Alyx and company walked through the lower halls of the temple, the twisting hallways spreading in every direction, level after level of subbasements still waiting to be explored.

  “I expected more pushback,” Marco muttered as they walked with purpose past another group of priests.

  “Walk with confidence,” Telis ordered, demonstrating with her head held high and her steps fast but not rushed. “With purpose. We have business here. Others will feel that and not question it.”

  “But you are also using a skill, right, Miss Telis?” Pellen asked.

  “Naturally,” Telis said.

  Telis’s skill wrapped around them like a bubble. A bubble of purpose and urgency. It didn’t make them invisible, but it discouraged those who saw them from questioning what they were doing. They were busy. It was important.

  Down here, with so many different groups of priests, all busy with important work for disparate rites for the different gods, they were just another group of many people too busy to explain what their business was.

  “Any sign of Cass yet?” Alyx asked.

  “Still looking,” Telis said. “This basement might as well be an entire town unto itself. It will take me a while to search the whole thing, even with my talents. The fact there are sealed sections does not make it easier.”

  “Sealed sections?” Alyx asked.

  “It’s a common enough practice,” Telis answered. “Some priests possess the power to separate their god’s temple from the rest of the world. It is a god-granted ability. It is common to use it when holding a private rite, though some of the more secret sects use it all the time.”

  “Miss Cass might be in one of those!” Pellen said. “That kind of spatial distortion would hide those inside from location spells like the one I used.”

  “That is unfortunate.” Telis shook her head. “Piercing them is outside my considerable skill set.”

  Pellen’s face fell. Alyx’s heart did as well. Was this a wild chase, then? Could Cass be here but still entirely out of reach?

  A roar tore through the building from below, shaking it to its foundation.

  “Was that—?” Marco grunted, bracing himself against the wall. Pellen slammed into him. Telis didn’t even flinch.

  “A dragon,” Alyx said. That was a dragon’s roar. It spoke of pain and rage. Alyx would recognize the sound anywhere.

  “What is a dragon doing in the Temple?” Pellen asked.

  Dragon Knights and their charges were more than welcome in the city’s temple, but most preferred to use the temple in the Palace or private altars in their mansions. It was less of a fuss to get the civilians out of the way.

  “The better question is, what’s a dragon’s war cry doing in the temple?” Marco asked.

  That was odd. And something someone should investigate.

  But it wasn’t Cass, and so there wasn’t time. “We focus on Cass.”

  “Oh,” Telis muttered. “How odd.”

  “What now?”

  “Your brothers are here, with company.”

  “What? Why?” Alyx asked. Had they followed her? But why?

  Kohen, she could imagine sending someone to follow her. He would love to catch her breaking in here. He’d report her in an instant if he thought it would disqualify her from the dragonlings or the position of heir.

  But he would have stopped at the temple’s threshold. He wouldn’t have broken in after her. That would land him in the same trouble as her.

  And why would he bring Ahryn with him?

  Telis frowned. “No. That cannot be right.”

  “Telis?”

  “That company.” Telis shook her head, her lips twitching into a scowl. A venom slipped into her voice as she spoke. “Your brothers appear to be chasing a group of Stealthed enemies through the halls nearby. Enemies that should have long been banished from our city walls. Their Stealth and Cloaking skills have greatly improved since nine years ago, but they are almost certainly the Order of the Copper Crescent.”

  Marco’s hands clenched around his sword hilt, his teeth grinding at the mention of the name.

  “Who?” Pellen squeaked meekly.

  “The rats of Fortitude who hunt dragons for fun.” Alyx’s aura flared through her sword and crown. “Who killed my mother.”

  Pellen’s mouth made an ‘oh,’ but her entire body shifted further out of the way.

  Everything inside her burned to hunt them down. They had no right to be here. They’d killed her mother. They’d killed Kelstor.

  They were banished. The grand duchess had nearly gone to war with the Temple to see them removed.

  They shouldn’t be here!

  Had the Temple allowed them back after all this time? Or had they never left, quietly lurking unnoticed in a sealed section of the basement?

  They were the reason she was the unwanted ward of Delim instead of the heir of Aretios. They were the reason she’d had to fight for every scrap of experience and power and approval when it should have been as much her right as it had been Fioreya or Kohen’s.

  They were the reason she’d lost everything.

  “Keep an eye on them.” Alyx’s hand clenched around her sword’s pommel. Whether they had snuck back in or had never left, dealing with them would wait until after she’d seen Cass safe. “But we stay focused on Cass. Try to narrow down which seal section Cass is in, Telis.”

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  “Of course.” The bite had not left Telis’s voice.

  “As you say, my lady,” Marco acknowledged, his hand loosening ever so slightly from his sword.

  “Pellen, what are our options for breaching a sealed area?” Alyx asked. This was a magic thing. Best to ask the magic expert.

  Pellen’s eyes widened. “Ah, um! The easiest way would be for someone inside to let us in. But um—” She pulled a tome from one of her pockets, flipping through it frantically. “If you have a greater enzaro core, we could use Breach #82 fairly quickly.” She held up the page of her book as if it meant anything to Alyx before flipping through it again. She stopped and flashed the pages again. “Or, if we have a couple of hours and a liter of pelmorn blood, Breach #29 might be possible.” She rattled off several more spells with wildly varying components and time requirements.

  Alyx cut her off. “We need this now, Pellen. The Dragon Binding Ceremony is in two hours. I need to be at the Palace then. We need Cass safe before that.”

  Pellen nodded emphatically. “Yes, of course, my lady, um, one problem. I don’t have a method of opening it that fast with what we have on hand.”

  “It didn’t sound like you could open it at all with what we’ve got on hand,” Marco grunted.

  “Well, no. Spatial breaching is hard. And dangerous. Most mages can’t do it at all!”

  “Yet you have an entire tome on methods?” Alyx asked.

  “I specialize in spatial magic,” Pellen said, her chest puffed out in a strange pride. It deflated as quickly as it had ballooned. “Or, I did.”

  Alyx didn’t have the time to decode that.

  Pellen frowned. “Actually. I, I might have an idea.”

  “You just said—” Alyx’s protest was cut off by the mage.

  “Most Breach spells are designed to work regardless of the method of Sealing by unraveling a section of that sealing.” The mage had a distant look in her eyes; her words, spoken aloud to everyone, had a cadence that suggested she was thinking through the problem rather than explaining a complete solution. “That’s why they’re so expensive. One is working against another active working. It’s the same reason a practical counter spell has yet to be developed for field use despite it theoretically being possible for most common spell forms.

  “But there are lots of underlying methods of spatial sealing. Spatial warp, enclosed realms, bubbled space,” Pellen listed off another dozen methods.

  “Incidentally,” Telis interrupted while Pellen was mumbling to herself. “Your brothers have been captured by the Order of Copper Crescent members they were chasing.”

  Alyx’s hands clenched. What were those idiots doing? What were they even doing here?

  “For example, the fact that sound is able to get through a barrier implies that the barrier between regular space and sealed space can’t be that thick or impermeable.” Pellen was still talking, her rambling returning to a more confident tone and volume. “Warped space, then? Or maybe a Curtain wall?” All her eyes suddenly focused on Telis. “Do you sense a sharp barrier between the sealed space the roar came from, or is it fuzzy?”

  “Fuzzy,” Telis answered.

  “Warped Space,” Pellen said with a nod, returning to her middle-distance stare. “But still technically a stable space.”

  “What is your point?” Alyx asked.

  “Oh,” Pellen snapped back to attention. “I have a very experimental spell I’ve been developing. I think it might get a person into that kind of sealed space. Um, one person. At least, one person at a time. And they’d need to figure out how to get out again from inside on their own.”

  “How experimental?” Alyx asked.

  Pellen bit her lip and shrugged. “Very?”

  Alyx didn’t like it. “One of us?”

  “At a time.”

  Alyx sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “How sure are we that Cass is inside that kind of barrier?”

  “As of this moment,” Telis answered, “Completely.”

  Alyx raised an eyebrow. “What changed?”

  “Your brothers, and my spy, were just taken across that barrier by the Order of the Crescent. Miss Cass is currently on the other side. The amount of chaos on the other side is considerable.”

  “Of course it is,” Alyx muttered. “Fine. Pellen, let’s try this thing.”

  “I don’t recommend that,” Telis said. “I would not enter that sealed space. There is a paladin at level 40 chasing Miss Cass. She will be caught. You cannot change that. Once on the other side, you will not have a way out. You will be separated from our support. You will die.”

  It was hard to argue with that. It was usually hard to argue with Telis.

  “I can’t just abandon her,” Alyx said. No. “I can’t abandon any of them.”

  “Your brothers would not rescue you,” Telis pointed out.

  “No,” Alyx agreed. There was no world in which Kohen stuck his neck out for her. It was difficult imagining one in which he even cried over her grave. “But Cass would.”

  “I fail to see how that makes a difference.”

  It didn’t.

  Or it shouldn’t.

  And yet, Alyx couldn’t help but imagine a different life. One where her mother had never died. Where she’d never gone to live with her father. One where she and Kohen had never been forced into antagonism by expectation and birthright.

  A life where she would have done anything to see them safe.

  Before she could attempt to explain that feeling to Telis, a notification flickered at the edge of her mind.

  Light Message from Ahryn. Would you like to accept?

  Alyx stared at the notification. What was a Light Message? Since when did Ahryn have such a skill? But under these circumstances, she wasn’t in a position to ignore it. She accepted it and another message appeared before her face.

  [Alyx, hi. Ahryn here. Kohen and I have been captured by the Order of the Copper Crescent. They have the dragonlings. I think they are going to kill them again. Please get help. I can’t reach anyone else. We are in a sealed space in the Temple. Please save Emenie.]

  “They what!” Alyx shouted.

  Pellen jumped.

  “What now?” Marco asked.

  Alyx shot Telis a look. “Did you know Ahryn had a messaging skill?”

  Telis shrugged. “That seemed likely, but it never seemed relevant enough to you to spend the resources to confirm it.”

  Alyx explained the message she’d received. “I’m going in there. Telis, go tell my grandmother where we are and what’s going on. This is well above our heads now. She needs to know.”

  “I agree the duchess should know about this, but I don’t see what you expect to accomplish by jumping into this mess.”

  “Whatever I can,” Alyx said.

  Telis scowled.

  “This isn’t the time for arguing. You’re the only one who can get the message to my grandmother fast enough,” Alyx said. “I won’t be in there on my own very long with the grand duchess barreling down on them, right?”

  “Fine, be safe.” Telis looked away, the stony mask of professionalism she preferred to wear cracking. “I don’t care about those boys or the dragons or even your friend. Just come back to me safe, understand?”

  “Always,” Alyx said.

  Telis nodded. She took a step down the corridor, away from Alyx.

  She paused.

  “Telis?” Was there something else they needed to settle before Telis left?

  Telis darted back. Her arms wrapped around Alyx.

  Alyx stiffened. What? Oh! Oh. She softened into the hug, absorbing the shaking of Telis’s shoulders against her body.

  “Come back to me safe,” Telis repeated into Alyx’s shoulder.

  “I will,” Alyx said.

  “That’s what she said, too,” Telis whispered.

  Alyx’s breath caught in her throat. ‘She.’ Her mother.

  Telis detached herself before Alyx could collect herself. The butler walked away without looking back, her voice again stony. “I will inform the Grand Duchess of what we have found down here. Survive until she arrives.”

  She disappeared before anyone could wish her farewell.

  The clock had started. Now, they just needed to see if they could outlast it.

  “Let’s get going, too,” Alyx said to Pellen. “What do we need to do for your spell?”