The map was older than dust.
It had been scrawled in ink that had long since faded to sepia, curled at the corners, and reeked faintly of mothballs and smoke. Silas unfolded it with the reverence of someone unearthing a ghost. The candlelight flickered across the parchment, casting distorted shadows of the rebel council gathered around it.
Aerin leaned over the table, her brows furrowed.
"This is it?"
Silas nodded, his young fingers tracing the arching tunnel line etched beneath the eastern quadrant of the capital. "My grandmother said the nobles had escape routes hidden in the chapel crypts. This one leads straight into the undercellars of the palace. Past the servant quarters. Right under the Cellar of Oaths."
Thorne, ever the skeptic, crossed his arms. "And how do we know it's not collapsed? Or worse—sealed with blood wards?"
Silas didn't flinch. "We don't. But it's the only path they won't expect. No one has used it in generations. They think it's myth."
Aerin straightened. "Then myth will be our ally."
Lys grinned, leaning one elbow on the table. "We're really doing this, aren't we?"
Thorne shook his head with something between admiration and fatalism. "Gods help us all."
Aerin looked around the room—the mismatched collection of warriors, spies, healers, and ghosts. She had once believed rebellions were forged in marble halls and declarations of fire. But now she knew: real rebellions were built in the dust, whispered through cracks, stitched together by desperation and the thinnest threads of hope.
She placed a hand over the map. "We move in three nights."
The capital slept beneath a velvet sky streaked with storm clouds. Lightning licked the tips of the spires like the kiss of a god losing patience.
Inside the palace, time moved differently. Like honey, slow and suffocating.
Cassius had stopped counting the hours. Or the lashes.
Valen visited daily now. Sometimes to taunt him. Sometimes to ask questions he already knew the answers to. And sometimes—for reasons that disturbed Cassius more than the pain—to simply look at him. As if studying a dying animal to see what kind of beast it had once been.
But it wasn't Valen that haunted him most.
It was her.
Aerin.
She came to him in dreams, sometimes blood-soaked, sometimes radiant, always just out of reach. His body was breaking, but it was the absence of her that gnawed deepest. Their bond, thinned by magic, still pulsed faintly in his mind like a distant heartbeat.
She was alive.
He knew it. Felt it.
And that alone kept him breathing.
Until today.
Today, the door creaked open not with Valen's habitual arrogance, but with something quieter.
A shadow slipped inside.
At first, he thought it a trick. But then the scent reached him—not blood or incense or iron.
Lavender. Moon-silver.
He struggled to raise his head.
A woman stood in the threshold, cloaked in priestess robes. Her face was concealed behind a thin lace veil, her voice like silk on cold water.
"Cassius Vael. Once Prince of the Sangrael Throne. Slayer of kings. Betrayer of blood."
He blinked hard. "Have we met?"
"No," she said softly. "But I've prayed for your death."
Charming.
"And yet, here you are," he rasped, "delivering none of it."
She stepped closer, until her hand hovered near his cheek—but never touched.
"You don't recognize me. But she would. My sister. The woman you killed."
Cassius went still.
The pain in his limbs receded behind a different ache. One that lived deeper, colder.
"Her name," the priestess whispered, "was Elenna."
He closed his eyes.
So that's how far his past had reached.
"I loved her," he said simply.
The priestess scoffed. "And then you drained her."
"She begged me to."
That gave her pause.
"I was hunted," he continued, voice like gravel. "Cornered. Dying. She found me. Hid me. Loved me. And when the hunters came, she knew they wouldn't stop until my body was ash."
He exhaled. "So she gave me a choice. Die... or take her blood and survive. She chose it."
The priestess trembled.
Silence.
Then she turned away. "Even if it's true, it changes nothing."
He didn't argue.
"I have not come to judge," she added. "Only to warn. Veylin plans a public execution. The throne craves spectacle."
Cassius stiffened.
"When?"
"Seven days. During the eclipse."
He let the number sink into his bones.
Seven days.
The priestess hesitated at the door. "My sister may have chosen you, but I do not. I only tell you this because war is coming... and I want you alive long enough to watch your kingdom crumble."
She vanished into the dark.
The moon was high above the northern cliffs when Aerin descended into the catacombs.
The old chapel was little more than a ruin now—overgrown ivy, shattered stained glass, and crumbling stone. But beneath it, a secret waited.
Silas led the way, torch held high. The narrow passage reeked of decay and time, walls etched with symbols even Aerin couldn't decipher. The silence pressed against their eardrums.
Lys followed, muttering under her breath. "If a single skeleton jumps out, I'm stabbing someone."
Aerin remained focused. "How far?"
Silas turned. "Another mile. Then we hit the eastern well. After that, it's the real test."
They walked in silence after that, boots crunching over bone-dry dust. At one point, they passed a collapsed altar with a rusted crown sitting atop a skull. Lys stopped to give it a mock salute.
"May we die slightly better than you."
Finally, they reached the well.
It wasn't much—just a circle of stone with iron rungs descending into inky water. Silas climbed down first. Aerin followed, her muscles tensing with each rung.
The tunnel beyond was narrow—wet and cold—and forced them into a crouch. Rats scurried past. Muffled echoes danced along the walls.
But eventually, they emerged.
They stood in an ancient antechamber, carved entirely from black stone. And there, in the center, was a door unlike any they had seen.
Not wood. Not steel.
Bone.
Woven together like thorns.
Lys exhaled. "Lovely. Creepy and symbolic."
Silas approached. "Blood lock. One of you needs to offer."
Aerin stepped forward without hesitation.
She drew her blade, sliced her palm, and pressed it to the bone.
It shuddered.
Then opened.
And far beneath the palace, Cassius felt it.
Like a whisper brushing across his skin.
She was close.
And this time, he would not let fate steal her again.