The tunnel behind the Anchor's chamber was not hewn stone but a natural fissure in the bedrock, narrow and treacherously uneven. The blue light of the ward-stone was my only guide, its glow bouncing off wet, jagged walls. Behind me, the crash of falling stone and Greyford's shouts faded, replaced by the frantic drum of my own heart and the scramble of my boots on loose rock.
I had no plan, only the instinct to put distance between myself and the Inquisitor. The fissure sloped downward, then leveled out, the air growing colder and thicker with the smell of stale water and iron. I ran until a stitch screamed in my side, then pressed myself into a shallow recess, extinguishing the ward-stone's light.
Darkness, absolute and suffocating, swallowed me. I held my breath, listening.
For a long minute, there was only the drip of distant water and the blood roaring in my ears. Then, a new sound: the scuff of a boot on stone, deliberate and careful, far back the way I'd come. A pinpoint of harsh, white light pierced the dark, sweeping back and forth.
Greyford. He was following.
He wouldn't shout now. This was a hunt. My probation was over. Finding me in a forbidden crypt, having tampered with an ancient, corrupted seal, gave him all the justification he needed. Heresy. Dark magic. My title wouldn't protect me here.
The white light swept closer. I couldn't stay.
Feeling my way along the slimy wall, I moved deeper into the fissure. The path forked. Left seemed to narrow to a crack. Right smelled faintly of moving air. I went right, my hands scraping against rough stone.
The tunnel began to ascend. My hopes lifted for a second—was it leading back up?— until I rounded a bend and saw the light. Not daylight, but a sickly, phosphorescent green fungus clinging to the ceiling of a wider cavern. It illuminated a nightmarish scene.
The cavern was a dumping ground. Broken furniture from bygone eras, shattered lab equipment, and piles of bones—mostly animal, but some disturbingly humanoid—were heaped against the walls. This was where the academy had discarded its unwanted history and, it seemed, its victims. The source of the green glow was a pulsating fungal mass growing from a central mound of refuse.
And there, half-buried under splintered wood and rusted metal, was a shape that stopped me cold.
A suit of armor. Not imperial design. Older. Simpler. And emblazoned on its battered breastplate was a symbol I knew from Kaelen's standard: the frost-wolf of the Northern Duchy. His name was a knight of the Frost Guard, lost decades, maybe centuries, ago.
A memory, not mine but Rosalind's, surfaced: a childhood story of a Northern knight who vanished within the academy grounds during a diplomatic visit, a mystery never solved. The knight's family had been compensated, the incident swept aside.
He hadn't vanished. He'd been disposed of.
The green fungus pulsed, and a wave of dizziness hit me. The corruption here was different from the Anchor's—it was mindless, consuming, a spiritual rot that fed on discarded things and lost souls. It was attracted to pain and secrecy. My fear was a beacon.
The scuff of a boot echoed again, much closer. Greyford's light flashed at the tunnel entrance behind me.
Trapped.
My eyes darted around the cavern. There was another opening on the far side, partially blocked by a collapsed bookcase. It was my only chance.
I scrambled across the refuse, my feet slipping on bones and slime. The fungal light seemed to brighten, the pulsating quickening, as if excited by my movement. A tendril of green mist detached from the main mass and drifted toward me.
I reached the bookcase, heaving against the rotted wood. It gave way with a groan, revealing a low, cramped passage. I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled in just as Greyford's white light filled the main cavern.
"Lady Thorne!" His voice echoed, cold and assured. "This ends now. Submit to judgment. The darkness you court will not save you."
I kept crawling, the passage so tight the stone scraped my shoulders. The green mist tendril snaked after me, brushing my ankle. A jolt of nausea and despair shot through me—the Knight' final moments, his betrayal, his confusion, his slow death in the dark. The fungus was showing me his memory.
I kicked out, dispersing the mist, and pushed forward.
The passage ended at a rusted iron grate. Beyond it, I could hear the distinct, steady drip-drip-drip of water and feel a draft of marginally fresher air. A sewer line, or an ancient aqueduct.
I shoved against the grate. It didn't budge, cemented by rust and time. Desperation clawed at me. I could hear Greyford methodically searching the cavern, his light probing the shadows.
I fumbled for the ward stone. Its blue light was dim, its energy depleted from opening the seal and guiding me. It was warm against my palm, humming weakly. It was a piece of boundary magic. This grate was a boundary.
Pressing the stone against the rusted iron, I focused every shred of will, every ounce of the holy power that was now churning inside me like a scared animal. Open. Please, open.
A tiny spark of gold leaked from my fingertips into the stone. The ward-stone flared, a brief, brilliant blue. The rust around its edges flashed red-hot for an instant and crumbled to dust. The grate gave a shriek of protest and swung outward.
I tumbled through into a shallow, ice-cold stream of flowing water and pulled the grate closed behind me just as Greyford's light swept across the passage I'd vacated.
I was in a narrow brick channel. Sewer water, thankfully clean-ish runoff from the academy's springs, flowed around my knees. A faint light source, far ahead—the glow of magical street lamps from the city sewers.
I was out of the foundation. I was in the service tunnels beneath the capital.
But I wasn't safe. I was soaked, filthy, and would be instantly recognized if I emerged in the city. And Greyford would seal the crypt, discover the disturbed Anchor, and report everything to Cassian. My life at the academy was over. The investigation had just blown my cover apart.
I waded downstream, shivering, my mind racing. I needed shelter. I needed to disappear. I needed to get word to my allies without leading Greyford to them.
The sewer channel eventually joined a larger main line. I climbed onto a narrow service walkway, my body aching. High above, through a grate, I could see the boots of city guards patrolling and hear the distant clamor of the capital's evening market.
I was a ghost, buried beneath the city's feet.
Then, I saw it. Scratched into the brick at eye level, almost obscured by moss, was a symbol. A circle with a vertical line. The convergence sigil. And beside it, an arrow pointing down a side tunnel.
It was recent. The scratches were clean.
Someone was down here. Someone who knew the sigil. Friend or foe?
I had no other options. I followed the arrow.
The side tunnel led to an old, disused pump room. The door was slightly ajar. Inside, by the light of a single shielded lantern, a figure was waiting.
Prince Lucian.
He looked up from a map spread on a dusty console, his storm-grey eyes taking in my bedraggled, soaked form without surprise. "Took you long enough. I estimated you'd surface in the main channel ten minutes ago. Greyford?"
"Right behind me. In the foundations. He knows."
Lucian nodded grimly. "Then your tenure at the academy is conclusively terminated. You're officially a fugitive from the Church's justice." He rolled up the map. "We have perhaps two hours before Cassian locks down the city searching for you. You're coming with me."
"Where?"
"Somewhere a spoiled duke's daughter and a bookish prince are never supposed to go." He handed me a bundle of dark, coarse-spun clothes—servant's wear. "Change. We're going into the under city ."