Page 72 of Renegade Queen

Alyssa

Alyssa

My mind was screaming at me that we should turn back. Something felt wrong. This entire palace felt disconnected.

Nymeria was muted here. Like it was screaming at me through glass. I could feel my magic, I could feel the land, but that echo of magic that came back to me wasn’t there. The why was a terrifying thought I couldn’t even consider right now.

Arik had a plan. A long game I needed to try and figure out. I’d always assumed he just wanted a throne, and my family had the misfortune of getting in the way. But he’d since taken the Autumn Court and was now trying for the Summer Court.

My mind turned to the legendary Fifth Court. Could that really be his plan? I’d been so convinced that it wasn’t real. It seemed like a fairytale, the sort of thing you dreamed about because you needed something magical to hope for. But if it really was out there, in the middle of the Wildling Forest, why hadn’t anyone ever claimed it before. And if they did, what would they get out of it?

Questions piled on top of questions, but none of them would serve us. We needed to concentrate on what we could do now.

We reached the end of the tunnel, and I ran my fingers around the edge of the trapdoor I knew was there. Finding the handle, I gave it a gentle push, surprised to find no resistance as I did. Part of me had expected the way to be blocked, that it couldn’t be as easy as it had been when Rhidian and I snuck around this place so many years ago.

A faint light shone on the other side, which was definitely a difference from the last time. I gently closed the trapdoor and then leaned close to the guys behind me.

“There’s a light out there. I’m going to see what’s on the other side. Stay here,” I whispered. I could see Dean about to argue until I added. “If someone is on the other side, it would work more in our favour if they didn’t know you were there, and then we at least have some kind of surprise on our side.”

He squinted at me suspiciously, and I knew he was trying to see the catch. There genuinely wasn’t one. If I was going to walk out of here and find someone waiting for us on the other side, the only way we’d have a chance of getting past them would be to get the upper hand somehow. And I didn’t know any other way we could do that.

Maddox clasped Dean’s shoulder and nodded at me. Dean’s top lip lifted in a reluctant sneer, but he didn’t try to stop me. It was the only kind of acceptance I would get from him, and I wouldn’t take it personally. I knew he only wanted to protect me, and after spending so long alone, I could appreciate that.

Taking a deep breath to try and bolster my courage, I pushed the trapdoor slowly open with my shoulder as I pulled myself through.

It sat high on the wall, partially blocked by the racks of wine that lined the room. The space between the wall and the rack in front of it was only just enough to slip through, and I was careful to slide down into the cramped space without jostling the dusty, glass bottles shelved in front of me.

As my feet silently met the rough stone floor of the wine cellar, I felt the weight of the trapdoor lessen in my outstretched hand. Looking up, I saw Maddox; he kept a close watch on me as I quietly slid along the wall toward the edge of the shelves.

The light was slightly brighter here, but it was enough for me to realise that the source was outside, not in the cellar itself. Glancing over my shoulder, I locked eyes with Maddox and nodded for him and Dean to follow me through. They’d have a harder time getting into the cramped space than I had, but I trusted them to have enough experience to do it silently.

Without waiting for them to join me, I crossed the cellar and pressed myself against the wall at the entrance. There wasn’t a door to hide behind. This level of the palace was just an interconnecting warren of storage rooms; they didn’t bother sealing them away behind a door.

It had never been guarded before because only the nearest rooms had been used; the rest had been left to time, unused and largely forgotten about. The maze they created was difficult to navigate, but Rhidian and I had developed a system over the years that we’d been forced to visit here.

As I peered around the edge of the doorway, my fingers slipped to the old etching on the stone we’d left here. I easily found the circle with an arrow pointing to the left, the way out. It wasn’t the only circle we’d etched into the walls, indicating a doorway was inside this room. It was, however, the only one that was easily navigable. The only other we’d discovered was impassable, the tunnel had collapsed years before we’d found it. We’d had plans to start clearing the way to see where it went, but then Rhidian had left the Court, and exploring the lower levels didn’t seem any fun without him.

I felt Dean and Maddox move silently to my side before waiting for word of what happened next.

Grabbing Maddox’s hand, I moved it to the etching, running his fingers over the design. “The arrow points to the exit back into the palace. The others will have a straight line that points back to this room,” I explained to him.

He flipped his hand, wordlessly grabbing hold of mine as he did. I knew what he was trying to tell me. He didn’t need this information because he wasn’t coming back this way without me.

Standing here now on the precipice of sneaking into Arik’s palace had me needing to know they had a way out without me. We didn’t know what awaited us in there. For all I knew, they could end up carrying me out of this place, and that was firmly on the best-case scenario side of the scales when all the other possibilities flooded my head.

Looking into the interconnecting room, I realised it was as empty as it had always been, but the light we’d been able to see was coming from the next one. I couldn’t see inside it from our angle, but the bright light and the lack of dust on the floor would indicate that this one was not only in use, but frequently enough that someone had bothered to leave a light on.

We crept through the next room on silent feet until we came to the doorway. My heart thundered in my chest, reminiscent of the last time I’d tried to move silently through a palace with my life on the line. Just like then, I was certain whoever was nearby could hear it.

From the doorway, I could make out just enough to see wooden crates stacked haphazardly around the place, most were sealed shut, but one had a glimmer of a black substance sitting in the top open crate. It shone in the light like glass or some kind of polished stone. Even though the curiosity built inside me to find out what it was, this wasn’t what we came here for. Diverting from our admittedly very bad plan was a surefire way to get us all killed.

Dean’s hand gripped my shoulder, and I turned to look at him, my eyes widening in surprise as he quickly moved to the other side of the doorway.

It was risky, but when no shout of alarm followed, I had to reluctantly admit that it was a good idea. Especially when, with a flurry of hand signals, Dean silently communicated with Maddox what he could see on the other side.

“The room is empty, but there’s movement in the next one. How many more do we have to move through after this one?” Maddox asked.

“Two, then we hit some stone stairs, but instead of going up them, there’s a wooden door underneath that leads into the cells. Damon should be in there,” I explained.