Chapter 127 Find the Tunnels Part 1
Daisy found her mother in a room full of dying sunlight and medicinal rot. The window was propped open, letting in a trickle of cold air. Herbs hung from every rafter: bundles of willowbark, feverfew, dry blue thistle, all bled of color by the months of Maribel’s convalescence. From a tarnished iron nail above the bed dangled a pale bone charm twisted with blackened chain—the city’s crest carved on one face, the other blistered by old runes, as if the charm itself resisted being understood. A line of protection sigils, painted in lamb’s blood and overlaid with salt, glowed along the sill.
Maribel Smithson looked smaller than Daisy remembered, her skin gone nearly translucent, the old beauty in her face now sharpened to dangerous edges by sickness. She was propped up on a nest of pillows, her chest rising slow and shallow, but her eyes—those were sharp as ever, even in the filtered dusk.
The older woman had a locket in her fist, gripped so tight the chain had cut lines into the flesh.
“Daisy,” Maribel said, voice little more than a thread, “I thought you’d run already.”
Daisy moved to the bedside and sat on the edge of the straw mattress. “I don’t run,” she said, and tried to make it a joke, but it fell flat.
Maribel’s fingers trembled. She offered the locket, palm up. “Take it,” she said. “They must never get this.”
Daisy hesitated. The locket was iron, battered, a relic from the city’s earliest days. She recognized it from her own childhood, but had never seen it open.
“It’s just a keepsake,” Daisy said.
Maribel’s lips quirked, bitter. “Everything is just a keepsake until it becomes a weapon.”
Daisy took it, felt a pulse of heat run up her arm. The locket’s clasp was intricate—two entwined dragons, teeth locked. She tried to pry it open, but it refused her. Iron turns breath-magic against itself, her mother used to say. The magic in the metal was familiar, hungry, the same flavor as the chain that lived in her blood. No one had ever told Daisy exactly where the chain magic came from. All she remembered were fragments: her grandmother’s warnings, the old stories whispered on stormy nights, and the first time the silver in her veins had come alive—a fever dream, her body seized with cold fire, the city’s bells ringing out long into the dark. Since then, she had always felt that chain deep beneath her skin: a line of magic running through her veins, silver-cold and restless, ready to bind or break at her will. When she called on it, it coiled tight inside her, and sometimes she wondered if she guided it or if it guided her. Its hunger whispered to the metal, recognizing a kindred spell at work.
“What is it?” Daisy asked.
Maribel looked away. “Ask your father,” she said, and for a moment Daisy thought she was lost to the fever. But then the older woman smiled, a flash of the street-girl she must have been once. “Or take it to the eastern woods. There’s a hollow, under a willow tree, older than the city itself.” Her voice turned distant, thoughtful. “Some say wishes made at that willow come back to haunt their makers. And that nothing truly vanishes if buried there, not memory, not magic.” Maribel’s gaze flickered to the locket, then away. “There are stories about lockets like this,” she said, voice barely audible. “They say whatever is sealed inside cannot be destroyed, only changed, and that the locket hungers to keep secrets bound until the right hands set them free.” She hesitated, eyes shadowed. “Legends say it’s where the city’s first promise was broken. That’s all I can tell you.”
Daisy felt the urgency. As she scanned the mental map of escape routes, Maribel’s voice echoed sharply inside her mind: Don’t let them have you. The weight of that vow tightened around her heart, fueling every decision. “They’re coming, Mom. We have to go.”
Maribel’s voice dropped. “Don’t let them have you, Pesty. Promise me.”
Daisy nodded, unable to speak.
A distant boom rattled the windows, rolling through the hall like thunder. Beneath it, raised voices shouted desperate orders, rising and falling in panic. Then came the noise from the hall—boots, hurried, deliberate. Oliver’s head appeared in the doorway. “It’s started. They’ve breached the lower wards. Half the council is gone already.”
He saw the locket and raised an eyebrow. Daisy shook her head, and Oliver didn’t press.
Xeris appeared behind him, filling the corridor with his presence. “We have to move,” he said. “Now.”
Daisy stood, steadying her mother as she slipped an arm under the woman’s shoulders. Maribel was lighter than a bundle of sticks, but her stubbornness gave her weight.
They moved as a unit—Daisy, Maribel, Oliver, and Xeris—down the twisting servant’s passages to the kitchen, where a hidden door opened onto the old tunnel network. Xeris led, his senses tuned to every vibration, every whiff of magic. Oliver took the rear, eyes sharp, blade already in his hand.
The tunnel was a living history of the city, its walls layered with old graffiti—declarations of love, curses, and the marks of generations who had hungered for escape. Someone had painted NO LORDS UNDERGROUND, the letters smeared as if by a frantic hand. There were slogans in jagged red: COLDBLOODS OUT and TRUST NO ONE FROM THE SPIRES. Daisy paused on one, a scrawl etched deep: Remember Crux Night. We don’t. At every junction, Daisy saw signs that others had passed before: a dropped ribbon, a chalk arrow, the heelprint of a child. Each scrap reminded her of the city’s fractures and who paid the price for all this running. She wondered how many of them had survived.
The light was dim, the air cool and electric with panic. Somewhere behind them, a roar echoed—maybe a collapse, maybe the work of a Veilseeker’s binding spell. Daisy felt the chain in her body pulse, eager to answer, but she tamped it down.
“Which way?” Oliver whispered.
Daisy remembered Mira’s instructions. “East. Toward the river, then down.”