The few guards they’d seen posted in front of various doors ormaking their rounds through the cold, gray halls had been easy enough to avoid. Unease had only continued brewing in Kit’s gut the farther they wove through the building. She hadn’t expected a warm welcome, to be sure, but there was nothing urgent, nothing pressing about the way the guards were acting. If Malchior’s forces expected some kind of retaliation for the attack on King’s Keep, they certainly were not acting like it.
In truth, nothing about this place was as she expected. Instead of running into cadres of cultists lying in wait after she and Nox climbed out of the lower levels, Kit had searched several rooms only to find each one stacked to the brim with metal barrels. Dozens upon dozens of them, all uniform in size and shape, some resting beneath loosely draped tarps, others tipped over on their sides. After stumbling into the third room like this, Kit finally inspected one of the barrels, shifting its lid. The smell hit her first—fresh rain and melting snow, plus the tang of raw mana.
“Noctis take me,” she had said. “He’s been bleeding the Midlands dry.”
“No wonder the lord paramount has been soinvestedin overseeing the mana harvests,” Nox had replied.
“Most of these are empty. What in all four hells has he been doing with it all?”
The nocterrian’s unique voice drew Kit’s focus back to the present, to the shadows swirling around them both.
“It is curious that my magic is acting this way, isn’t it?” Nox said, their voice low. “Thesanguinagiwards cast on this place prevent any great manifestation of my power, yet do not cut me off from it completely. I only feel...dampened. Suppressed. And it seems...intentional.”
Kit frowned, releasing her grip on the nocterrian’s arm to call upon her own magic. Moisture pooled in her palm and started to crystallize, forming a sharp, solid shape...then dissolved nearly as quickly. Water slipped through her fingers, splashing her boots.
Long fingers wrapped around her wrist. “As I said. Intentional. Even more curious, it does not seem new. These wards were cast long ago.”
“I do remember Malchior mentioning something about wards in his journal entries. Did he put them in place to stifle his own power?” Kit wondered aloud.
“To keep him from being discovered? Or a constant reminder to his followers not to reveal their dark magic here, perhaps?” Nox whispered. Then, pointing to a pair of guards stationed outside a heavy wooden door at the far end of the hall the two Arcanians had just turned down, they said, “Look.”
Kit drew a dagger from her thigh, flipping it in her palm. “Guess we do this the old-fashioned way.”
The guards didn’t notice the pair until they were already upon them, and there,finally, was the urgency and alarm Kit had expected to see. It didn’t help them. She hadn’t even needed to use the dagger. Just one quick burst of her celestial-given speed had her behind the nearer guard, forearm wrapped around his neck. He gasped, clawing at her with frantic fingers, but a flex of her arm and twenty seconds of stillness had him sinking to the floor.
Tenebris Nox made even quicker work of the second, before dragging both bodies into a nearby alcove and hiding them from sight.
The door was locked. Kit’s eyes darted behind her to ensure the hall was still empty. Then, she slammed her shoulder into the wood—once, twice. On the third blow, the door burst open, and she and Nox fell into the room.
Tenny sat on her bed, legs tucked beneath her, the book she’d clearly just been reading clutched to her chest. “Oh, thank the stars, it’s you!” she exclaimed, launching off the mattress and barreling into Kit with enough force to knock the breath from the fae’s lungs.
“How are you here?” Tenny asked after a moment, eyes glassy as she peeled herself away from Kit. “I can’t believe you came. You came for me?” Her voice cracked on the last word.
Kit’s heart cracked a little bit too. “Of course we did, Ten. We never leave one of our own behind.” She winked, and the sound Tenny released was somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
“I’m just stunned to see you. Stunned and shocked and—stars above, I’m so grateful. My father—He—I can’t—I never?—”
“Just breathe, love,” Kit said, placing her hands on Tenny’s shoulders. She made a show of sucking in a deep breath—in through her nose, out through her mouth.
Tenny sniffled and gave a meek nod. “Thank you for coming.” Sheturned to Nox and gave them a quick bow, hands clasped in front of her. “Both of you. And thank Aurelia herself it’s you and not Cedric. For a minute I was worried he really is as stupid and noble as I thought.”
Kit exchanged a look with Nox. “What do you mean?”
Tenny’s throat bobbed. “I agreed to go with my father in order to stop the bloodshed at the palace. But he made me promise him something else too.”
“What did he make you promise?”
“He wanted me to write to Ric, to beckon him here.” She gestured to a small desk on the other side of the room. “Told me to say whatever I needed to, to come up with something that will get him to come here—alone. I told my father I needed time. He wasn’t...” She lifted her hand to her throat, which Kit noticed was bare, no locket or token in sight. “He wasn’t particularly happy about that.”
Kit’s jaw worked, her teeth grinding together.
“He said I had today to comply, or he would send Cedric a message of his own,” Tenny continued, and there was no mistaking the darkness in her tone. “But all thanks to the Five, you two came for me instead, and we won’t have to find out what he meant by that.”
It was like Kit could see the relief seeping from Tenny, the weight lifting from her shoulders as she spoke. It made Kit hesitate.
Nox stepped forward instead. “Cedric is here, Tenny. He and Elyria are confronting your father as we speak.”
Tenny’s amber eyes were wide, her mouth gaping open. “No,” she whispered, backing up toward the bed. “No, no, no, no. That’s what he wants. What heneeds.”
