“What the hells are we doing?” Ophelia hissed behind me, her hand slapping around my upper arm and pulling me back.

  My back slammed against the wall and our eyes met.

  “Did you not see that?” I asked, pointing back down the corridor. We were far enough away now that you couldn’t see the guard’s body anymore. The question was rhetorical. Of course she’d seen it. She’d been the one to put the bolt through his eye.

  “Rushing headlong into another guard isn’t going to do us any good. We’re far enough away now, we can slow down.” She said, keeping her voice low.

  “Why would we slow down? Sneaking is already out the window, what do you want to do, wait around for them to find us?”

  She let out a heavy huff and then let go of my arm, crossing hers over her chest. Her gaze narrowed, her features steeling, in what I could only assume was simmering anger. Maybe frustration.

  “If we keep rushing forward, our footsteps are going to give us away before anything else does. And even then, if we do come across someone, maybe we can come up with some kind of excuse or disguise.”

  I had to stifle the laugh that grew in my throat. Disguises? Had she looked at what we were wearing? Our outfits practically screamed 'I'm an intruder, throw me in a cell!' I shook my head at her suggestion.

  “We’re almost out of the corridor anyway,” I told her, pushing past so we could start moving again. “We’ll be in the lower dungeons soon.”

  “Good,” her voice moved with me, which meant she was following.

  Everything in me said I should start running, or at the least jogging like we had been, but I decided to give her idea the benefit of the doubt. She had a point about the sound, and I knew that we’d at least have a better chance of responding quickly if we saw the coming guards before they saw us.

  And it was likely we'd find others.

  I hadn't expected another guard down that tunnel, not for another few hours at the least. And yet, someone's life had been cut short tonight for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  I shook the thought away and reminded myself why I was even here in the first place. My hand was being forced. I had to do something to stop the [Hero] or all of my species would be destroyed. That sobered the pain in my heart and I tried not to think about who the guard might have been and whether or not I'd known him before.

  True to my word, we left the cramped confines of the corridor behind within minutes, the path forward opening up into larger hallways of dark, moisture-stained stone. The air also grew thicker, the scent of unwashed bodies and rot assaulting our noses as we pushed into the lowest parts of the dungeons.

  This part of the palace had always been used for the lowest criminals—the ones that were never meant to see the light of day again. It was situated so deep in the mountain, that if I stopped to think about it long enough, I could almost feel the earth above pressing in on me.

  I shivered as we turned out of the tunnel and into another hallway, which was lined with rows of barred doorways. I moved past several cell doors and was about to turn down a corridor on the left when I noticed Ophelia wasn’t following me anymore. I stopped and looked back the way we’d come.

  She was close to one of the walls, looking up at a plaque. Why was she taking the time to read a stupid plaque?

  I stalked back over to her and looked up at the place she was staring. It was a plaque with script written on it. Draconic script that described exactly which section of the dungeon we were currently standing in.

  Why would she… Something clicked in my head.

  “Oh no,” I said, grabbing her arm the same way she’d grabbed mine, but perhaps a little gentler. “We are not doing this. I don’t care who you think might be down here—”

  She ripped her arm away from me, shooting a glare in my direction. “Let go of me. You don’t have any idea what it’s like.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Ophelia drew herself up and stared me down, her jade eyes piercing into mine, her voice growing louder as she spoke. “I don’t know who you are or why Aurelion cares so much about having you involved, but we’ve all lost people—people that this stupid empire has taken from us. They take them away without any reasoning, and we never see them again.”

  I listened, a bit dumbfounded at what I was hearing. I’d never heard of anything like this. Of course, my attention had been elsewhere for the last couple of years, given the [Hero] and his crusade. But considering when we were now, her words made absolutely no sense.

  “I have a chance to find some of them and bring them out. Why wouldn’t I take that?” She continued.

  “Why? Maybe because we are working on a very short timetable to get in and get this seal. Maybe because we've already had to kill one guard, and it's only a matter of time until someone happens upon that body. Now you want to play hero? How do you even know they’re still here?”

  “I don’t." She admitted, her voice low, as if she hadn't wanted to say the words out loud.

  “Then how can you hope to find them? Hmm? Tell me that and maybe I’ll help you navigate this pit. Because those plaques,” I motioned to the one she’d been reading. “They are only going to get you so far. One wrong turn and you’re stuck here until some hapless guard, bringing the weekly meals down for the prisoners, comes across you and throws you in a cell, too. And that’s if you’re lucky. If you’re not, you could end up wandering these corridors until you starve to death—or worse.”

  If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  I decided not to elaborate on what the ‘worse’ might be, but I hoped the emphasis I put on the word got through to her. I’d take starving to death slowly over happening upon some of the creatures that we kept down here.

  Ophelia stared at me for a long moment, her mouth working in silence, searching for the words she needed to say to convince me. I knew she wouldn’t find them. It didn’t matter who was down here. I wasn’t deviating from our goal, especially now that our entrance had been compromised. And there was nothing she could do to convince me that she knew where the people she wanted to find were. They were likely already dead.

  We had this chance and only this one. And we were already working on borrowed time.

  “You’re right,” I told her when she didn’t respond. “You don’t know why Aurelion cares so much about having me involved, but you should know it is beneficial to everyone in your organization that I stay involved, and that means going along with what I have planned. If you want to take the chance and wander off alone, then go for it. But I didn’t come here to be a hero. I came here to get a seal and do some snooping. What you do is your choice. But you best make it quick, because I'm leaving now.”

  I twisted on my heel and hurried to the other corridor. Peaking around the wall, I made sure nobody was coming, and then pushed out into the hall, my feet carrying me more surely now than they had just moments before. Behind me, I heard the scuff of boots on stone as Ophelia turned the corner behind me, rushing to catch up.

  Heavy silence hung over us as we continued through the dungeon, passing long stretches of stone corridor broken up only by the barred doors of cells. I knew most of them would be empty—crime that reached the imperial court was usually handled swiftly—but I wasn’t surprised when I spotted a few wrinkled arms reaching out between the bars as we passed. The cells were all too dark to see into them, but I could barely make out the faces of the people inside, most wrinkled with age, skin pale from lack of sunlight.

  I almost pitied them.

  But ‘almost’ was far from actually feeling anything toward them. As we walked, Ophelia’s words pricked at me. The idea that we had been grabbing people and throwing them in the dungeon for no reason—even executing them—was senseless. My father had always had a soft place in his heart for humanity. It was a sentiment I had held myself to.

  Clearly mine and Ophelia’s opinions of how the empire was run were vastly different. She seemed to lean more toward the same side that Will did, which raised some questions about how Aurelion and Felix might feel about the empire as a whole, too. Part of me wasn’t even sure I wanted to know, so I tried not to think about it too much.

  Instead, I turned my attention back to the dungeon around me. Where there was one guard, there was likely to be more than a few others. I listened, as keenly as I could given my lack of draconic senses, but didn't hear the telltale signs of anyone around us. That was good, but also concerning. I hadn't expected heavy resistance coming through here—there was no chance for prisoners to escape, not that I'd ever heard of, so guard duty in the dungeons was pretty light.

  Apparently not as light as I thought, though. Turning another corner, I drew myself to a stop at the sight of two guards walking our way, an oil lantern extended in one of their arms. I immediately backpedaled, colliding into Ophelia. She started to say something in response—probably something snarky—but I twisted and smacked a hand across her mouth, raising a finger to my lips with my other hand as I pushed her back down the corridor in the direction we'd come.

  Slowly, I removed the hand and pointed to the corner that I'd just scurried back around. Guards, I mouthed, hoping she could see my face well enough in the flickering light of the oil lamps situated high on the walls. There wasn't much light here, which was good for sneaking around. But, it made reading lips a bit of a nightmare.

  Ophelia slipped past me and leaned her head out past the corner.

  "Thulus take us," she said with a hiss and jumped back. Her eyes met mine. "They're coming right this way." Her lips contorted into a frown and her eyes widened in slight panic.

  We needed to hide, but where? I looked around, trying to find anything that could work as cover. My gaze fell upon an old rusted cell door, which hung open slightly. It wasn't ideal, but it would have to do.

  "Quick," I whispered, motioning toward it. "In there."

  Ophelia looked aghast at the idea for a moment—a sentiment I shared wholeheartedly—but then she hurried over to the barred door and peeked inside. Slowly, she pulled the door open, the hinges squeaking in protest. We both held our breaths as the sounds of the guards' footsteps grew louder.

  I let out a long breath as she managed to get it open just enough to slip inside. I followed her a second later and grabbed the bars, pulling the door closed as the flickering light of an oil lantern appeared at the corner, booted footsteps suddenly becoming cacophony in the silence of the dungeon.

  We pressed our backs against the stone walls on either side of the door, hoping that their light wouldn't somehow give us away, and I held my breath again.

  "I wish they'd let us stop these patrols already," one of the guards was saying as they passed. "None of these halfwits can get out, and even if they did, the mafram will get them before they get anywhere."

  I tensed at the use of the draconic word for demon. It was what most humans in our service—the ones that knew about them at least—had referred to the other creatures that we kept locked away down here. I hoped Ophelia didn't know what the word meant, or she'd probably have something else to say about this entire operation.

  His companion grunted in response, muttering something I couldn't hear over the pounding of my heart in my ears. They slowly drew further away, their steps receding, and the brighter, flickering lantern light that made their shadows dance across the hall outside, giving way to the almost-comforting but dim flickers of the overhead lanterns. I let out my breath and forced my eyes to focus on Ophelia in the darkness.

  It was even harder to make out her features in the dark of the cell, but her eyes were almost impossibly wide, her mouth scrunched up in a worrying look.

  "Mafram?" She asked after a moment. "They keep demons down here, too?"

  I cursed myself. Of course, she knew what that word meant.

  "I thought that was just a rumor…" Ophelia said, trailing off. She peered around the dark of the cell, as if she might find some clue in the shadows that covered most of the small room.

  I watched her body shudder as she stared into shadows too thick to see through. We stayed there, waiting, for a long time, the silence growing thicker like someone had lit a fire beneath our feet and smoke was now filling the air around us.

  "Let's go." I moved toward the exit, completely ignoring her questions as I pushed the door open just enough to squeeze out. We left the door as open as we'd found it, and continued the way the guards had come. Thankfully, Ophelia didn't push anymore. Maybe she assumed I didn't know anything about the demons, or maybe she just hadn't finished processing the discovery.

  Either way, the chances of us actually seeing one of the creatures this close to the storerooms was slim, and I was perfectly happy to leave the rumors as exactly that.