Beneath the Citadel

by Destiny Soria

  “I’m going out there,” he said.

  Maybe Cassa had been thinking the same thing he had, because she didn’t seem surprised. She did shake her head. They were elbow to elbow, their backs against the brick, their breaths short bursts into the fog.

  “No,” she said. “I’ll go. You have to wait for the others and figure out a way to poison the elixir before it’s lowered to Solan.”

  “I’m faster than you.”

  “I’m more stubborn.”

  Possibly the truest thing she’d ever said. Evander could feel his pulse throughout his whole body, a thundering rhythm. Whoever went out there might not make it back alive. Another moment suspended in time. He wondered how many of those there could be in a life. How many moments could carry the weight of everything before finally something shattered?

  “When we were kids, were you just trying to impress me that day you climbed the bell tower?” Evander stared at the brick wall in front of them and tried to breathe.

  “What are you talking about?” Cassa paused for a heartbeat. “Did Vesper tell you that?”

  “Maybe.”

  Cassa was quiet. Evander couldn’t bring himself to look at her. He was waiting for a sarcastic retort, but when Cassa spoke, her voice was soft with honesty.

  “I was. Did it work?”

  A smile tugged at his mouth, and he squeezed his eyes shut for a second, just a second.

  “Yes.” He leaned over to kiss her cheek, to speak into her ear. “My turn.”

  He spun out from the passage before she could stop him and ran full tilt toward the chapel. He had to lead the guard down the cross street, away from the others. The man saw him immediately and almost cut him off, his shouts echoing through the night. Evander turned onto the street just in time to avoid him. He couldn’t see anything in the murk. He didn’t know if any second now he’d have a bullet in his back. He just kept running, farther away from the chapel and its eternal flame, farther into the night.

  FORTY-SIX

  CASSA

  If Cassa could have run down Evander and killed him herself, she would have. All he had to do was wait here for the others. Between the four of them, they could have easily managed to subdue the remaining guard and poison the vial. Simple and safe—or as safe as anything could be in the citadel. She should have been the one running through the dark with death on her heels. It was the least she could do for them.

  None of it would matter anyway if the others didn’t get here in time. How long would it take the guard inside the chapel to finish his task? Surely not much longer. Maybe it was already too late.

  A figure passed by the alley, and even in darkness Cassa caught a glimpse of burnished red hair. Her hand shot out and grasped Vesper’s sleeve, pulling her into the passage. Vesper swore and elbowed her in the ribs before realizing who she was.

  “Sorry,” she whispered as Cassa rubbed her side. “You shouldn’t go around grabbing people like that.”

  “Noted,” Cassa said, but before she could say more, Vesper pushed something into her hand. The vial.

  “I came ahead to give you this,” Vesper said. “We’re running out of time, and I already know you’re going to insist on taking it yourself.”

  Cassa nodded and shoved it into her pocket. The least she could do. Her fingers were shaking, but she told herself it was the chilly air.

  “Where are Alys and Newt?” She peered down the foggy street, but it was empty. When Cassa looked back at Vesper, she was swaying on her feet. She propped her right hand against the wall and rubbed her temple with her left.

  “What’s wrong?” Cassa asked, but Vesper said nothing, only stared at her with a strange concentration. Cassa’s heart pounded so fast, her chest ached. She couldn’t catch her breath suddenly.

  “Vesper, what’s wrong? Where are the others?” she demanded.

  “They’re fine.” Vesper shook her head sharply, as if shaking herself out of a trance. “Sorry, they’re right behind me. Newt’s hurt, but he’s okay. Alys is helping him. That’s why I came ahead.”

  Cassa forced herself to inhale and tried to steady her heart. They were fine. She had the poison. Maybe there was still time.

  “I have to go now.” She slipped past Vesper. “Before it’s too late.”

  “Wait,” Vesper tugged on her sleeve, but before she could say anything more, Evander rounded the corner, stopping just short of careening into them.

  He was panting heavily, hands on his knees, head bowed. Cassa’s mind spun.

  “Evander, what are you—”

  He lurched suddenly to the side, throwing out his arm to catch himself on the wall.

  “Something’s wrong,” he gasped out. He leaned against the wall but only managed to stay upright for a few more seconds before sliding to the ground.

  Cassa dropped down beside him, her stomach hurtling into her throat as she searched for an injury, but she couldn’t see anything. No blood. Nothing looked broken.

  “What is it?” Her voice was as tight as her chest. He was clutching his head now, shaking all over.

  Nearby, somewhere along the street, came a sharp cry. Evander’s eyes flew open, and he lunged forward with some kind of mindless instinct. Cassa barely caught him before he face-planted into the ground, shaking too hard to even hold himself upright.

  “Alys,” he whispered, before crying out with another surge of pain.

  Cassa lowered him gently to the cobblestones and jumped to her feet. “Stay with him,” she ordered Vesper and ran toward the sound.

  Alys was only a few yards down the street, a stark, staggering figure against the gray mist. She held Newt against her, desperately trying to keep him on his feet. He was holding his head in both his hands, his jaw locked, trembling all over. When she saw Cassa, she looked ready to sob in relief.

  “I don’t know—he just—” She stumbled uselessly over the words as she helped Cassa drag him the rest of the way to the alley.

  Between them, Newt managed a few steps on his own, but mostly he was deadweight. He sounded like he was trying to say something. Short, strangled whimpers came from his mouth, but no words formed. By the time they’d reached Vesper and Evander, he’d fallen unconscious. Vesper looked up at them from where she knelt over Evander—he had gone still as well.

  Alys let out a hiccuping sob—at the sight of her brother, Cassa assumed, but then she also collapsed to her knees. Cassa’s own knees buckled at the sudden shift of weight, and she lost her balance, cracking her head so hard on the wall that tears sprang to her eyes. She let Newt’s body slump the rest of the way to the ground but fought to keep her feet. Too fast. Everything was happening too fast.

  Alys was rocking back and forth on her knees, cradling her head in her hands. She sucked in a wild breath and found Cassa’s gaze.

  “It’s Solan.” The words sounded as if they were being torn out of her. “He says—he says he’s waiting for you.”

  No sooner had she spoken than she slid to the ground, unmoving. Cassa tried to remember to breathe. She crouched down and let her hand rest on Newt’s chest. It rose up and down in steady rhythm. He was still alive. So was Evander. So was Alys.

  “What do we do?” Her voice was so thin that she wasn’t even sure she’d spoken aloud.

  No reply. Her eyes shot to Vesper, who was sitting back against the wall, both palms pressed against her forehead.

  “Dammit.” She clambered over Evander to kneel in front of Vesper. “Please, Vesper, please don’t—” Please don’t leave me here alone.

  Vesper was rocking back and forth. In that moment, she seemed so far away, so deep inside herself, that Cassa was sure she wouldn’t come back. But then she gasped in a ragged breath and dropped her hands.

  “It is Solan, but I can keep him away from my mind for a while at least.” Her eyes roved across their three unconscious friends, and she pressed her lips into a hard line. “I’m sorry, I could have tried to help them—I didn’t realize in time.”

  “What d
id he do to them?”

  Vesper’s brow wrinkled as she considered. She reached out and grabbed Evander’s limp hand, searching out those invisible threads that only she could see.

  “He took their memories,” she said, pulling away with a shudder. “All of them. When they wake up—if they wake up—there won’t be anything of them left.”

  She dropped her head into her hands again. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I should have known. I should have—we were so close.”

  Cassa stood up.

  “He said he was waiting for me. I don’t know what he wants, but maybe I can convince him to give them back their memories.”

  Vesper peeled her hands from her face and stared up at her.

  “You can’t go down there alone.”

  “I can’t leave them alone either. Not again.” She gestured at her friends’ prone bodies. In the eerie night, slumped as they were across the cobblestones, they didn’t look like they were sleeping. They looked dead. It struck a chord in her that reverberated through every part of her being. The fire she’d been tamping down sprang back to life, heat licking up the back of her throat. “Stay with them. Let me deal with Solan.”

  Vesper grabbed her arm and hauled herself up.

  “Cassa, if you go down there, you—” But she couldn’t finish the thought.

  You won’t come back.

  Cassa forced her lips into a smile, though she knew it was a small, ghastly thing.

  “The least I can do.” She reached into her pocket and closed her fingers around the vial of poison. “He must have gotten the elixir by now, but if I leave this with you, maybe there will be another chance, some other way.”

  Vesper grasped her wrist before she could withdraw the vial.

  “No,” she said firmly. “Keep it. If anyone can find another way, it will be you.”

  Something flitted through the back of Cassa’s mind, a thought she couldn’t quite catch, a memory she couldn’t quite reach, but she shook away the sensation. She wanted to ask how Vesper expected her to find another way, when Solan knew her every thought just by looking at her, could steal her every thought without even seeing her. Maybe he didn’t intend to meet with her at all. Maybe he just wanted to lure her into the dark so that she died alone down there, among the ancient bones. Maybe she deserved as much. Hadn’t she lured Mira to her death in the same manner, however unwittingly?

  “Okay,” was all she said. She left the vial where it was.

  Vesper followed her to the mouth of the alley, and Cassa paused in the street, steeling herself, calculating her route. She would have to go back through the citadel, back down those long steps dropping into blackness, back across the silky surface of the lake and whatever monsters lurked below.

  “Here.” Vesper touched her own temple and then pressed her fingers to Cassa’s. Suddenly Cassa had a very vivid memory of the citadel’s corridors, the path to the great oak door that opened to the dank air of the dungeons. It was as if she’d walked that way a hundred times.

  “I thought you couldn’t remove your own memories,” she said, once she’d adjusted to the odd sensation of a familiarity that wasn’t hers.

  “I took it from one of the guards,” Vesper said. “Just in case.”

  She’d always been able to think three steps ahead, whereas Cassa could only ever stumble from moment to moment, reacting to each problem as it came. They’d become friends for a reason.

  Vesper’s fingers still lingered at Cassa’s temple. Their eyes met.

  “Do you want me to take back my uncle’s memories that I gave you?” Vesper asked softly.

  Cassa nodded, swallowing hard. Vesper pulled her hand back slowly. Rapidly the memories rose to the surface of her mind. The bargain with Solan, the dead guard whose name she—the chancellor—couldn’t remember, the night he lost almost everyone he loved. Then suddenly they were gone. The only thing she remembered with any clarity was that in a strange and terrible way, she and Chancellor Dane weren’t very different at all. Vesper was still staring at her, eyes solemn.

  “I understand why you did it,” Cassa said. “Why you told your uncle everything.”

  Vesper had been three steps ahead and pulling Cassa along, trying to keep her alive. Cassa couldn’t bring herself to thank her for it, but she couldn’t hate her for it either. Vesper hugged herself and sighed.

  “And I understand why you tried to help Solan,” she said.

  “Don’t worry, I never make the same mistake twice.” Cassa flashed a smile that she didn’t feel. She glanced back toward the alley, where her friends were only indistinct shapes. The last people she had left to love. “If—when—they wake up, tell them I—I don’t know. Tell them I said whatever it is I’m meant to say in a situation like this.”

  Vesper only stared at her. In the mist she was a pale wraith, almost a stranger but not quite.

  “You’re not meant to say anything,” she said at last. “You’re meant to come back.”

  “Okay.” Cassa backed away, before she could change her mind, before she could think of a reason to stay. Soon Vesper was shrouded in fog, and Cassa turned to run toward the citadel. Toward the crypts. Toward Solan Tavish.

  THE NIGHT VESPER BETRAYED CASSA

  The Merchants’ Bridge was entirely empty. Other than the whispering flow of the river and the occasional flapping of a tarp covering a market stall, the night was quiet and still. There were no stars visible overhead, but the moon broke through the clouds at intervals, glinting on the water below. Vesper and Cassa were near the center, facing the eastern slopes of Aurelia Valley. They sat, legs dangling, on the stone wall that was supposed to keep people from falling into the river.

  “I don’t understand.” Cassa’s fingers curled over the edge of the stone on either side of her hips. Her eyes on Vesper were sharp and demanding. Vesper couldn’t hold her gaze.

  “I’m sorry,” Vesper said. “I just—I just can’t.”

  “We have to find out what’s happening to these people who keep disappearing.”

  “I know, but you four can do it without me. You don’t need me.”

  “What happened? Did your uncle find out?”

  “No,” Vesper snapped, maybe too forcefully to be believable. Fortunately, Cassa was too distraught and confused to be paying close attention. She also probably didn’t suspect that Vesper would ever lie to her.

  Cassa stared over the water, her jaw set. Vesper took a few deep breaths.

  “You trust me, don’t you?” The question felt more like a betrayal than anything else she’d done tonight.

  After a few long seconds, Cassa nodded.

  “And you wouldn’t push me off this bridge, would you?” Vesper asked.

  Cassa’s eyebrows quirked, and she looked at Vesper.

  “That depends,” she said slowly, “on what you are about to say.”

  “I think maybe you should call off the plan. Or at least postpone it. I’m not sure it’s a good idea anymore.”

  Cassa narrowed her eyes, and for a moment Vesper really did think she might push her off the bridge. She’d known the suggestion was a vain hope, but she had to at least try. If she could convince Cassa to call off the plan to infiltrate the citadel, then maybe she could also convince her and the others to help Ansel kill Solan. No deceit, no blackmail.

  But that had always been a vain hope.

  “We’ve been planning this for months,” Cassa said. “First you want to back out—with no explanation—and now you don’t want us to go through with it at all?”

  Vesper bit her lip and looked down at her hands in her lap. When her uncle had confronted her earlier that evening, she’d thought for sure that all of them were going to end up in chains. Ansel’s diviners had seen everything in their runes and cards and tea leaves. Cassa’s entire plan. Vesper’s entire involvement. She’d never seen her uncle as weary as he’d been that night, sitting in the armchair across from her in his study.

  He hadn’t threatened to expose them. I
nstead, he had asked for her help. There was a monster beneath the citadel, and it had to be stopped. The council was watching him though, waiting for him to show some sign of disloyalty. He couldn’t risk asking for her friends’ help until he knew for sure they would help him.

  Vesper knew that Ansel always played the long game, that he was always thinking further ahead than everyone else, but even she was surprised when he pulled the four signed and sealed pardons from his desk drawer. One for each of her friends. He already knew they were going to go through with their foolhardy plan and that they would get caught. He already knew they were going to find a way to escape and that without those pardons they would spend the rest of their lives on the run.

  Vesper wasn’t sure what the right thing to do was. She did know she had to help her friends earn those pardons. She did know the monster had to be killed.

  She hadn’t known how hard it would be to sit there beside Cassa and lie to her.

  “I’m just worried about you,” Vesper said, keeping her eyes averted. “No one has ever infiltrated the Central Keep and lived.”

  A moment of quiet.

  “You don’t think my plan will work?” Cassa’s voice was soft, too soft.

  Vesper looked up, but now it was Cassa’s gaze that was averted. The hard line of her jaw had begun to quiver.

  “I think . . .” Vesper’s heart ached more and more with every beat. Guilt dug its claws into her stomach, wrenching at her insides. “I think if anyone can make it work, you and the others can.” That was the truth, but it didn’t hurt any less than the lies.

  She expected Cassa to smile or shoot off a cocky remark, but she just kept staring across the river. The clouds peeled away from the moon long enough for her face to be illuminated. Vesper studied her profile, thinking that she didn’t look like either of her parents but rather a perfect blend of them both. Cassa could very well be the last Valera, but their name wouldn’t be forgotten for a long time.

  “I have to try,” Cassa said into the open air. “You understand that, don’t you?”