Ending Maker novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Kitchen Door

Locked in the keep with the man she hates, Greer finds there is no logout, and a kitchen healer leads them out as the courtyard seals.

They locked us in the same room.

It was a guest suite in the Dawn Keep with a stone fireplace, two chairs, and a window barred with silver.

"Subtle," Emmett said, and tried the door.

It did not open.

I sat on the edge of the long table and pulled my menus up again.

Inventory showed nothing but the armor I wore.

The map showed a grey fog over everything outside the keep.

In the corner of my vision a small icon had the shape of a door.

I pushed on it with my thoughts.

LOGOUT UNAVAILABLE.

I tried it three more times, and it said the same thing in the same calm font.

"It's not a bug," Emmett said, without turning around. "I tried it in the cathedral before you woke."

"You were awake before me?"

"By about an hour."

"And you didn't think to tell the room?"

"The room was busy kneeling."

I laughed once, and hated that it came out as a real laugh.

"You broke the oath blade," he said.

"I did."

"That was the dumbest thing I've ever watched anyone do."

"You said 'good.'"

He finally turned.

His face was tired and unshaven, and the look he gave me was careful in a way I hadn't seen in four years of chat.

"I said a lot of things in the dark ten minutes ago," he said. "Don't build a theory."

"I'm not building anything," I said. "I'm trying to figure out why a man who has never once been scared of me looked afraid when he saw my face."

"You reported me."

"You took my world-first."

"Your raid wiped on the last boss seven times."

"Because you camped the room and killed my healers."

"It was a PvP zone."

"It was a raid instance."

"It was both," Emmett said. "That was the exploit you reported."

For the first time in four years, we were in the same room, and it was quiet enough to hear the fire.

"So we hate each other," I said.

"Since patch 5.2," he agreed.

"And we're locked up together."

"Yes."

"And we have thirty days."

"Twenty-nine."

I stood up, because sitting made me feel like I was losing.

"I'm not killing you at a gate."

"I'm not killing you either."

"Good."

We looked at each other like two cats with the same box.

The door at the back of the room, the one I had thought was a cupboard, creaked open.

A girl stuck her head out of it, in a green apron, with brown braids and a tray of bread.

"Are you really the Sunblade?" she whispered.

I stared at her.

"Who are you?"

"Tavi. I'm in the kitchens, I mean, I heal people in the kitchens, mostly burns." She came in sideways, pulling the cupboard door shut behind her. "I heard what you did in the nave. The cooks are saying you're either a saint or a heretic. I think you're brave."

"Brave is a generous word," Emmett said.

"I wasn't talking to you."

I liked her at once.

"How did you get here?" I asked.

"The cooks' stair. It goes from the pantry up to this room. The silver bars are only on the windows. Nobody remembers the stair because it's older than the keep." She set the tray down. "The Champion has doubled the guard in the courtyard, and tonight at midnight he's bringing a priest with a sealing ring. I think he means to bind you both here until the day."

"Bind how?" Emmett asked.

"Like a bell in a tower," said Tavi. "It can ring, but it can't leave."

I looked at Emmett.

Emmett looked at me.

For one second we agreed on everything.

"We go," I said.

"Now," he said.

Tavi opened the cupboard door wide.

A narrow stair wound down into the dark, smelling of flour and old smoke.

I took the bread from the tray, because I had learned in four years of raiding that you always take the bread.

Emmett took Tavi's lantern.

We went down in single file, Tavi first, then me, then him, our armor scraping the stone.

Behind us, faintly, a bell began to ring somewhere high in the keep.

"They've noticed," Tavi said cheerfully.

At the bottom, a door opened on the kitchen yard, and I saw what waited past it.

Torches.

Forty knights, at least, in silver, filling the courtyard from wall to wall.

At the head of them stood Rennard Vosk with a sealing ring held up in the firelight.

He looked straight at the open door and smiled.

"The Sunblade has found the kitchen," he said. "How practical of her."

A hand caught mine in the dark.

It was a big hand in a black gauntlet, and it was warm.

"Left," Emmett said, close to my ear. "The gate by the well. Run left."

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