Chapter 190 One Step Ahead
ADRIANA
Getting into the palace itself was easier than it should have been, which told me something about Landon’s security that I knew would come in handy later.
The guards at the outer perimeter were attentive. The guards at the palace entrance were less so, men who had been on their shift long enough to have settled into the rhythm of a quiet night and were no longer actively anticipating anything.
I moved through the gaps their inattention created and found myself in the interior corridors without having had to use my powers again, which was the preferred outcome. Every time I used them I felt the drain of it, in a small but cumulative way, and I needed to be functional when it mattered.
I moved through the palace looking for the holding area Brianna had described. A large hall, stone floors. I checked three rooms before I heard voices ahead and followed them to a corridor that had guards stationed outside it.
Two of them were talking quietly, not watching the door.
I listened to what they were saying.
My stomach dropped.
“—can’t believe he’s moving them again. Two moves in three days.”
“He’s scared. Got word someone was coming for the kids. The whole plan’s changed.”
“Where are they taking them this time?”
“No idea. It’s above my level. Just know we have to clear out before dawn.”
I pressed myself against the wall and thought.
He knew I was coming.
The realization arrived with cold clarity, but it explained other things — the unusual quiet of the palace exterior, the sense I’d had since entering that the energy of the place was off, directed elsewhere. Landon hadn’t been sitting here waiting for my letter. He had been packing.
Someone had told him.
Someone who had known I left the palace tonight, or someone who had been watching for my departure and had moved the moment it happened. I ran through the possibilities and arrived at the same name Hazel had arrived at. Shawn was gone from the palace but gone didn’t mean cut off. He’d been Beta for eighteen months. He had people. And those people had apparently remained loyal to him even after his dismissal.
I closed my eyes briefly.
Then I kicked the hall door open.
The room was empty.
The marks on the floor where pallets had been laid. The bucket in the corner. The smell of too many people in too small a space for too many weeks. All of it was there, imprinted on the room, and none of the people were.
I stood in the middle of the hall and breathed through the anger of it.
“Elijah.”
He was with me in an instant.
“What’s happened?”
“He moved them. He got word I was coming. No, he was told by someone and he’s already cleared the facility. The children are gone and so is he.” I kept my voice even with effort. “You need to hold the soldiers. Do not advance on the palace. He’s not here and I don’t know yet where he’s taken them.”
He was silent for a beat. “Are you safe?”
“Yes. I’m going to get out before anyone finds me and then I need to think.” I was already moving back toward the corridor, retracing my route. “Whoever told him, it happened fast.”
“Shawn,” Elijah said.
“Probably. Or someone still loyal to him. Find out who left the kingdom in the last few hours. Anyone who wasn’t where they were supposed to be.”
“I’ll have Hazel on it.”
I navigated back through the palace and through the village and through the gate — stepping over the guards who were still sleeping exactly where I had left them — and into the treeline on the other side. I moved until I was far enough from the boundary to feel the particular release of Lycan territory behind me, and then I stopped and stood in the dark forest and let myself feel it for exactly thirty seconds.
The anger. The exhaustion. The awareness that I had walked a significant distance through difficult terrain on no sleep and no food and had arrived to find an empty room.
I told myself thirty seconds. Then I set it down.
I heard movement ahead of me and recognized the sound of a large group moving with military discipline.
Elijah’s soldiers.
And Elijah himself, which I had expected, because telling him to hold the soldiers was not the same as telling him to stay home and he knew exactly what I meant when I said it.
I stepped into the clearing.
“No,” I said, before he could speak. “I know what you’re going to say.”
“I’m going to say that you walked into an active situation without backup and came out of it with actionable intelligence and you’re standing upright, so overall I consider it a reasonable outcome.”
I looked at him.
“You’re not angry?”
“I’m beyond livid. But you’re fine and that is a win.” he said, with complete equanimity. “We’ll discuss the rest later. What did you find?”
I told him everything. He listened without interrupting.
Hazel appeared by his shoulder when I finished.
“Shawn left the kingdom approximately four hours ago,” she said. “Through the tunnels. A guard who was on the eastern passage reported a figure matching his description. He didn’t stop him because Shawn still had his credentials and they hadn’t been formally flagged yet.”
The tunnels. Of course.
“He’s been feeding Landon information through the tunnels,” I said. “That’s also how the children were taken. That’s how groups of people were moving through the pack without being scented at the gate.”
“Yes,” Hazel said. “That was my conclusion too.”
Elijah was looking at the treeline in the direction of Golden Blade’s territory.
“Leo is somewhere in that direction,” he said. “He won’t know what’s happened on our end.”
“He’ll adapt and he’ll come up with a new plan,” I said with conviction. I trusted my son.
“I know he will.” He turned to look at me. “Are you alright?”
“No,” I said honestly. “I want to go home, wash the forest off me, eat something, and sleep for two hours. And then I want to figure out where Landon has taken my son.”
We turned back toward home, the soldiers falling into formation around us, and I walked the distance in silence.