The voices behind them had faded. The secondary passage had taken them off the main route, away from whoever was following. The air was different—less stale, the faintest draft against his face that meant an opening somewhere ahead.
“I feel a draft,” Honey said from the dark.
“I feel it too.”
“There’s something ahead. A junction. I think—”
She stopped. The tunnel terminated in another junction—three passages branching off into black. No signage. No markers. No helpfulTHIS WAY TO FREEDOMpainted on the walls by a thoughtful maintenance worker.
“Matthias,” Riot said.
Matthias was silent.
“The east service road,” Riot said. “Which passage.”
“I don’t—”
“You have three seconds to know.”
“Center,” Matthias said. “The center passage trends upward. Upward means exit.”
“Then you go first,” Riot said, knowing exactly what he looked like with just his eyes glowing in the dark. “And if it’s another dead end, you don’t get to go back.”
Chapter forty-five
Under the Garden Wall
Riot
Riothadquestions.
He’d been carrying them the way he’d been carrying Cass—in his arms, against his chest, the weight of them pressing into his bones with every step. They’d been forming since the living room. Since Cass had cleaned the wound on Matthias’s face, asking about bedtime stories and accepting every answer.
The questions were ugly. The answers would be uglier. And the man who had the answers was shuffling along the tunnel a few feet ahead of him.
“Was this always the plan?” Riot asked, keeping his tone conversational as they continued into the dark. “Even when he was small? The stories, the tutoring, the sessions…was that always building toward what you did?”
Matthias’s chin lifted and he glanced back, his pace slowing. He had the fucking gaul to lookoffended. “Everything I’ve done for Cassiopeia has been in service of his spiritual development. His sensitivity required—”
The blade went into Matthias’s arm.
It was precise and controlled, the thin blade sliding into the meat of his upper arm the way a needle went into fabric. An inch. Maybe two. Sage’s face looked carved from stone as she wiped off the blood on the back of his robes. Honey yelped, taking a step back before nodding to herself, as though she were convincing herself this was normal and fine.
Matthias screamed like someone who had spent decades administering pain and had no framework for receiving it.
“Answer him,” Sage said. Her voice was thick, not as flat as it usually was. She was cracking. Something about being here, maybe it was Honey, or maybe Cass’s rambling as the drugs swept him under, had broken the stoic mask she wore. “Answer him honestly or I’ll find somewhere less convenient to put this.”
Matthias looked at the wound on his arm with an expression of pure bewilderment, as if his body had betrayed him by being capable of bleeding.
“Was this always the plan?” Riot asked again.
Matthias’s breathing was ragged. His composure was trying to reassemble—Riot could see it happening, his shoulders trying to stiffen, his neck rolling, but he hunched anyway.
“I joined Elysian young,” Matthias said. The words came out uneven. “From SVI territory. I was sixteen. I learned the practices quickly, faster than anyone in my intake. They made me a spiritual guide before I was twenty.”
He swallowed audibly.
“Guides aren’t permitted partners. No sacred bonds. It’s the commitment—your guidance has to be undivided. When I became an Elder, the rules were... less clear. It was a gray area that nobody had a written policy for because no one had asked.” He dropped his shoulders. “I knew I would never have a family. That was the trade. But I could mentor. I could guide. I could have that much.”
