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It was nothing.

We raced through the castle, Aster and I hard on Lazaros’s heels as he led us down toward where Alexandra might be. It was as if he could feel her more than I could, having quickly overtaken me to lead the way. I prayed he was right. I prayed harder that we would find her safe. But I couldn’t shake the cold and certain feeling, growing with every stride, that something terrible had already happened.

He took us through the cellars first, past the great oak casks and the dusty racks of wine, and then on, past the places I knew. Further down into the old prison tunnels, my brother and I had haunted as boys. And then further still.

Because the passage Lazaros turned down next was one I had never set foot in. One I had not known existed at all. It was clear now that it had once been blocked off but was now open by some unknown force. For the mouth of it had once been sealed, that much was obvious. It was cut off in a way a man wishes to seal his secrets behind bricks and mortar. Sealed behind walls so that he would never need to look upon the shame of it again… now where did that thought come from?

But more importantly, what exactly had my father tried to hide down here?

Well, whatever it had been, the secret had broken free, and literally from the looks of it. As now the bricks lay scattered in a heap of broken stone and old grey dust. The mortar crumbled to nothing, the black passage beyond gaping wide. And what’s more, the rubble had been disturbed.

Recently.

There were marks dragged through the dust where the fallen stone had been shoved aside. A path cleared through it by something, or someone, not long ago at all. The dust had not yet had time to settle back over the scars of it. Meaning whatever had walled this place away, and whatever had since torn it open again, had done so within the last day.

Perhaps just before it started to call to her.

It opened off into some old cells I had never seen before, and through an archway so narrow we had to pass it single file. The stone here was older and rougher than anything above. It was slick and weeping with damp, the air thick and wrong in a way that raised the hair along my arms. Torches that never should have been lit burned in their brackets, throwing our shadows huge and writhing up the curving walls. I thought

I knew this castle as I knew my own hands. Every stair, every passage, every forgotten room. And yet here was a whole black artery of it sunk beneath my feet, and I had never once felt its pulse.

That alone sent the unease crawling deeper into me.

Lazaros pressed on ahead, his breath coming ragged, his skin gone grey. He was still healing, my brother, and yet he took those endless stone steps two at a time, driven by the same desperate urgency clawing at me and at Aster both.

“How do you know where she is the same as I?” I asked, my voice ringing strange and close off the narrow walls.

“I don’t know,” he breathed, not slowing, not looking back. “I can just… feel her.”

Yes, and so could I.

Her presence swelled with every step downward, stronger and stronger, and yet there was no comfort in it. Only a deepening dread, because beneath that pull I could feel the other thing now too. The wrongness… The cold… The touch of some ancient evil.

I quickened my pace, and Aster pressed himself to the wall to let me pass.

“And this passage, do you know of it, Lazaros?” I asked, as I got the strong sense that he did.

“Yes, but it’s difficult to explain how.” He dragged in a shaking breath. “It’s in my head. Like a memory. Only I don’t think the memory is mine. It’s there, and it’s too far away to take hold of, like something… something our father left behind.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

I didn’t like any of it… not one fucking bit!

But there was no time to chase the thought, because Lazaros stumbled abruptly to a halt at the foot of the stairs with a sharp, broken gasp, and I nearly went straight into the back of him.

I caught myself and stepped past him instead.

And then my whole world stopped.

As there she was.

My little bird.

My little warrior.

My Queen.

Alexandra lay crumpled on the cold stone floor beside a single low pedestal, so small and so still that for one endless, ruinous heartbeat I could not make myself believe it was her.