The drainage tunnel smelled like rust and stagnant water, low enough that Damian had to duck the entire way through, Kai and Elena close behind him, Callan bringing up the rear with a torch shielded low against his palm.
“This should let out near the lower cells,” Elena murmured, checking the rough map she’d sketched from memory. “If the layout hasn’t changed.”
It had changed. The exit they’d mapped two nights ago opened not into a quiet storage corridor but into a wide, torch-lit chamber crowded with crates and, worse, with guards, more than double what Elena’s earlier scouting had counted.
Damian froze at the tunnel’s edge, taking in the scene with the particular stillness of a predator recalculating mid-strike.
“They reinforced,” he breathed. “Recently. Very recently.”
“Which means
