Sold to the Alpha King

Chapter 13 — The Crypt

The key is cold against my palm. Heavy. Iron, not steel—old enough that the teeth are worn uneven, like something chewed them into shape. I stole it from Gareth's study while he was in the war room with Viktor, while Mira was pouring him whiskey and lies, while neither of them noticed the human mouse slipping through the cracks.

I tell myself this is bravery. It's not. It's the kind of stupid that gets people killed.

The servant stairwell at the east wing's end is narrow enough that my shoulders brush both walls. Dust coats the stone, thick as felt, and the smell shifts as I descend—from woodsmoke and candle wax to wet rock and something metallic. Old blood. Or rust. I can't tell the difference anymore.

Forty-seven steps. I counted. At the bottom, a door.

The wood is rotted at the corners, black with moisture, but the lock is new. Shiny. Out of place. Someone's been down here recently. Someone with money and a reason to keep secrets.

The key slides in. The mechanism clicks. The door swings open on oiled hinges that shouldn't exist on a door this old.

The tunnel beyond is dark in a way that feels physical. Thick. I hold my hand in front of my face and see nothing. I should have brought a torch. I brought a lighter instead—Sera's Zippo, the one with the scratched rose on the side, the one I found in her things and never told anyone about.

I flick it. The flame catches. Small. Insufficient. But enough to see the walls.

Carved. Every inch. Names, dates, prayers in a language I don't recognize. Some are fresh, the stone still pale where the letters were cut. Others are so old they've grown moss. I run my fingers over one—*Elara, forgive me*—and feel my blood freeze.

Elara. My real name. The one I stopped using the night Sera died.

*He thought: It'll look different inside, lying flat. She deserves to know how many of us fell trying to protect you.*

I keep walking.

The tunnel slopes down. The air gets colder. My breath comes in white puffs that the flame swallows. I count my steps again—I've always counted, ever since the fire, since the night I woke up in a hospital bed with no memory of how I got there and a nurse telling me my sister was dead.

Ninety-two. One-thirteen. One-forty-seven.

At one-seventy-two, the tunnel opens into a chamber.

The ceiling is high enough that my lighter can't reach it—just darkness, swallowing the light. The walls are raw stone, wet with condensation, and in the center of the floor, there's a sinkhole. A natural crack in the earth, maybe twenty feet across, with stone steps spiraling down into it.

I smell her before I see her. Sweat. Unwashed skin. Urine. And beneath it, something floral—jasmine, maybe, or honeysuckle, old and faded like pressed flowers in a book.

I descend.

The steps are uneven, slick with moisture, and I grip the wall with my free hand. Moss squishes under my fingers. The flame sputters. I'm running out of time. Running out of courage. Running out of reasons to pretend this is going to end well.

At the bottom, a cage.

Iron bars, rusted, set into the stone floor. A chain bolted to the wall, and at the end of the chain—

She's smaller than I expected. So thin I can see the architecture of her bones through her skin. Her hair is gray-white, tangled, hanging past her waist. Her wrists are raw where the iron cuffs have worn through flesh to something underneath. Her eyes are closed.

But her eyes.

When she opens them, they're silver. Not gray. Not pale blue. *Silver.* Like moonlight on a frozen lake. Like Sera's eyes, the night she told me she was leaving, the night she said *I found something, Lyra. Something big. Something that changes everything.*

The woman's lips part. Cracked. Bleeding.

"You're her," she whispers. "You're Elara."

My name in this place. At the bottom of this hole. My fingers go numb. The lighter clatters to the ground.

"How do you know my name?"

The woman smiles. Her teeth are stained brown at the gums.

"Because I held your sister while she died. I held her, and I listened, and she said your name over and over. *Elara. Tell Elara I'm sorry. Tell Elara it's under the blood. She'll know what that means.*"

*Under the blood.* The words hit me like a physical blow. Sera's last message. The one I never received because she never made it home. The one I've been chasing for two years.

"I need to tell you what she found," the woman says. "But we don't have much time. They check on me every three hours. The last check was two and a half hours ago. Which means—"

Above us, a door slams.

The woman's eyes go wide. Her hand shoots through the bars, grabbing my wrist with strength that shouldn't exist in someone her size.

"You need to hide. Now."

I shake my head. "Who is it? Who checks on you?"

She opens her mouth to answer.

And the lights go out.

The Zippo died when I dropped it. The chamber plunges into absolute blackness. I hear footsteps on the stone floor above—slow. Deliberate. Someone who knows exactly where they're going.

I scramble, blind, my hands finding the wall, the steps, the cold iron of the cage. The woman's hand finds mine in the dark and squeezes.

"Don't make a sound," she breathes. "And when I tell you to run, you run. Don't look back. Don't look for me. Just run."

The footsteps descend the spiral stairs. One step. Two. Three.

I press myself into the darkness and pray I'm not about to join my sister.