t know me. He’s not going to call me crazy.
Not even when I say, “The Scarred Man.” The words are quiet, almost reverent. “I have to find the Scarred Man,” I say, and I know now, more than ever, that it’s true.
Because this time I know that he’s on my side.
“He loved my mother,” I explain. “He’ll know what to do. We can trust him.”
“Okay.” Thomas nods. “We’ll split up and find this Dominic and then we’ll meet back here.”
“Sounds good,” I tell him.
We start back down the south corridor then split up when we reach the main hall.
As soon as Thomas is out of sight—as soon as he’s safe—I reach for my flashlight and turn back. Maybe because I’m being stupid. Maybe because the last person who went down this proverbial rabbit hole ended up dead.
But, more than likely, it’s just because there are some paths you’re destined to walk alone.
It smells like the tunnels. Like centuries of dust and damp and mildew and … secrets.
The stone steps are steep and dusty but not dark. I walk in that beam of light, past torches that still hang from the walls as if waiting for the guards to change shifts—for an emergency to send them down these stairs. Maybe for supplies. Maybe reinforcements. I just know that with every step, I get further from my own time and closer to my mother. Closer to Amelia. Closer to the truth.
When at last I reach a cold stone floor, I stop and get my bearings. Cobwebs cling to my hair and to my clothes. I’m walking through a century’s worth of dust, and it feels at least ten degrees colder here than it did in the rest of the palace. The ceiling is made from stone and ancient wood, and I can’t hear the servants who are rushing from room to room upstairs, getting ready for the onslaught of dignitaries and world leaders who will come to mourn the king. Somewhere, Thomas’s father is dealing with the fact that the job’s now his. And Ann …
Ann is probably thinking that she’s won.
And she’s probably right.
But I keep walking anyway.