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“What is she doing?” I heard Coraline mutter. “Has she gone completely off the rails?”
“Shh!” Heddy pleaded. “She can hear you.”
“Icanhear you, Coraline,” I agreed, glancing over my shoulder, the door in hand. “Is anyone down there?”
I glanced at the head chef, and she paled at my question.
“How would I know,Luna?”
“You haven’t seen anyone go down there?” I insisted.
Coraline ignored me and returned to her chopping, but I caught her watching me through her peripheral vision.
I would deal with her later. I was at the end of my rope, and I wasn’t going to stand for her rudeness any longer.
“Queen Zephyrine…” Maywin pleaded when I started toward the dank underbelly of the palace. “Please, don’t go down there. Who knows what’s in there!”
“That’s why I’m going,” I replied, gently stepping along the ancient, crumbling steps. “See if you can find a light, Maywin.”
“Jasper!” Maywin cried out desperately, but I continued through the spiraling walkway, darkness encompassing me as I swallowed the anxiety mounting within me.
“Queen Zephyrine!” Jasper cried from behind me, a beam of light shining in front of me as he shined a flashlight through the passageway. “It’s not safe for you!”
Ignoring him, I hurried forward, determined to see if Sandor was indeed captured below. I could feel the evilness swimming all around me, and I had to know if he was the cause, but the cries behind me were making me second guess my bold movements.
“Queen Zephyrine, please don’t go any further!”
My senses were on high alert, the feeling that I wasn’t alone overtaking me as I descended into the terrifying underbelly which I’d never hoped to see again.
“Hello?” I called out. “Is anyone down here?”
It was still, too still, the air stale and unmoving, and yet, in the pitch blackness, as my heel touched the bottom, I felt another presence.
“Hello?”
The scurry of footsteps met my ears, too heavy to be rodents, and surprised breaths reverberated through the air.
“There are others down here!” I barked at the guards, who were now behind me. “Give me light! Hurry up!”
Suddenly, light flowed all around me, the guards obeying my commands and a single bulb emitting power overhead, but when I blinked, the disgusting cells I recalled sat empty. Spider webs interlocked through the bars, indicating that no one had sat in them for quite a long while. I’d been wrong about Sandor and his vendetta.
And yet when I looked into the dust below me, undeniable footprints marked the way, scattering in every direction.
“Someone was down here,” I muttered again. “Just down here.”
“Come,” Jasper urged me. “The air quality down here is terrible, and as you can see, no one is here now.”
“But someone was here, and they ran…”
“You must have startled them. Kids, maybe?” he offered, sounding nervous himself. “Please? If the King learns that I’ve allowed you to come down here in your condition…”
I grimaced, but I didn’t argue. I didn’t want to get Jasper in trouble, and I had seen what I’d come to see. Sandor was not locked in the dungeon. That was not the presence that I had been feeling, that had been overtaking me.
But if not him, then what and who?
“Fine,” I grumbled, accepting Maywin’s outstretched arm to lead me back up the steep stairs, the guards closely following behind me, lest I fall back.
No one wanted to explain that catastrophe to Cade.
