“Stay close,” the Ninja echoed. Rosamund struggled to see where she was stepping. They had been walking through the tunnels in complete darkness for so long. They were no longer under the Palace. Of that, she was certain. They were deep in the underground catacombs. The sapphire side of the Ninja’s armour helped to illuminate the walls. Sometimes she would see skulls sticking out of them and she swiftly darted her eyes downward. There were bones on the ground too, but not as many. It was silent. Normally she hated harsh noise, but all that could be heard was her and the Ninja’s echoing footsteps. She hated it. She was not sure what was worse. Being down here with the dead or back at her home where the demons were lurking, hungry for her blood. And where my kingly father’s body is still burning away… She wanted to escape, but every time she closed her eyes, she saw her father, shadowed, and charred behind orange flames. Other times, when she closed her eyes, she would see Malborne’s bloody face, the knife sticking out the back of his head.

A torchlight flickered down the ends of the tunnel they were pacing through. The Ninja raised his hand to halt her. The fingertips had scars wrapped around them. She did not know how he had got them. The distant flame moved closer towards them. Two men emerged from the darkness. They were in dark hoods and brown leather apparel. They both frowned as they approached the Ninja in his otherworldly armour. “The King and Queen want that dagger, Night Fang!” one of them called out.

“Shit, not now,” she heard the Ninja echo before charging into them. He slammed one into the wall of skulls and kicked the other in the abdomen in one swift movement. The Ninja’s hands lit up the tunnel and for the faintest of moments, she could see everything. The skulls jutting from above her, the scattered bones across the ground, the blood crawling from under one the hooded men’s nose. Then everything turned dark again.

She heard a grunt as one man slid down against the skulls, followed by groaning and kicking. She could not identify who was doing what. All she could do was wait in the dark and contemplate fleeing. Flee where? Back to the demons? She could have the chance to say goodbye to her father before they burned her, too.

She had refused to believe the things Dorian had told her. Then her own father admitted what he had done with his own lips. Her father, the man who cherished her, and raised her. The golden example of what a king should have been. Only whilst he was having Ana take care of his only daughter, he was burning others…

The world had lost meaning to her. If she could not even trust her father to be a good man, then there was no hope in this cruel land. She felt a hand touch her in the dark and she jumped back and shrieked. “It’s me,” the Ninja echoed. “We need to keep moving.”

She tripped over the leg of one of the hooded men. He made no noise or reaction. “Did you kill them?” she asked the Ninja with a noticeable tremble in her voice that she could not hide.

“No.”

“Are you truly going to kill Dorian?”

It was too dark to see how the Ninja’s eyes reacted to the question. He was silent for a painfully long moment. “You know who he is?” he asked, his voice still inhuman and echoing.

“He told me himself.” She felt her lip tremble at the memory. Being unable to move in her bed. Being told that she was going to die. Escaping through the crawl space. Malborne’s bloody face… His face was the worst of it. She couldn’t escape the image of his twitching eye and the blood creeping into his thick moustache. “Are you going to kill Dorian?” she asked again, her voice breaking. She didn’t want him to die.

He wasn’t himself up there. Something must have possessed him. He did care for her. He must have done. Didn’t he?

“Right now,” the Ninja said, “I’m just focusing on getting you somewhere safe.”

“Because he’s a good man,” she implored, grasping onto his sapphire gauntlet. “I don’t know what’s become of him. He was kind and gallant.”

“Dorian had been planning this for some time, Princess,” the Ninja bluntly echoed. “He was only gallant to get close to you, just as he did with Anastasia, the Countess and your father. The Velociraptor is his true self.”

Rosamund felt her fear morph into an alien anger. “And what of you then?” she demanded. “Is this blue monster with the ghostly voice your true self?”

The Ninja looked down at her with his eyes that brimmed with lightning. “Yes,” he said without any hesitation.

A rattling sound echoed from behind them in the darkness. The gate. Someone was following from the way they had previously come. The Ninja did not need to tell her to run. She dashed ahead of him, praying that she would not trip and make a noise with each step she took. She was panting and beginning to feel tired. She just wanted to sleep and end this waking nightmare. She felt the Ninja pull on her arm and they sharply turned into a side passage, past an open iron gate. The Ninja grunted as he pushed the iron bars shut behind them. It screeched and voiced a howl throughout the tunnels. The demons would have heard that. Even if the gate had stalled them.

The walls were narrower here. They were closing in. Bricks and stones were scattered and there was a damp and dying smell that made her feel queasy. She made tentative steps through the narrowing tunnel. She could hear the Ninja’s footsteps behind her. Why is he protecting me? She questioned to herself. Who wants to defend the daughter of a man who had countless people burned?

A steel gate ahead gleamed in the dark. It was wedged shut and rusted after centuries of unuse. She felt her heart panic and beat manically. They were trapped with Dorian’s assassins. Anastasia had told her countless cautionary tales of unfortunate souls descending into the catacombs and never returning to the surface again. I’m not dying in the dark!

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Rosamund took a sharp right turn. The Ninja called out to her, but by then it was too late. She felt a sharp clank as she stepped onto a tile. She felt it lower beneath her foot and a sharp screech in the dark followed. She twisted around to see another steel gate slamming shut behind her. The Ninja jumped back before spears broke out from the walls, the ground, and above behind the bars. “No!” she screamed. Her only source of safety was cut away from her. The spears separated them in the blackness. Stupid girl, she chided to herself. You’re going to die down here and it’s all your fault! She fell to the bone-ridden ground and began weeping into her muddy sleeve. She howled and kicked at the bones that were scattered around her. She kicked and kicked and began hitting herself repeatedly until her arms felt bruised.

The spears retracted away, and the Ninja grasped the bars with his scarred hands. He shook at it and his hands flashed with sparks. The hinges remained unbroken. “Rosamund,” she could hear him echoing her name. She couldn’t focus. She was trapped and cold. If the demons didn’t get to her first, then the cold certainly would. She rocked back and forth, covering her ears, and wanting the pain to go away. She hit her arm again. She felt a cold touch and saw the Ninja’s scarred fingertips grasping her arm through the bars. “Rosamund, look at me.” There was no echo in his voice this time. He sounded… different.

“Hideo?” she asked, looking up and wiping snot and tears from her mouth.

“Rosamund,” the Ninja spoke in the Alchemist’s voice. “Listen to me. I know you’re scared, but I need you to keep going.”

Alone? “I can’t...”

“You can,” Hideo affirmed. “I used to come down here often as a child. You’re not far from the surface. You just need to follow the tunnel and keep turning left. You’re nearly there already.” His grip on her arm tightened. “Once you reach the surface, keep yourself hidden and do not talk to anyone. There is Pax chapel in the Shards. Go there and ask for a priestess named Evalina Doucet. Tell her that I sent you. She knows my identity, too. I’ll fend off the pursuers and meet you thereafter.”

Rosamund wiped the streams of tears from her eyes and reluctantly nodded.

“You can do this,” the Ninja said in Hideo’s voice.

*

Hideo was not lying to her. Rosamund only had to walk blindly in the catacombs for some minutes before discovering beams of light from above. The gate was stiff, and Rosamund had to hit her entire body against the bars for it to pry open with a scream. She did not feel any safer out in the streets than she did back in the catacombs. It was still nightfall. It was raining heavily. She did not know what borough she was in and was wearing a bright golden dress. The assassins would catch wind of her easily if she were to run madly around the Shards dressed like royalty.

Rosamund wandered around the raining night aimlessly. She had never felt more alone. She heard a nearby horse whinny across the street. She heard trotting and saw a City Watch carriage riding towards her. Watchmen in black armour and kettle-hats were hanging from the sides of it. Malborne was City Watch too, before he tried to kill her and Athena. She darted across the street and down a narrow alleyway. She heard screaming and shouting in the distance. She peaked out from the alleyway and saw commoners marching down the street. Some of them were holding torches. Others were carrying pitchforks and batons. She did not understand who the violent crowd was or who they might be looking for. City Watch bells were dinning from afar.

Rosamund stepped backwards into the puddles. As she turned around, she saw that one of them was standing behind her. His face was gaunt and bearded. He was limping and used a rake to prop himself up. Rosamund recognised him. He was at her father’s burning. One of the hostages that was pushed back and beaten by the demons.

“Help me get to the Pax chapel,” she pleaded in a whisper.

The man’s beady eyes narrowed on her. “You need to burn,” he said as limped towards her. For a man who had been beaten mercilessly some hours ago, he had surprising strength. His free arm wrapped around her neck, dragging her deeper into the alley.

“I had nothing to do with it!” she wailed as she kicked at his bad leg. The man began to stagger and grunt. He did not relent. He kept dragging her away, tightening his grip around her throat. She began to feel faint and dizzy. The torches in the street blurred and swirled around some stationed horses as her vision hazed. There was a swooping sound, and the man grunted and moaned. She felt his grip release and heard his limp body slump and drag against the alleyway wall. She stood from the damp ground to see a crossbow bolt sticking out of her attacker’s leg. He moaned in the puddles like a wounded animal.

Rosamund coughed and gargled the phlegm from her throat as her airway cleared. She saw a girl standing over her. She was only a few years her junior. The girl’s clothes were ragged and torn, her hair stringy and bedraggled. She helped Rosamund move away from the groaning man and further down the alley, away from the shouts coming from the high street. Her eyes studied the small glimmers from her gold dress that were mostly hidden and coated in mud and blood. Rosamund noticed a smaller child stood beside the crossbow girl. She said nothing and clung tightly to the taller girl.

“Can you take me to the Pax Chapel?” Rosamund asked them both uneasily.

The crossbow girl shook her head. “They’re all out there looking for you. The chapel is surrounded.”

Rosamund nodded her head solemnly. Perhaps she should just burn if that’s truly what everyone wanted. The girl dropped her crossbow into a puddle and reached into her satchel. She wrested out a long and thick tawny cloak and wrapped it over the Princess’ shoulders. “Hide the gold,” the crossbow girl said. Rosamund nodded again. The cloak was warm. It was made of the amplest wool, and she felt as if she could hide away and escape within in it. “Come back with us,” crossbow girl then pleaded.

“Why are you being nice to me?” Rosamund asked, her voice breaking. She had tried to be brave since she was separated from the Ninja, but she wasn’t. She was frightened and alone. She was afraid to accept the peasant girl’s kindness because the only people who were kind to her in life weren’t who they said they were. They were most likely acting kind in order to bring her to Dorian. Or were they?

“We have a shack in the Shards,” the girl said, ignoring the question. “You can hide there until things blow over.”

Rosamund flinched away. Too many people had already died over her and her father. She did not want the blood of these people on her hands too, whether their intentions were pure or not. Crossbow girl and the smaller peasant child next to her stared at the Princess wide eyed as she headed out of the raining alleyway.

Rosamund made sure to wrap the cloak tightly around her, ensuring that not an inch of her royal attire was visible. She did not know where she would go or if she would even make it five blocks. She glanced back at the two of them. The small mute child started crying and nestled her face into the taller girl’s waist. Crossbow girl looked at Rosamund, concerned. “You don’t have to be alone,” she said.

Rosamund felt her lip quiver. She ran out into the rain.