Chapter 12 · The Heir Under the Manor

The stairs went down a lot longer than Kai expected.

Vera moved ahead of him, one hand trailing the stone wall, the other holding a glow-stone that barely pushed back the dark. The air smelled like rust and something sweet gone bad. Kai's ribs still ached from the fight two floors up, but the mark under his chest had gone quiet. That was almost worse. When it burned, at least he knew what was coming.

"You sure this is it?" Kai kept his voice low. The echo made it sound like someone else was down here with them.

Vera didn't look back. "The file said sublevel three. We're past two."

"And if Luca's people are already here?"

"Then we move fast."

That wasn't a plan. That was just Vera being Vera. Kai stepped over a crack in the stone wide enough to lose a boot in and tried not to think about how many ways this could go wrong. They'd slipped past the manor's outer guard, picked two locks Vera said were older than the clans, and found a service hall that didn't match any of the maps she'd stolen.