Page 133 of Unveiled

Xiathen swallowed hard. “Connor, the valley’s resonance is unstable. You can’t enter the fault lines alone. They’ll shred you.”

“I don’t care.”

“But, Connor—”

“I. Don’t. Care.” His voice echoed across the entire castle.

Xiathen trembled. “Connor. Where will you even begin?”

Connor closed his eyes and felt it. A single pulse. Faint. Distant. Adrian’s bond. Still reaching.

Connor opened his eyes. “There.”

He pointed toward the lowest point of Heatherfell, to the darkened mouth of an old, abandoned cavern no one had entered in decades.

“He’s under the valley,” Connor whispered. “Somewhere beneath the anchors. Somewhere where the shadow dragged him.”

Xiathen’s face drained of colour. “Connor. That is the Labyrinth Underspan. The Triarc managed to find a map of the valleys and rifts when they were looking through the Knowledge.”

Fraser swore softly. “That sounds like a place you go in, and you don’t come out.”

Connor bared his teeth. “Then I’ll be the first.”

“But, Connor, the Council—”

“I will not leave him there.”

Silence. Then Xiathen bowed their head. “Then we go tonight.”

Connor blinked. “We?”

Xiathen nodded. “You are Valour. So is he. So am I, in my own way. You can’t face the Underspan alone.”

Fraser cracked his knuckles. “Aye. Bloody right you can’t.”

By this time, nearly all the clans’ people had arrived, standing in shared anger and fear. Irial stepped forward, her face determined.

“I will come with you.”

Connor shook his head. “Thank you, but no. I’ll not put anyone else in danger. This is my fight, and you’ll be more useful helping me from afar. I’ll need someone on the ground here.”

Xiathen nodded. “He speaks the truth. We will all be far more useful, gathered with our combined power and abilities and the Triarc, should we be needed. Aboveground, we are far stronger.”

Connor’s throat tightened. He didn’t thank them. He couldn’t. He simply stood and wiped the blood from his knuckles, steeled his shaking breath, and spoke the truth aloud.

“I’m bringing Adrian home.”

As the others gathered weapons, lanterns, charms, and maps for his journey, Connor stood alone for a moment in the ruined study.

The faint outline of Adrian’s last shadow-twist lay burned into the wall. He touched it with trembling fingers.

“Hold on, Adrian,” he whispered. “I’m coming.”

Connor felt the valley tremble, not in anger. In warning. In empathy. And somewhere deep beneath the earth, he heard something: Adrian opened his eyes in absolute darkness and whispered Connor’s name.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Connor