Chapter 4 - The Queen's Door
We ran downward through darkness.
My legs had forgotten stairs. Sixteen years in one stone room had made my knees weak, but fear was a better crutch than pride.
Behind us, a door slammed open.
Voices.
"Search the passage!"
Renard.
Mathurin shoved me ahead. "The chapel. If we reach the old chapel, there's another exit."
We descended into colder air. The walls changed from finished palace stone to rough blocks sweating with moisture. At the bottom waited a narrow oak door carved with a lily.
Queen Aveline's private door.
I pressed the brass key into the lock.
It stuck.
Footsteps hammered above us.
"Come on," Mathurin breathed.
I turned harder.
The lock gave.
We stumbled into a chapel that had been sealed since the queen died. Dust covered the pews. The painted saints had faded into gray faces. Her prayer stool still sat before the altar.
For one terrible second, I was twenty-nine again, standing beside Aveline while she told me she'd found missing money in the war accounts.
"If I'm wrong," she had said, "I will apologize to Armand Vautrin myself. If I'm right, he will kill to keep this quiet."
She had been right.
Mathurin barred the door.
I went straight to the altar and lifted the loose stone beneath the candle rail.
Nothing.
My stomach dropped.
"No."
"What?"
"There was a packet here. Aveline hid her copy of the accounts."
Only dust remained.
Then I noticed something fresh scratched into the stone.
Three words.
NOT SAFE. NORTH CRYPT.
I knew that handwriting.
Dr. Severin, the royal physician.
The man who had signed the queen's death certificate.
The man our secret messages said had died eight years ago.
Mathurin stared at the words.
"He's alive," he whispered.
May you like
A fist struck the chapel door.
And from beneath the altar, someone whispered my name.
