Bound to Four Alphas

Four Ways to Break a Promise

Four words. That's all it takes to make the whole cell feel smaller.

"Choose one, or lose all."

I read it twice, like the second time might change what it says. It doesn't.

"Give it here." Riven holds out his hand, and I pass him the parchment without arguing. He reads it once, and something in his face goes flat and cold in a way that scares me more than his usual temper. "This isn't a threat. It's an offer."

"Same thing, dressed differently," Lucien says, reading over his shoulder. His charm is gone, stripped down to something sharper underneath. "Whoever wrote this wants April to think she has a choice. She doesn't. Not really. Not if Selene and Jax's lives are the price of getting it wrong."

"We don't know that's what they mean," Jodan says, but he doesn't sound like he believes it either.

Eryx takes the note last, holding it gently, like it might still be warm from whoever wrote it. He goes very still, the way he does when he's reading something with more than his eyes.

"There's a symbol under the ink," he says quietly. "Pressed into the parchment, not written. A crescent, split down the middle."

My stomach drops before I even understand why. "What does that mean?"

"It means this wasn't the Council," Jodan says slowly, taking the note from Eryx and turning it toward the torchlight. "The Council's seal is a full moon. Whole. Unbroken." His jaw tightens. "A split crescent is older. Rebellion iconography. It hasn't been used publicly in over a century."

"Jax," I say, before I can stop myself. "He's part of a rebel group. Selene mentioned it once, joking, like it wasn't serious."

Riven's head snaps toward me. "You think the rebellion took them?"

"I think somebody wants it to look that way," Lucien says, tilting his head. "Which is almost worse. If this is real rebellion work, we're dealing with people angry enough to hurt them for a cause. If it's staged, we're dealing with someone smart enough to make the Council look guilty either way."

The torch on the wall gutters, and for a second the whole cell goes darker, shadows stretching long across the floor.

"Either way," Jodan says, "we go where the note leads. There's no other option."

"There's always another option," Riven mutters, "usually one that involves fewer polite words and more consequences."

"Not this time," Jodan says. "Not if we want them back alive."

I fold the note carefully, my hands still not quite steady, and tuck it against my chest like it might disappear if I let go of it. The bond hums low under my skin, four separate heartbeats pressed against mine, and for the first time since the ceremony I understand what the Queen meant by consume. It would be so easy to let their certainty replace mine. Their strength carry me instead of my own.

I don't let it.

"There's no address on this," I say. "No location. How are we supposed to know where to go?"

Eryx crouches by the scrubbed sigil on the wall again, running his fingers along the invisible grooves. "The mark responds to blood. Royal blood specifically, which is why it was carved here, in a Council-controlled building. If we're meant to follow it somewhere, it'll want the same kind of blood to open the next door."

"Meaning?" I ask, though I already have a terrible guess.

"Meaning one of us bleeds," Jodan says, "and the mark shows us where it leads."

Riven doesn't hesitate. He draws a small blade from his boot before anyone can argue and drags it across his palm in one clean line, hissing through his teeth. Blood wells dark in the torchlight, and he presses his hand flat against the sigil on the wall.

For a moment, nothing happens.

Then the stone drinks it in.

The scrubbed-out lines flare to life beneath his palm, glowing faint gold, and a seam splits open in the wall where there was only solid rock a second before, revealing a narrow staircase spiraling down into the dark.

"That," Lucien says, "was not there five minutes ago."

"None of this was here five minutes ago," Riven growls, flexing his cut hand. "Welcome to the new normal."

Jodan steps toward the opening first, testing the air, listening. "It goes deep. Older than the school, older than the sigils probably. This is a passage that predates Mooncrest itself."

"Which means whoever's holding Selene and Jax knew about tunnels the Royal Council doesn't," Eryx says. "That's not a rebel hideout. That's something with resources. Something patient."

I stare down into the dark, my bare feet already cold on the stone, the bond thrumming louder the closer I get to the opening, like it wants me to walk down there. Like something at the bottom of those stairs is calling to the same magic that lit up my arms in the arena.

"April." Jodan's voice pulls me back. His eyes are steady on mine, careful. "Once we go down there, there's no clean way back up. Whoever set this trap wants you specifically. If you come, you're walking toward exactly what they asked for."

"I know," I say. "I'm still going."

He doesn't argue. None of them do.

We start down the stairs together, torchlight from the cell shrinking behind us until it's swallowed by the dark, and the deeper we go, the louder the hum in my chest gets, until it isn't just four heartbeats anymore.

It's five.

I stop dead on the stairs, one hand flying to my chest.

"What is it?" Eryx is at my side instantly, hands hovering, not touching. "April, what's wrong?"

"There's someone else," I whisper, staring into the dark below us, my pulse hammering out of rhythm with all four of theirs at once. "I can feel someone else down there. Another heartbeat. And it's not one of you."

The tunnel exhales cold air up the stairwell, carrying with it, faint but unmistakable, the scent of my own perfume.

The one I haven't worn since before I left home.