Page 95 of Memory of Ashes

“Could it work?” she asked.

“I don’t see why not. We’d have to find out the exact area beneath them. I need access to the maps,” Emin said.

“And the explosives?” Casyl asked.

“I don’t know where they are kept. I didn’t even know that they’d perfected them,” she said.

They’d been working on creating weapons with chrysonium for a long time, but she wasn’t privy to that type of information.

“I know where they’re kept,” Emin said. “The guilds have been helping the palace develop them, but there aren’t many.”

Emin led them to a building near the palace on the royal grounds. It looked like a normal building. Amelia had walked past it most days without noticing. They went inside and Emin gestured to a door. “I don’t have the key.”

“No problem.” Ruven kicked it in. The door splintered, revealing a stairwell as fragments of wood clattered down the steps.

At the bottom was a room packed with weapons, including the explosives. A blue glow emanated from the bombs as they came closer. A pain formed behind Amelia’s eyes.

“How many do you think we’ll need?” she asked.

“Well, we only dropped two of them on that army,” he mumbled, avoiding eye contact with the fae. “I think two would do it, perhaps three. Each one is highly unstable. You need to carry it carefully, or you risk detonating one prematurely.”

They would need a team to go down there with her to plant the bombs, and they’d have to run fast before they went off and all the tunnels collapsed.

“Can you show me where we need to put them in the catacombs?” she asked.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “You are not going anywhere near it, and don’t argue!” he added as she began to speak. “That is my condition. I will show them where to put the bombs, and you will stay above ground. Safe. That, and the other prisoners are released.” He looked at Casyl, who nodded his assent.

“You show them where to put them and then you return right away.” She smiled at Emin, tears welling in her eyes.

A team was assembled from fae volunteers. The bombs would not kill them if they exploded, but the collapse could bury them alive, which seemed a worse fate.

Amelia walked with them to the entrance of the catacombs, a shaft in the ground near the palace temple. The tradition of burying the city’s dead there dated back hundreds of years. She remembered the first time her father had taken her down into the catacombs as a child, how the flames from his torch had sent shadows crawling across the bones. She hadn’t slept properly for weeks after.

“Be safe.” She hugged him.

She watched as they climbed into the shaft and the bombs were passed to them carefully.

“Do you think this will work?” she asked Casyl.

“It was your idea,” he said. “You’d know best. It was better than any of ours, anyway.”

They climbed back up to the city walls to wait anxiously for the explosions. It would take them a while to get to the right place.

The creatures paced across the bare earth outside the walls. She hoped they were far enough away to avoid the walls being damaged by the explosion. If this didn’t work, it would be her fault.

“Where are they?” she asked. “Why haven’t they come back yet?”

Casyl leaned over the wall, watching the creatures. His knuckles whitened where he gripped the stone.

Amelia joined him, placing her hand beside his.

She frowned as small blue flecks glimmered in the stone beneath his grasp.

A tremor travelled through the wall.

The creatures began to move.

They were moving away from the city. If the explosion didn’t go off soon, they wouldn’t get a second chance, as the catacombs would most likely collapse, blocking the tunnels. They needed to lure the creatures back. The others looked at each other, thinking the same thing.