“Easy,” he murmured, his hand coming up to pry her fingers away from it. The care in his touch was disconcerting, each movement languid enough to feel calculated.
“That was clever,” he said, turning the hairpin in his grip. The blood on his knuckles caught the light before he tucked the pin back into her hair. “But don’t think you can play that card twice. Next time you point something sharp at yourself, I’ll call your bluff.”
He stepped around her, retrieving his rapier from where it lay in the grass. “You’ll find I’m much harder to bargain with when I’m not in a generous mood.”
She heard only the faintest ghost of a sound—mockery wrapped in breath. The blow came fast, cracking against the base of her skull. Light flared behind her eyes. The forest spun, the hairpin dragging heavier as her body lost its hold. As she sagged, she felt his arms catch her. Efficient. Like a man hefting a burden he knew from the beginning he’d had to carry.
Her last thought, before the dark swept her under, was of Alexander.
CHAPTER 48
JINGYI
Someone was shaking her shoulder firmly.
“Rise and shine, Your Highness,” came Tedric’s voice.
She opened her eyes to the pale sky of dawn above her. Mist threaded through the trees. Her head throbbed–a dull, punishing rhythm, and her mouth tasted of bile and iron.
They were tucked in a shallow hollow, half-screened by wet brambles. Nearby, one of the horses stood between the trees, coat dark with dew. Wet. Everything was soaked. Panic seized her chest. Would there be tracks Alexander could follow? She searched the ground, but the night’s rain and fallen leaves had already hidden any sign of their passing.
She tried to sit, and the world tilted. Nausea crested. Her cloak was a leaden weight, the wool saturated and reeking of horse and forest decay. Damp strands of hair clung to her cheeks. A small squelch escaped her slippers with every shift.
Once she was upright, he gave her a nudge—silent, firm, and picked up her medicine chest.
They stood in an unremarkable clearing, save for a crumbled stone ruin ahead. Time and weather had all but erased its shape. What remained was little more than a heap of collapsedwalls, with a single row of three arches still standing, already swallowed by moss and trailing ivy.
Tedric nudged her again, and she moved, slippers scuffing wet leaves as the forest floor gave way to worn stone. He stepped ahead and crouched. With the heel of his boot, he scraped away leaves and soil until a flat stone panel emerged—square, weather-stained, with an iron ring set into its center.
He grasped the ring and pulled.
The hatch groaned. Earth clung to its edges as it revealed a narrow opening with steps vanishing into darkness. The cold air that rushed out was heavy with the scent of damp stone and something smelling like iron, or old blood.
“Inside,” Tedric ordered.
JingYi hesitated. His hand came to the small of her back, firm enough to erase any illusions of choice.
She descended. The steps were steep, uneven, and slimy with condensed moisture. As darkness deepened after three steps, she had to use her hands to feel her way down. Her right leg screamed in protest each time she lowered her weight onto it. The old break felt like a knot of live nerves.
The air grew colder and thicker, tasting of minerals and rot. Her breath echoed loudly in her ears. Her slippers scuffed. Behind her, Tedric’s tread was calm, even—maddeningly so. When she reached the base, she nearly collided with a tall, solid iron door. Behind her, the stone hatch slammed closed with a jolt that echoed through the stairwell, plunging them into utter, suffocating darkness.
For a breathless moment, there was only the sound of his boots against the stone. He brushed past her. She jumped back when she felt the whisper of his clothing against her shoulder. Keys jingled. Metal scraped. The hinges shrieked as the door swung open, the sound unnaturally loud in the absolute dark. A faint breeze stirred the stale air.
But still, no light. Not until she heard the clunking noises from her left.
A limyerite torch flared to life between them, its pale blue glow flooding the tight passage with a cold, otherworldly shimmer.
They continued walking through the tunnel. Pain pulsed higher from JingYi’s shin to hip, her breaths growing shallow.
“How much farther?” she asked, her voice small.
“Not far.” His tone was mild, but it carried the kind of finality that made her think pressing him would earn only silence.
They wound their way even further. Now and then, a thin shaft of light pierced through cracks in the stone overhead—proof the open world still existed above them. Her palm skimmed the wall for balance, the rough surface biting into her skin whenever her limp forced her weight against it.
When her breath was turning to rasps, the tunnel widened and opened into a circular shaft carved straight out of a rocky cavern. The space was vast, its walls honeycombed with cell doors built into galleries spiraling three stories up. A narrow walkway ringed each level, connected by slender bridges of stone.
Far above, a sun-hole let in a pale beam of light that fell in a perfect column to the centre of the floor. Around the edges of that light, shadows clung. And in those shadows, movement. Guards, masked and dressed in black from head to toe, leaned against iron railings with the ease of men who didn’t expect to be challenged.