The room was larger than ours. Adrian sat near the window with a cup of something steaming in his hands. Roderick stood by the fireplace and prodded the logs with more force than necessary.

  “Can’t sleep either?” Adrian asked.

  “Haven’t tried yet.” I stepped inside and let Henrick close the door behind me. “Wanted to make sure you were settled.”

  “Settled is a strong word.” Adrian set down his cup. “I keep thinking about what would have happened if Dag hadn’t stepped out with that gaff hook. Or if the townspeople had stayed inside like the watchers expected.”

  “But they didn’t.”

  “No. They didn’t.” He looked at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. “Because of what you and Felix built there. All of the systems and training. And the sense that Veldros belonged to them again instead of to whoever controlled the supply chains.”

  “We fixed some wards and taught them some techniques. The rest was them.”

  “The rest was what you gave them reason to fight for.” Adrian stood and turned toward the window. The city spread out below and lights flickered in the darkness. “That’s what whoever organized the attack doesn’t understand. They think this is about trade routes and profit margins. It’s not. It’s about people who discovered they could save themselves.”

  “That makes them more dangerous, not less.”

  “Yes.” Adrian didn’t turn from the window. “It does.”

  Roderick shifted by the fireplace. “Your Highness should get some rest. Tomorrow will bring its own challenges.”

  “Roderick’s right,” Henrick added. “We’ll take watches through the night. Nothing will get past us.”

  Adrian turned from the window with a faint smile. “I know. You’ve proven that often enough.” He looked at Roderick and Henrick. “Both of you have guarded me through the dungeon and the creatures and the corruption that nearly killed us all. This is not worse than that.”

  “This is different,” Roderick said. “Dungeon monsters don’t plan. They don’t coordinate or send messages.”

  “No, they just try to eat you.” Adrian’s tone held dark humor. “I’m not sure which I prefer.”

  I stayed a few minutes longer. We talked about nothing important. The weather. The food at the inn. The letter I had sent to Sarah. Felix’s ongoing wedding stress. Normal conversation that pretended everything was normal.

  “Katherine sent another list,” I mentioned. “Felix spent the entire ride from Veldros trying to decide between two shades of blue that looked identical to everyone else.”

  “Cerulean and azure are completely different colors,” Adrian said with mock seriousness. “Any fool can see that.”

  “Can they?”

  He grinned. “No. But don’t tell Felix I said so.”

  The moment of levity faded. We both knew what waited beyond these walls. What hunted us. What would keep hunting until someone stopped it.

  Eventually I said goodnight and returned to my room and found that Felix had fallen asleep at the desk.

  His head rested on his documentation journal. His quill had rolled onto the floor. The lamp beside him guttered with the low flame of oil nearly spent.

  I picked up the quill and set it aside. I covered him with a blanket from his bed and considered waking him to move, but decided against it. He needed the rest more than he needed comfort.

  The room settled into quiet.

  I sat on my bed and pulled off my boots. The weariness hit all at once. Days of travel, nights of worry, and the constant tension of knowing someone wanted us to fail and would do whatever it took to ensure it.

  My eyes drifted closed.

  Blinding white light seared through my eyelids. Pain lancing through every nerve. My muscles locked and refused to respond to my desperate commands to move.

  I heard Felix cry out somewhere nearby. I also heard shouting from the hall. Adrian’s voice. Roderick’s bellow of rage. All of it distant was distant and muffled, like sounds reaching me through deep water.

  Then nothing.

  I woke to darkness and pain.

  My head throbbed with a pressure that made thought difficult. My mouth tasted of copper and something bitter. My arms were behind my back. My wrists were bound with something that bit into my skin when I tried to move. My ankles were similarly restrained.

  The floor beneath me was cold. Hard wood that pressed against my cheek. I had fallen from the bed at some point and lay where I had landed.

  “Felix?” My voice came out as a croak.

  “Here.” His response came from somewhere to my left. Close but not touching. “Can you move?”

  “No.” I tested the bindings again. They held firm. The rope was thick and coarse, the kind used for cargo. “You?”

  “Same.” Felix was quiet for a moment. “They got us while we slept. Some kind of activation trigger. The inscriptions must have been dormant until we were all unconscious.”

  “How long have we been out?”

  “Hours. Maybe more. The lamp burned down completely. There’s moonlight through the window now.”

  Moonlight. We had arrived at the inn before sunset. If the moon was up and the lamp had burned out, we’d lost most of the night.

  Felix had mentioned inscriptions. I forced my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Moonlight through the window let me make out shapes. The room around us was still our room at the inn. The furniture and walls were unchanged.

  But now I could see what I had missed before.

  Lines covered every surface. Walls, floor, ceiling, desk, bed frames, and windowsill all bore delicate patterns that had been invisible in the lamplight. The concealment spoke of extensive preparation. Someone had spent hours inscribing this room while we traveled from Veldros. Someone who knew exactly when we would arrive and where we would sleep.

  “Professional work,” Felix said. He had noticed my attention. “The concealment alone took real expertise. And the ward sequence was elegant. Stun first, then binding, then a secondary stun to ensure we stayed down.”

  “I’m glad you can appreciate the craftsmanship of our captors.”

  “Understanding the enemy is the first step to defeating them.”

  A groan came from somewhere else in the room. I twisted my head and made out more shapes in the darkness. More bodies than there should have been. Brennan lay near the door with his face bloodied. Roderick and Henrick were against the far wall, bound like Felix and I.

  “Where’s Adrian?” I asked.

  No one answered.

  “Felix. Where’s Adrian?”

  “I don’t know.” His voice had lost its analytical calm. “He was in his room when we fell asleep. But when I woke up, everyone was here except him.”

  Cold settled in my chest that had nothing to do with the night air.

  “He’s gone, lad.” Brennan’s voice came rough with pain. “They took him and left the rest of us.”

  The words hit like a physical blow. Adrian was gone. Taken while we lay helpless and unconscious.

  “Why are you all in our room?” I asked.

  “They moved us.” Roderick’s voice was tight with fury. “Whatever ward they used, I couldn’t move or speak. Just heard fragments while they worked.”

  “Your room had the strongest inscriptions,” Henrick added. “We heard them talking while they tied us. Said the glyphwrights might break free from standard work, so they built this room to hold you specifically. Guess it was easier to dump everyone here than heavily ward multiple locations.”

  That explained the professional quality of the inscriptions Felix had noticed. They had prepared specifically for us. The innkeeper had shown us to our rooms personally. So either he was involved, or someone had been watching when we arrived.

  “And Brennan?”

  “Should have checked. Should have looked closer. Should have done something other than trust that Duncan’s men had it handled.”

  Brennan muttered something under his breath. A soft blue light bloomed from his palm, filling the room with a pale glow.

  Felix made a surprised sound. “You can cast?”

  “One spell.” Brennan’s voice was flat. “Light. Learned it forty years ago and never bothered with anything else.”

  A note lay on the floor between us, now visible in the glow. Someone had placed it where we would see it when we woke. A single sheet of paper with words written in a hand that conveyed no personality, careful and deliberate and anonymous.

  Leave Keldrath.

  Stop your work.

  If you want to see him alive again.

  It didn’t have a signature, ransom amount, or a deadline. Just a simple statement of intent from someone who believed they held all the power.

  Roderick read it aloud for those who could not see. His voice held barely controlled fury.

  “They came into our inn,” he said when he finished. “Inscribed our rooms while we were gone. Waited for us to fall asleep. Then took our charge from under our noses.” He strained against his bindings hard enough that I heard something creak. “We failed him.”

  “We were outmaneuvered,” Henrick corrected. His voice held the same anger, but tempered with something colder. “They couldn’t beat us in a straight fight, so they found another way. That’s not failure. That’s war.”

  “Semantics don’t bring him back.”

  “No. But understanding how they beat us tells us how to beat them.”

  I stared at the ceiling and tried to think past the pounding in my head. The bindings were tight professional work that matched the inscriptions. Whoever had done this knew exactly what they were doing.

  They had studied us. Learned our patterns. Anticipated our movements. And built a trap so elegant we had walked into it without suspicion.

  And now Adrian’s gone.

  The cold in my chest spread into fear and anger and determination. Because whoever had done this had made a few mistakes.

  They had left us alive.

  They had left us together.

  And they had underestimated what we were willing to do to get our friend back.

  Chapter 27

  Loose Threads

  The bindings bit into my wrists as I tested them again.

  Roderick had not stopped struggling since he regained consciousness. The sound of rope creaking against his efforts filled the room. Henrick worked at his own restraints with methodical patience. Both men radiated fury that seemed to heat the cold air around them.

  “Stop fighting it,” Brennan said. His voice came flat and tired. “They’re tied properly. You’ll just cut your hands open.”

  “Then I’ll cut my hands open.” Roderick strained harder. Something in the rope groaned but didn’t give. “They took him. They took our charge from under our noses.”

  “Fighting the ropes won’t bring him back.”

  “Neither will lying here doing nothing.”

  I let them argue. My mind had already moved past the immediate problem to something else. The bindings were tight and designed to hold exactly the kind of people who might try to escape.

  Good thing they didn’t know about the extra experiment on my vest.

  The dissolution ward had been there since we left Millbrook. I had inscribed it months ago during the work on Kyle’s armor. A failsafe designed to break apart physical restraints in case someone ever managed to capture me. At the time, it had seemed like paranoid preparation. Now it seemed like the best decision I had ever made.

  I twisted my wrists to press the fabric against the rope. The ward was positioned on the inside of the vest, near my left hip. If I can just reach it with my fingers...

  “Marcus?” Felix watched me in the pale blue glow. “What are you doing?”

  “Being glad I’m paranoid.”

  My fingers brushed fabric and searched for the familiar texture of inscribed cloth. Found it.

  I activated the ward.

  The sensation was strange. It wasn’t exactly painful. More like a sudden absence where the rope had been. The dissolution pattern worked exactly as designed and broke apart the physical bonds without touching my skin. The rope fell away from my wrists in pieces that scattered across the floor.

  “What—” Roderick started.

  “Hold still.” I sat up and worked at the bindings on my ankles. These came apart just as easily once I pressed the ward against them. A moment later, I was free, but the ward fizzled out and left a charred section on my vest.

  Brennan’s light spell gave me enough light to work by. I moved to Felix first and found the knots that held his wrists. My fingers were clumsy from hours of restricted blood flow, but I managed to loosen them enough for him to pull free.

  “The vest ward,” he said as he rubbed circulation back into his hands. “From Kyle’s armor project.”

  “Same principle,” I said. “Different application.”

  We freed Brennan next. The older man didn’t speak as I worked on his bonds. He just watched with an expression I couldn’t read in the dim light.

  Then the guards. Roderick practically tore himself loose the moment the ropes slackened. Henrick rose with the careful movements of someone conserving energy for what came next.

  “We need to move,” Roderick said. His hand went automatically to his hip where his hammer should have been. The weapon was gone. All their weapons were gone. “Duncan needs to know.”

  “Agreed.” I looked around the room. The inscriptions that had trapped us still covered every surface, but they had spent their power. They were just patterns now, evidence of how thoroughly we had been outmaneuvered. “But first, we need to understand what we’re dealing with.”

  Felix had already moved to examine the wall inscriptions more closely. His professional instincts overrode his exhaustion.

  I stared at the ward patterns and committed them to memory. These techniques may come in handy at some point.

  “Three-layer system,” Felix said. “A detection ward to confirm everyone was unconscious. An activation trigger tied to the detection. Then I’m guessing the paralysis and binding sequence.” He traced a finger along one of the patterns without touching it. “The concealment work alone would have taken hours. Someone spent some time preparing this room specifically for us.”

  “They knew we would come back here,” I said. “And knew which rooms we would take. Knew our routines.”

  “They’ve been watching us for weeks, maybe months.” Felix stepped back from the wall. “This wasn’t improvised. This was planned from the beginning.”

  Brennan had found his flask. The container lay on the floor near where he had fallen, still stoppered. He picked it up and tucked it away without drinking.

  “We go to Duncan,” he said. His voice held none of its usual dry humor. “Now. Tonight. This happened in his city, in an inn he personally secured. He needs to know.”

  “It’s the middle of the night,” Henrick pointed out.

  “Then we wake him up.” Brennan was already moving toward the door. “Come on, lads. Duncan needs to know.”

  I caught the word. Lads. He had never called us that before. Something had shifted in the older man. The professional distance he maintained had cracked.

  “Brennan.” I touched his arm. “This wasn’t your fault.”

  “It happened on my watch.” He didn’t turn around. “I was supposed to keep you all safe. I’ve been guiding people through this kingdom for thirty years. Never lost anyone under my protection.” His shoulders tightened. “Until tonight.”

  “You couldn’t have known about the inscriptions hidden in the walls. None of us saw them.”

  “I should have checked. Should have looked closer. Should have done something other than trust that Duncan’s men had it handled.” He finally turned. In the blue glow, his weathered face looked older than I had ever seen it. “That boy trusted me. They all trusted me. And I let this happen.”

  “Then help us fix it,” Felix said quietly. “Blame yourself later. Right now, we need you focused.”

  Brennan held Felix’s gaze for a long moment. Then something shifted in his expression. The grief didn’t disappear, but it settled into something harder. Something that could be used.

  “Aye,” he said. “You’re right. Let’s move.”

  Brennan nodded to the castle guards. They stepped aside without question.

  I didn’t know what kind of authority Brennan carried in Keldrath, but it clearly extended to the middle of the night. No one asked why five people were entering the castle at this hour or where Adrian was.

  We moved through corridors that felt different in the darkness. Torches burned low in their sconces. Shadows pooled in corners. The castle that had seemed welcoming during our first visit now felt like a maze of potential threats.

  One of the gate guards must have sent word ahead. Duncan’s personal guards were already waiting outside his chambers when we arrived. Both wore full armor and looked like they hadn’t slept either.

  “Wake him,” Brennan said. He offered no explanation and no context.

  The guards exchanged a look. Then one of them disappeared through the heavy wooden door.

  We waited. The silence stretched. Roderick paced like a caged animal. Henrick stood perfectly still with his hands clasped behind his back. Felix studied the floor. I watched the door and tried not to think about what Adrian might be experiencing right now.

  The door opened and Duncan appeared in a robe thrown hastily over sleep clothes. His hair was disheveled and his eyes held the unfocused quality of someone pulled from deep sleep. But when he saw our faces and counted heads and noticed who was missing, that unfocus vanished instantly.

  “Inside,” he said. “Now.”

  Duncan’s private study was smaller than his formal receiving room. Books lined the walls, maps covered a central table, and the remains of a late meal sat on a side table, forgotten. This was where Duncan did his real work.

  “Tell me everything,” he said.

  We did. The return to the inn. The evening that seemed normal. The trap that caught us all. Waking up bound with Adrian gone. The guards he had stationed there, drugged and slumped over their table in the common room.