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Without waiting for him to react, I turned left with no choice but to retrace my steps with Marek. He’d not be pleased, having his secret entrance revealed, but it was that or get caught. No doubt the palace guards were already looking for me.

“I had no notion this existed,” he said behind me. At least my gamble had thus far paid off. The narrow corridor we walked through twisted sharply, dim light barely illuminating the damp stone walls. The noble’s hurried steps echoed unevenly behind me; his breath quickened as I pressed us forward.

We emerged into a passage so tight it felt like the walls themselves were closing in. Dust swirled around the faint beam of light filtering through a crack above, and the air carried the musty scent of disuse. “This way,” I said, pressing my palm to the disguised latch Marek had shown me. The panel creaked open, revealing a spiral staircase leading into the shadows below.

By the time we emerged from the palace, my noble was thoroughly confused. He looked up, shook his head, and planted his hands on his hips. “I’ve been to the palace many times and had no notion that entrance existed.”

Marek was going to kill me, but there was no hope for it. “Would it be too much of an inconvenience to ask it remain that way?”

“If it would not be too much of an inconvenience to ask why we are here. You are the human, Sir Rowan of Estmere?” When he stuck out his hand, our human greeting, it confirmed this man as an ally.

Shaking it, I said, “Aye. And you are?”

“Lord Gavric of Corvi.”

“I’ve been to Corvi— a coastal trade village, is it not?”

“Known for the Pearl Market and Navigator’s Guild,” he said proudly. Still suspicious, though, he waited for me to explain myself. I had but one course of action here. The truth.

“I am a friend of Nerys’s,” I said. “And know of the queen’s plans to discredit her.”

His anger, still palatable, was replaced with something else, not yet fully formed. Mistrust, maybe?

“She is a friend to my clan,” I explained. “And so, I would do anything possible to support her.”

Mistrust turned to… curiosity.

“The queen,” he faltered.

“Say it,” I reassured him. “We’ve little time before the festival.”

“The queen,” he continued, clearing his throat, “attempted to persuade me to use my influence and publicly denounce her. She knows Nerys plans to challenge her, and said it was not a legitimate claim but a threat to the throne. She painted Nerys as an impetuous, misguided child too reckless to understand the consequences of her actions, let alone the fragile peace we’ve fought so hard to maintain.”

All he said tracked with what I’d learned.

“What did you say to her?”

He frowned, his emotion shifting again to guilt. “I agreed, for fear of retribution before the festival, but I have no plans to do so. Our laws are clear, and I will not interfere with them.”

“And when you do not do as she bids?”

“I will not be at the palace to learn her response.”

“A good plan.”

Satisfied. He was both satisfied and hopeful.

“Perhaps you should not be at the palace either. The queen will not take kindly to you having slipped away from your escort. Her fears of an assassination are well known.”

“You are both lucky to have found a different sort of escort.”

I’d been trained to know when someone approached, but somehow, Marek had gone completely undetected. He was a tricky one, his emotions less evident than most.

Also, he was pissed.

“We had no choice,” I said by way of explanation. “And I cannot go back, having slipped away from my escort.”

He was either unconvinced I had no other option or did not care, because the look he gave me was similar to Lord Gavric when he was escorted from the hall by the queen’s guards.