“Maybe all an act?” I suggested. They’d been there to witness her initial displeasure when the guard had first informed her of the supposed new suspect. Whatever her thoughts, they weren’t of a grieving mother searching for closure and justice for her murdered son.
“Yeah,” West echoed in perfect understanding.
Assuring myself the many blades tucked into my belt were ready to be drawn rapidly, I said, “If something responded to my plea, I have no idea what it might’ve been, but I do know whatever happened went down exactly when I asked and without a single second to spare. I would’ve left her no doubt about my true intentions—all of them—if the shaking hadn’t started when it had.”
Hiroshi leaned to one side of Ryder so I could better see his face. His lumoon hovered close to his crown, making the lavender of his hair bright. “So we have a potential ally we don’t know about.”
“Maybe. If we have the fortune of dragons.”
West chuffed. “When have we been fortunate?”
I forced a smile. “Hopefully starting now?”
“We could use all of it we can get,” said Ryder, his hair appearing pale as moonlight beneath the glow of his orb.
“So perhaps whatever was roaring is what responded to you?” Hiroshi suggested.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Then let’s get down there and find out,” West urged.
“Thought you wanted to get the hell out of here,” Ryder said, probably only because he knew it would irritate West.
West had been wise to Ryder’s game since we were boys, though he still rose to his goading more often than not. This time, West only chuckled.
I turned back around to head downward, but before I could take the next step that would deliver us to the worst of the queen’s two dungeons, the staircase, carved from the rocky foundation of the palace, trembled badly enough for my throwing knives to vibrate in their sheaths.
We braced ourselves, and closed our eyes to the falling debris—a fine powder, nothing more, thank the Ethers.
The earth around us grumbled and shook and protested ... and finally settled into a mild quaking.
But then—a roar louder than any I’d ever heard before in my entire life, raced toward us in the passageway, so ferocious, so potent, soenraged, it fluttered the loose strands of my hair.
“Holy. Shit.” West breathed the words as he crowded me. “That’s no pygmy ogre.”
“That’s not even a dozen pygmy ogres,” Ryder said.
“Is that...?” Hiroshi shook his head. “Could that have been a ... dragon?”
“No, definitely not. There haven’t been live dragons here in ages,” West answered, but his eyes were already widening at the possibility.
My eyes were surely just as wide. “We gotta get down there right now.” With the queen out of the palace, there was no better time.
I didn’t wait to see if my brothers were ready to follow when I sped down the stairs. My lumoon raced along with me, each of my footfalls careful to avoid the trail of fallen gravel and grit.
I slowed only long enough to listen at the open threshold to the dungeon. When I didn’t hear the usual grunting and loud breathing of the pygmy ogres typically stationed there as sentries, I sucked in a deep inhale, drew my sword as silently as I could, extinguished my lumoon, and rounded the corner.
West, Ryder, and Hiroshi, their own blades at the ready, prowled a step behind me.
But there were no pygmy ogres at all within sight, when there should have at least been several. They rarely ventured beyond the walls of the fae dungeon, which had become a prison for them nearly as much as that of their captives. I’d never seen them, but their living quarters were rumored to be on this same level, beyond the cells, deep within the earth, where no one the queen deemed “proper” would ever venture.
“This doesn’t feel right,” Ryder cautioned as I stepped into the dungeon’s walkway, large enough to be considered a courtyard if above ground. Seemingly endless rows of barred cells lined its four sides. Most were full. Those that weren’t still carried the foul scents of their last occupants. My nose itched with the urge to close off to the odors of piss, shit, and puke, of fear, suffering, and death.
The rows of cells were far enough away from where we walked that we weren’t forced to stare into them to witness who inhabited them and how they looked, to wrestle with the inevitable urge to free them and spare them from any more torment.
“Not now, but later,” Hiroshi promised us, echoing my thoughts. “Definitely later.”
“We’ll come back for every single fucking one of them,” Ryder agreed.