Page 3 of Secrets of Graves and Gold

Side by side, we run the rest of the way to the door Stavros has already pushed through. Casimir ushers us onward, touching my arm in a brief but reassuring caress.

Stavros lopes onward, barely sounding winded. His military training has clearly held up well. “There are doubly fortified rooms in the basement that the royal family can descend to in an emergency—and a secret escape passage if the situation gets dire. With luck, they’ve already removed themselves?—”

He cuts himself off with a hiss of breath as we come upon two more dead guards slumped outside a stairwell.

Stavros bends, the fall of his dark red hair across his tan forehead an unnervingly similar hue to the congealing splatters of blood. He hauls one of the murdered soldiers out of the way and heaves open the door.

Shouts and the clang of metal carry from below the stairs.

“Curse them all,” the former general growls, leaping down the steps.

My stomach clenches at the sound of fighting ahead. A thin voice shrieks—is that one of the royal children?

Princess Klaudia and Prince Jacos are only sixteen and fourteen. I can’t imagine they’ve ever seen violence on this level before, let alone directed at them and their parents.

My magic squirms inside my chest, tugging at my ribs for me to let it out.

It could hurl the villains back to wherever they came from. It could smash through them all.

But as always, I have no idea what else it might destroy to balance out the power I release. All magic requires sacrifice.

Until I know exactly what we’re dealing with, we’re all safer sticking with tools we can hold.

I slip my free hand between the folds of my riding gown’s skirt and retrieve another knife from the hidden sheath there. As we barrel onward, I tap Casimir’s arm to offer the weapon.

The courtesan glances down and shakes his head with a glint of his deep blue eyes. “I fight better with my hands. Holding something will throw me off.”

I’ve seen him dissuade a judgmental nobleman with a wrench of the fellow’s wrist, so I know he has some defensive skills. I doubt he’s ever found himself in the middle of a full-out battle, though. “If you change your mind…”

He manages to shoot me a fond smile. “I know who I can count on for extra blades.”

At the bottom of the stairs, a short hall leads to a doorway half-filled with collapsed stone. Stavros curses and scrambles over the rubble, the rest of us following in his wake. The rough edges scrape at my palm.

The sprawling room behind is a picture of carnage. One of the inner walls has partly crumbled; the lanterns flicker wildly.

I nearly trip over a body half-buried by the doorway. More corpses lie scattered across the stone floor.

The wavering light gleams off a golden crown. King Konram is wearing his where he’s braced next to his wife to shield a few smaller figures I assume include their children.

Six guards continue fighting valiantly in front of them, but one of them is swaying and another’s sleeve is drenched in blood.

At least twice as many opponents have closed in on them, half of them in guard’s uniforms, the others in plainer clothes like I saw upstairs. Most of them are wielding swords and daggers.

But in the first moment after I leap into the room, one man swipes out with his bare hand.

A crackling light escapes his fingers and smacks into one of the guards, searing blackened lines across his face. As the soldier staggers backward, a pool of ice forms in my gut.

The daimon have their own supernatural powers. Now we know how they barbequed the gate.

Another man snatches up a huge chunk of broken rock and hurls it at the royal guards. It slams into one woman’s head, and she falls to her knees.

Stavros roars and throws himself forward with his sword whipping through the air. He cuts down two attacking men, who smash into clay shards on the floor before any of the others can react.

The largest of our opponents whirls. As Stavros moves to swing his sword, the equally immense man charges right into the former general like a battering ram. They slam through a side door and careen into the shadows of the room beyond.

Another attacker races to fight with Stavros, and two more spin toward the rest of us new arrivals. A burly man slashes his sword at me.

I duck and whirl around to kick at his legs. He stumbles backward but only for a second before he’s lurching toward me again.

---