Page 25 of A Court of Bones & Sorrow

“No.” I shook my head, even though I knew he couldn’t see it, and reached for his hand. My fingers bumped into his arm, and I slid them down until our hands were clasped. The contact was both intimate and innocent at the same time, and I was suddenly acutely aware of how warm his hand felt in mine. How right it felt. “They don’t work anymore, and I never bothered to fix them, but I know the way. Trust me.”

His fingers tightened around mine. “Lead the way, Heir.”

I started carefully walking down the steps. Draven followed, not slipping once despite not being able to see anything or having my familiarity with the hidden stairs.

“How did you find this?” he asked after a few minutes.

Silence filled the air as I thought about how to answer. What truths to reveal and which to hide. Finally, I decided it was easier to go with the truth when possible—fewer lies to keep track of.

“After my parents died, I started to spend more time visiting the strikers. It became my safe place, especially since I wasn’t old enough to leave the House grounds on my own. A week after”—the words caught in my throat—“their death, I was coming down, and I heard Carmilla talking to Alaric’s parents. They were discussing the future of the House and their concerns about how I was handling things. I didn’t want to face them, so I spun to run back up the stairs and tripped. It was pure luck that I noticed the glyph on the wall.”

“I’m sorry,” he said roughly. “I don’t think I ever told you that, but I’m so sorry about how your parents died. They were always kind to me.”

For the first time since we’d entered the darkened stairwell, I felt off-balance and had to concentrate on where my feet fell, despite having walked down these steps dozens of times before. I rarely spoke about my parents. The wound left behind by their deaths hadn’t healed, it’d just festered in my soul over the years. I didn’t know what to make of Draven’s words. There was a raw edge to them that felt genuine.

But my parents had been killed by wraiths, and now Draven was working with them. Was that why he felt so guilty over this? He was only a couple of years older than me, which meant he’d been a teenager when they’d died, so I doubted he’d been working with them then. The urge to turn around and shake him until he told me what the fuck was going on was overwhelming, but I shoved that feeling down.

I had another hundred steps to get my emotions under control. Too much was riding on this for me to stumble now.The others were doing their part, I needed to seize this opportunity to carefully question Draven.

“Thank you,” I said tightly. “My parents were excellent rulers of House Harker. I only hope to live up to their legacy someday.” Clearing my throat, I redirected the conversation. “Speaking of living up to legacies . . . it’s been a while since I visited the Sovereign House. How are things between you and your mother these days?”

His fingers loosened around mine, and for a moment, I thought he would release my hand. But then they tightened once more. “Same as always. She’s delighted about our engagement—sorry—potential engagement.” He’d slipped back into his charming prince mode.

We continued our trek down, and I listened while Draven recounted some of the events that had transpired over the past couple of years at the Sovereign House. About how he was bored and had very little to do these days.

I listened to him lie to me for one hundred and eight steps.

Our footsteps echoedacross the large, empty room we’d entered after leaving the hidden stairwell. Dinner was still hours away, and I needed to come up with something to do with Draven during that time so the others could continue their work unhindered.

Maybe we could go for a ride or something. Although, if Vail found out I’d left House Harker alone with the prince, he’d probably strangle me.

“What is this place?” Draven asked as he glanced around curiously.

“We’re right beneath the main tower.” I pointed to an iron and wood door across the room. “That leads to the kitchen. We’re not sure what the Fae originally built this room for.When they abandoned this place, they took almost everything with them except the furniture. We use it for storage now.”

“Hmm.” Instead of heading towards the door that led upstairs, he started aimlessly wandering around, studying the walls. “Seems weird they went through the effort of building a secret stairwell only to have it lead to the kitchen pantry, right?”

There was more than one secret passage that led to this room. After stumbling across the one in the upper stairwell when I was a kid, I’d made it my mission to find others. I’d found six in this tower alone, plus another dozen short ones that linked the hidden staircase together. There were more in the other buildings and towers that made up House Harker as well. I didn’t understand why they’d done it. There was nothing special about this room, but the Fae had spent an awful lot of time planning a way for anyone to secretly get to this place.

I wouldn’t be telling Draven any of that though. I probably shouldn’t have even shown him the room we were in. It’d been careless of me, and I couldn’t afford to be like that around him. The prince was not my friend, despite our history and how I felt about him. He was our enemy, and he’d hurt Kieran.

I should have pushed him down those fucking stairs. The sensation of his hand in mine and how right it had felt came rushing back. The way his voice had sounded so sorrowful when he’d said he was sorry for the loss of my parents. I ruthlessly grabbed the feeling and shoved it into the same box where I stored my grief for my parents’ deaths.

“They built everything out of stone despite wood being far more abundant and easy to move. Paintings of places that don’t exist around here adorn the ceiling of every bedroom, and the vast majority of books we’ve found written by Fae hands . . . ispoetry,” I said in a bored tone as I walked towards where Draven was standing and staring at the dark grey stonesof the wall. “Not where they came from, how they ended up here, or why there was such hatred between the Seelie and Unseelie. And then they vanished practically overnight, never to be heard from again.”

“Your point?” Draven didn’t so much as look at me as his eyes continued scanning the stone surface. Was he looking for something? I started skimming the walls to see if there was something here I had missed this whole time.

“Mypointis that they did a bunch of shady shit.” Nothing stood out on the smooth stone surface, but I kept searching. “The secret passages are just another thing on that long list.”

“Passages?”

Shit. I hadn’t meant to say that.

I felt his gaze on me and turned away from the wall I’d been studying to meet his stare. He cocked his head, causing his long hair to fall over his shoulder in a shimmering curtain. “There’s more than one?”

“I hate you.”

He chuckled. “I think that’s the first truthful thing you’ve said to me all day.”

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