Iris and Clive ran until they could run no longer. Then they collapsed on the cold ground, heaving and panting. They were still in complete darkness, but they had heard nothing behind them, so Iris was fairly sure they were safe. Her heart burned with worry for her mother, but she felt better with Oliver back there to protect her.

She gripped the leather-wrapped hilt of the dagger Oliver had given her and imagined him telling her to be brave. Don’t come back this way. I will meet you there.

“I’m thirsty,” Clive complained. “And my feet hurt.”

“I don’t care,” Iris informed him. “We have to keep going.”

“What’s going to happen to Mother?”

“Nothing, Oliver will protect her.”

“Are you sure?”

No, she was not at all. But she had to believe it, and she had to make him believe it, too. “Yes, I’m sure. Oliver won’t stop until she’s safe. That’s why I made him go back.” She grabbed her brother in the darkness and pulled him to his feet. She was not enjoying the cave darkness. She couldn’t even see her own hands if she put them in front of her face, and the unsheathed dagger in her hand was making her nervous. Not to mention the eerie feeling that they could run into anything—or anyone—in here with no warning. “But we have to keep going,” she said quietly.

“Why?”

“I’m going to smack you if you keep asking stupid questions.”

He sniffled and let her lead him further into the tunnel.

“We have to keep going because we can’t go back,” she told him, feeling a little bad for that comment. “Our only way to get food and water is to keep going. All right?”

He sniffed again and didn’t say anything.

They went on for a long time, and nothing changed. They still heard nothing but their own feet on the moist earth, so eventually she let them walk more slowly. Her stomach growled. She wondered how long this tunnel was—was it even possible to walk the whole length of it without supplies? Northfort was a short distance on a map, but she knew that was often misleading, especially when traveling on foot. Especially with a whiny ten-year-old behind you.

What if they died of hunger or thirst down here, and no one ever found them? She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Oliver wouldn’t send them down here if it was an impossible walk. And if he were here with them, he would tell them to keep going.

“How do you think they got into Whitehall?” Clive asked tentatively, perhaps afraid she would smack him.

She didn’t. She had been wondering the same thing. If neither Oliver nor her mother had any idea, she doubted she could figure it out. But she had suspicions, for she knew history repeated itself, and she knew a lot of history. The city of Iridia, once ruling all of Ordivicia and the Kailands, had fallen because their own prince betrayed them. He had let an army of barbarians inside the gates with their promise that they would make him king. They had lied, of course, and killed him instead. “Maybe someone inside opened the gates for them,” she said.

“Why would they do that?”

To let them kill our mother. And maybe us, too. “She has a lot of enemies. Maybe someone who was pretending to be on our side wasn’t. Maybe there was a spy.”

“Oh.”

They walked on. The utter darkness was making her dizzy. Or maybe that was the lack of food.

“Wait,” Clive whispered. “Stop.”

Iris stopped. “What is it?”

“Do you hear that? It sounds like . . . water.”

He was right. They followed the trickling noise to its source, blindly reaching out, and found a slimy wall with little streams of water slipping down it.

“I don’t know if it’s safe to drink,” Iris said slowly.

“I don’t care,” Clive said, and she heard him slurping.

“Are you drinking it off the wall?”

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“No—catch it in your hands, stupid. It tastes good.”

It did. It tasted like a clear mountain stream, and it was as cold as freshly melted ice. She felt very small suddenly, realizing that they were likely underneath the mountains. The Ediacara range.

On maps, it was a series of small triangles that separated Ordivicia from the Kailands, and both of them from Slovland to the north. From the balconies of Whitehall, they were the gigantic craggy rocks stretching higher than the highest towers of the castle. The sun disappeared behind them in mid-afternoon, darkening the land and making it feel like evening came right after lunch.

Whitehall went through so many candles, lamps, and torches because of this phenomenon, not to mention the long, sullen winters, that they had a whole section of the castle dedicated to making them, right next to the blacksmith. She remembered the strange scents of wax and oil that she smelled any time she passed near it.

After they drank as much of the cool, refreshing water as they could, they walked on. She grew cold and rubbed her arms. They were both barefoot and had on only their nightgowns, so she imagined they would be quite a sight when they reached Northfort.

Though the ground was dirt with occasional rocks, making an uncomfortable walk sometimes, she found herself glad to be rid of the tight and uncomfortable shoes she would otherwise be in. There was also something comforting about touching the ground with her bare skin—it made her feel more connected to the mountains, somehow.

The hours stretched on, and she often wished to go back to the water, for there was no more to be found, and she was soon parched again. She tried to keep herself calm by breathing slowly, but the hunger grew ever worse and made it hard to think straight.

Would they have to spend the night down here? Did this tunnel ever end? Should they not just turn back before they were too far gone with exhaustion to do so? Her heart raced, and colorful lights flashed across her vision as dizziness hit her. She stopped, leaned her hands on her knees, and sucked in deep breaths. She closed her eyes, even though it made no difference.

She heard Clive keep walking. “Wait,” she said. “Let’s—let’s take a break for a minute.”

“Ouch,” he said harshly. Then came a quiet, “Iris?”

“What?”

“There’s a bend.”

“All right.” The tunnel had taken many slow turns, which they had not noticed until they bumped into a wall and had to change direction.

“No, like—two bends. Two choices.”

“What?” she breathed. That didn’t make any sense. Oliver hadn’t said anything about that. Clive took her hand and put it on the wall that he had run into. It was in the middle of their path, and the tunnel was open on either side of it. “Is one wider than the other? Maybe one is just a cave.” They ran their hands along the walls and found the tunnels to be similar sizes. “It just splits?” Iris demanded, frustrated.

“Well—which one points closer to the direction of Northfort?” Clive inquired.

He had too much faith in her sense of direction while underground in complete darkness. Still, she did her best to think it through. “It’s a straight path north from Whitehall to Northfort. There . . . there shouldn’t be a split. It doesn’t make sense.” The headache pulsed behind her eyes. They were going to starve down here. Maybe they should just sit down right here, conserve their strength, and wait for their mother’s men to come looking for them when they didn’t find them at Northfort.

But how long would that take? And, in the small chance that they lost the battle, would anyone ever come? She couldn’t risk that.

She rubbed her temples. “If the left one goes northeast, and the right one goes northwest . . .”

“Northeast is where the Ordic tribes live,” Clive said quietly.

She nodded, then realized he couldn’t see her. “Yes. But one could be due north. If the right one is due north, the left one would just take us deeper into the mountains. If the left is north, then the right could take us into Ordic territory.” A shiver ran through her—perhaps that was how they had gotten inside the walls of Whitehall. Tunnels. She didn’t know who had built these, or when—likely they were ancient. Who knew where they all went?

She waited for Clive to put the pieces together, but instead he said, “Maybe the extra tunnel leads to another safe house.”

“Maybe. But not to Northfort.” She sighed harshly.

“I’m not going right,” her brother said matter-of-factly. “I’d much rather risk the mountains than the Ordics.”

Probably tortured to death. That’s what the Ordics do to people they don’t like.

She rubbed her arms. “All right. That’s—that’s true. Let’s go left.”

Left they went, and Iris tried not to imagine her mother being tortured right that minute, Oliver dead at her feet.

She swallowed and focused on making her sore, cramping legs keep moving. She was glad Clive couldn’t see the tears on her cheeks. What if she had sent Oliver to his death? What if no one was waiting for them at Northfort? What would they do then?

A little under an hour, the lights flashed across her vision again, and she was trying to breathe through it when Clive gripped her arm, and she realized it wasn’t her eyes. There really was light ahead. It was incredibly dim, but as they kept going, it grew brighter. Iris was suspicious because she couldn’t see an end to the tunnel, just light pouring in from the side.

She could finally see her brother, and the walls around them, more and more clearly as they continued. Clive was limping from his sore feet, but his eyes were excited as he looked up at her. “Did we make it?”

As they approached, Iris let herself dream for a moment of Oliver waiting for them on the other side, and maybe their mother as well. Maybe the fighting had ended hours ago, and the two of them had raced on horseback to meet them in Northfort.

It was not the end of the tunnel. Nor did it look like it had happened on purpose—more like the side of the tunnel had collapsed, letting a bright ray of sunlight pour in. It pained her eyes as they came to stand before it. Then she realized the hole was just a finger’s-width wide.

They stared at it for a while, letting their eyes adjust. Then Clive grabbed the rocks around the hole and pulled. They fell apart easily, and the sound of them falling echoed down the tunnel ominously. They both peered through the hole.

Their hole was at the back of a cave, which looked naturally-formed. It opened up to what appeared to be yellow grassland. There was no sign of people. It opened up to the wild.