Evangeline
The tunnels beneath the palace are odd, almost alive, breathing things, against the torches each of us hold.
We don't run, but Cal's pace ahead of mine carries urgency, and sometimes there's a spring to his step that makes me think he's about to launch into a sprint. I can't blame him, not with the people marching through the halls above us; the bodies of the guards we left behind.
Father, amid my years of training, taught me to have a tolerance for blood and guts, the unsightly parts of the art of war. The cuts I made to the guards were clean and merciful, though they hardly deserve it. Iris's kills could've been kinder, but water takes time to suck a soul. But for the glance I spared at Cal as we ambushed those Red guards, the sight I saw turned my stomach over. And Cal, not armed with anything but a nearby sconce... I know by the look in his eyes that he didn't do it out of spite or to prove a point, but out of necessity. He brought flames at three of the guards without relent, until he was sure that they wouldn't be getting up, wouldn't see sunlight again, die in a lonely prison.
The tunnels beneath the palace transition at random from modern white to ancient sandstone, and now we enter a new passage in the system that looks older than the other ones we've been in, branching off from one that was already desolate and cobweb-covered.
And the torches we carry hardly help underground, darkness on each and every side of us, the flames glowing dully. We don't need to lead our hunters right to us.
"Every moment that we stay down here is another moment wasted, Cal," Iris hisses storming through the tunnels behind me. "You heard what they said. The tunnels anywhere besides for right under the damn palace are gone. They've probably found the corpses by now, or else noticed that Jon woke from his coma. We need to leave."
Cal doesn't stop, and at first he doesn't respond. Then he sighs. "Of course they've found the corpses by now. It wouldn't take long, not when guards are always changing rotations in the units. It was luck that we came up when there wasn't a rotation going on." Not luck. Jon. "But we don't have armor or any weapons to use if they bring Silencers down on us. I need a set of flamemakers, and we need time away from the Silence to regain energy. Trust me when I say it won't matter if we leave now or in a week. The window for element of surprise is already gone."
My gaze skips around through the passage that seems to narrow as Cal speaks. At first it was wide, wide as a palace corridor, but now it's grown smaller, so that Cal, Iris, and I could barely walk shoulder to shoulder if we desired. The walls are more craggy than before, jagged rocks sticking out at various angles. Wherever he's taking us isn't a glamorous path towards the royal libraries or the King's rooms.
If only because Iris has to be thinking it, I ask, "Where are we going?"
"Somewhere that Maven and the bastards upstairs don't know exists."
I can't do much more than blink at his back. I charge forward anyway, leaving Iris to the rear.
Cal has this...militant expression on his face when I look at him now. A soldier with the sole motive to survive, to kill. Or else a scared boy who's learned how to distract himself. I should tell Cal that, whisper in his ear, asking what Mare will think of him when she sees those he killed for herself. Not that she should judge, with all the people she's murdered. I've seen the corpses she's left behind, horrible, terrifying bruises from her lightning all across their bodies.
"Do you still wish to be king?" It isn't condescending. It's a genuine question. I could tell Cal a thousand facts that would rip him apart from the inside out, but I don't. I ask him that question.
He grits his teeth, moving past me as the walls move closer together. We all retain some semblance of civilized human beings with our fresh clothes that our guards brought us each night after Davidson sent us back to the dungeons. But none of us smell pleasant in the slightest, reduced to something perhaps worse than what Mare was before she wound up with royalty.
"That's hardly today's issue. Who knows when the Lakelander troops will arrive? Maybe never, if news off it truly didn't get out. Today we survive."
"For what?" I say, though I didn't intend for the words to slip out. "What is there anymore for any of us?" I don't tell Cal what he already knows. At least I have my brother and Elane; Iris has her country, sister, and Bart. But Cal... the few family members he has left have turned against him. And Mare...there's nothing left.
The Burner Prince stops dead in his tracks. Some of that militant look is gone, replaced with a dull rage. At least I knew. At least I knew that this was going to happen, never made the mistake of calling his lover anything more than a questionable ally. "Then I suppose there's nothing left for me, Evangeline."
"Cal," Iris shakes her head back and forth. If she wasn't a Nymph, there'd be tears in those brown eyes. "Please." That single word spoken in these hollow caves could mean so many things.
He sweeps a hand through dirty hair as if to clear his mind, strands glinting in the orange light.
"I was mad at her at first," she says, willing Cal to look at her rather than the floor. "I was livid as they dragged us to the dungeons, trying to process a betrayal I could barely comprehend. She was my friend, and she hurt me more than I've ever been hurt before. Maybe you've been hurt worse, by your brother, I don't know." Iris takes a grounding breath. It isn't wise to just be standing out here, listening to Iris and her monologue, but... "But then the morning came, when Davidson offered you an ultimatum. I glared at her with the hatred of a million burning stars, and I told her that I'd kill her. She thought she deserved it, by that look on her face.
"She told me I made her question if it was worth it more than anybody else." She breathes again, the words coming too fast, too much. "Then I grew tired, exhausted by her words and face. And now I'm still tired, because I've barely slept, because that's all I've been thinking about. Her."
Sometimes I woke in the dead of night to hear Cal's pacing, or else breathing too loud to be of somebody who was asleep. I know him well enough by now to know that she's all he's been thinking about, as well.
Maven might have very well gotten more sleep than the rest of us combined.
"Let's go," Cal says, turning back and starting into a walk.
"Okay," Iris says, though her voice is void of much of anything. His response wasn't what she was hoping for.
We continue down the narrow pathway, no end in sight. Occasionally doors appear on the left or right, forking off in different directions of shadows. The tunnels underneath the palace are easily the most dense, but still I wonder what the other tunnels were like; how many miles they carried on for.
Though I left Elane on the outskirts of Archeon still encompassed by Davidson's forcefield, I have no doubt in my mind that she's wandered further than the places I begged her not to leave. Namely the palace. She's somewhere within this sickly beast's walls, hidden in the shadows, waiting for her chance. Despite how many times I argued with her on the way here that I would find a way to escape without her, she's been here all along, I imagine. Once the news of the bloody guards reaches her, and it will, then she'll come looking for me.
And I'll be looking for Ptolemus.
"They'll be down here looking for us soon enough," Cal says out of the blue, suddenly keen on talking. "Especially the Newbloods who can sense us. If Farley-the Whisper-" he amends, "was still out on the prowl, we wouldn't stand a chance. Hopefully there aren't more we don't know about."
"Tyton the Bloodhound," I murmur, scraping a nail on one of the walls. Cal cringes and Iris roles her eyes. "He'll be leading the hunt, I'm sure. He seems to enjoy taking up roles of leadership when it comes to you."
"It's more than Mare, though," Iris says, walking behind us thoughtfully. "There's something more to why he hates the royal family, something more than simply hating them for the Red's sake. He grew up in Montfort, so it has nothing to do with growing up under oppression. Mare would know."
"Yes, she would," I say, looking to Cal. He doesn't deign to respond. "I'm sure they know all of each other's secrets. All but one, anyways."
But Cal's forgotten about me entirely, focusing on the floor at his feet. His eyes float over the space, searching for something. The stone is the same, if not covered in more dust and dirt. He kicks at a patch of earth, now looking at the walls. "Yes, this is the right place," he says, almost to himself. He crouches down to the ground, running a finger over the dirt, thick everywhere, particularly here. Unusually, unnaturally thick here.
He stops after awhile, having found something. Then he continues in a light line, then turns his finger, then turns it again and again until he stops for something.
"A hidden passageway," Iris muses, looking at the small indent in the flooring Cal's discovered. "How innovative."
Cal finds the spirit to grin as he looks up at Iris, arms straining as he finds purchase on the covering and pulls upward. It's not large, the the piece of stone, a two-foot-long square at most. And the sound it makes against the floor is loud as Cal heaves it upward-nails on a chalkboard-revealing nothing but more shadows, just like the passages on the hall's sides.
"What is it, exactly? Iris asks.
"A secret," Cal breathes, drawing the flame out of the torch and into his palm. He crouches over the entrance. "It's more than just another royal safe house. It's meant for the king and his heir, a secret that's been passed down from son to son for generations, since Caesar Calore. In case there was ever mutiny within House Calore."
"Maven doesn't know about it?" We left him in the dungeons after Cal unlocked my cage, then Iris's. All it took was one low laugh from himbefore we ran. He spoke it softly, the word run, as though he had wanted us to get away. But, oh, no. Maven only wanted to see a hunt take place tonight.
"My father didn't tell him, no," Cal responds. "Unless Elara cared enough to search my father's mind and pass down the secret to Maven. I doubt she did though, and either way, I doubt he remembers. It would've been years ago, before Elara ever decided to overrun the king."
Careful with the torch, though Cal controls the flame, Iris dangles a leg into the passageway and lowers herself into it, bracing herself on the sides with her arms.
"Spiral stairs. My father took me down once before."
Iris only nods, and as her arms relax as her feet touch the stairs, she disappears down into the safe room. Not afraid of the dark, then.
Cal raises his brow. "After you."
"How chivalrous."
I hand my torch to Cal and swiftly lower myself. My fingers find the metal railing, smooth and cold and untouched for years. It's indeed soft and cool to the touch, and I descend into the room, Cal close behind as he pulls the slab of stone back over the floor-the ceiling.
Above, the dust isn't thick enough to show new footprints, but old enough to cover up a hidden passageway, even after it's been opened. For the years these tunnels have been abandoned, what perfect timing.
The stairs keep coming, widening under Iris's flame ahead of me. The metal that creates them is intricately molded, curved into circles and waves. Twenty-two stairs I count, before my foot at last takes another step, to find a rug beneath my boot.
Moving out of Cal's way so he can light the sconces on the high stone walls, I brave further into the chamber, half-alight with fire.
"Of course, food supplies have to be changed out every few months, so a couple of Arvens knew about this place as well. But..." he thinks to himself, "yes, they're all dead now."
"Good," Iris says, tearing away a white sheet from a piece of furniture. Cal lights a massive fireplace at the far right side of the cavernous room, a room that has several hallways branching off from it. The spiral staircase splits the room clean in half, the side on the right like a large, happy old sitting space, two sofas with various armchairs and benches scattered around them, a great red and gold carpet placed at the foot of the fireplace. Though there would never be more than two people using the chairs, if everything went according to plan.
The rest of the floor is wood, the color of dead leaves on an autumn day.
Forgotten and empty, this place is still a palace in and of itself.
On the other side of the room is a desk and an oaken table, eight plush chairs surrounding it. No, certainly not made for two men alone. The desk is large, too, meant for the king, I'd assume. Though now that there isn't much of a king, I settle into the chair, flippantly opening up the drawers on either side of it, the table in front of me, the seal of the Calore dynasty weaved into a tapestry at my back.
The drawers are full of documents of protocol, some neatly handwritten and others typed.
Yes, this isn't a place for a king and his firstborn son. It is a place for the king, his heir, and his closest allies in times of hardship. Of course the architect didn't actually believe the king would only allow his son down here. Two men aren't really enough to lead a nation.
"The hallway on the left wall leads to the bedrooms and a washroom. The others lead to boardrooms and a kitchen."
Iris rips another sheet off a lamp, though we don't need any more light. A fireplace blazes at one wall, and fire burns every few feet on the stone walls, bringing the room into a warm light.
Cal stands next to the fireplace, and if he were anybody else, his back would've burned by now, the flames stretching high behind the glass. He closes his eyes and rolls out his neck, and I see now how tired he is, the way in which he slouches for a moment, a generous reprieve in the drowning he's been enduring for the past week and a half.
"I can't sleep," I growl, despite the obvious tension he's trying so poorly to hide. "I need to find Elane and my brother."
"I need to find Bart," Iris whispers.
From across the wide and tall chamber, Cal lifts his eyes to mine. "And who do you need to find on this fine evening? If you say it's best we wait until the guards have lost their edge and we've regained some energy... gathered some supplies, you have a bit of time on your hands if Iris and I have people to find."
"What are you implying, Evangeline?"
"You know exactly who I'm implying, Cal."
Half an hour later, I've read only half the headings to the various writings of generals and kings, but none yet have suggested a solution to the situation Cal's found himself in. Crown at the bottom of a river, a coup of Archeon shepherded by a rebellion that wasn't recognized three years ago, a Whisper in the dungeons and a seer running loose.
Cal swears as he comes from the hallway leading to the bedrooms at my left. Though there's a perfect decent bathroom down there, none of us have bothered to bathe. I've spent my time reading, and Iris has taken to raiding the armory hidden in the kitchen, well-kept with knives and guns and fighting gear.
"Flamemakers are a relatively new design, are they not? Burners are spoiled with those things. Guess you'll just have to take to carrying a torch around like your ancestors did." He's been looking for a pair of bracelets for the last twenty minutes, but to no avail. Apparently nobody had the sense to stock a set or two down here in the last ten years.
Cal laughs through his teeth. "Without my flamemakers, I'm useless and disarmed unless there's a fire nearby. The torch issue is precisely why my ancestors never fought their own battles."
I shrug. "Maybe they were just cowards."
"The world would be better off without your sarcasm. It cannot contain itself, even when we're trapped down here," Iris says.
"I know for a fact that there's pairs in my room. My old room, I mean," Cal says, and I can't help but lurch out of my chair. "It'll be a painless trip," Cal says, but he swallows nonetheless his attempt to calm me down. "Through the tunnels, and the passageway leads to one hallway down from my room."
Desperation. Nothing but desperation laces his voice. But I don't call him a coward, because he's anything but for suggesting something like this. He could never win against a volley of guards without his abilities, let alone Tyton or Mare. He needs them to survive.
"I'll go with you," Iris says, sensing his struggle.
Slowly, I sit back down. Cal stares at me, waiting for what I'll say.
"Very well, fireboy. But you owe me one."
"Consider it your payment for locking me in a cage with the little lightning girl."
Somebody's going to die tonight, I can feel it in my bones. But I give him a wild grin anyway.
Getting through the tunnels is easy enough. Cal seems to have the entirely system mapped out in his head, and he doesn't take a wrong turn once, though we pass five doors for every turn we make.
There should be guards in the tunnels looking for us, but we haven't heard any foreign voices or footsteps, let alone seen any troops. Their absence sets my nerves on edge, even with the knives strapped across my limps. Where are they?
"Security cameras?" I ask.
He shakes his head. "There aren't any in the royal family's wing of the palace. The guards are expected to do their job."
This section of the tunnels are modern and white, and as Cal glances through the crack in the set of double doors he's opened, he jerks back, but keeps the door very, very still. The doors on the other side look the part of any other room, just another set of chambers for a privileged Silver. That's the one advantage we have over them. Or Cal, anyways. He knows the palace like the back of his hand.
In time, he looks again, then angles the other way so that he can look down the other side of the hallway.
"Go," he says, pushing the door open on silken hinges.
Iris closes the door behind us as we dart to the other side of the hallway that has too many windows for my liking. It must be nearly ten o'clock at night now, and there's no moon to be seen in the sky. Lights cast shadows on our faces, and Cal glances around the next hallway.
Clear.
Another sprint down the corridors that I'm so familiar with yet are mine own no longer.
Cal eases open his door, and we slip inside. For all my talk of becoming Cal's queen, I've never laid eyes on his room, messy and cluttered with books and swords. A half-finished game of chess on a table near the desk.
The bed is neatly made, which isn't something it seems Cal has the capacity to do based on the likes of the rest of this room. Books, so many books on war strategy are strewn across shelves and small tables, and more photographs than I've ever seen in my life litter his desk, as if he was looking through them when he was last here.
As Cal opens a closet, I near the black and white photos. The glossy paper on top is a photograph of Mare, and though it hasn't been two years, she looks... different. Painted in white paste and dark lipped, the girl in the picture smiles, though I know for a fact that she hated everything we turned her into.
There were always photographers at the balls we went to, and it must have been just another ball, another dress, another coat of paint. Yet... I've never seen her smile like that. Mareena.
There's a click in the background, meaning Cal must have his bracelets. But the photo is magnetizing as I try to remember when it was from, whether it was from Summerton or Archeon, what color the dress really was in the black and white photo, and what-
"Why are we here, Maven?"
The voice paralyzes me for a moment as I here it from outside the door, and I look to Iris and Cal, who have both gone still as well.
My first thought is that we can't fight them. Three against two, but it would cause a raucous and the guards would be called up. The closet is a risk, and the only other hiding place is under-
"I haven't been in here since we played half a game of chess."
Iris is ahead of my thoughts, already shuffling under the bed, and Cal follows her.
I have no choice but to follow them as somebody-either Mare or Maven-puts their hand to the doorknob, and twists.
