I Survived My Father's Test and Took His Throne novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Kitchen Tunnels

Rhiannon escapes through the old tunnels and puts a knife to Garrick's throat; he kneels and swears his sword, and Dorian's wolves are already at the Hollow.

I went through the kitchen door with my father's blood still wet on my dress.

Three cooks flattened themselves against the stoves and said nothing.

I had been born in this palace, and I knew its back ways better than any guard in blue.

I took the servants' stair down, then the cold pantry, then the iron hatch behind the flour barrels.

Boots hammered above me.

"She's in the kitchens," a man shouted. "Spread out!"

My new wolf was awake, and it showed me everything at once.

I smelled the damp stone, the tallow, the men's sweat and the gunpowder on their coats.

I heard each of them breathing through the floor.

It frightened me, and it also made me feel enormous.

I pulled the hatch shut over my head and ran in the dark.

The old tunnels under the palace had been built for kings to escape their enemies.

My father had shown me the way when I was nine, laughing, and had made me promise never to tell Dorian.

I had never told Dorian.

He had still known which door to seal.

A sound moved in the tunnel ahead of me, slow and careful.

I stopped and held my breath.

My wolf said, plainly, one man, hurt.

I drew the knife from the sheath at my ankle.

My father had put it there on my fourteenth birthday and told me a woman who could not carry a blade could not carry a crown.

A shape stepped out of the dark with both hands open.

I put the point under his chin before I even saw his face.

"Don't," he said, very low.

It was Garrick Rook, the captain of my father's guard.

His coat was torn at the shoulder, and a bullet had cut a bloody line across his upper arm.

I knew his scarred left hand.

I had watched it hold a rifle on my father's doorway every day of my life.

"You weren't there," I said.

My voice shook, and I hated that it did.

"He sent you away, and you went, and he is dead on the floor of the Moonhall."

Garrick did not move the knife and did not look at it.

"I know," he said. "I felt the pack bond go cold at the border. I rode back the whole way and I couldn't get here in time."

His eyes were red.

"Somebody shot at me on the river road. That's how I knew the order was a trap."

"What order?"

"The king's. He sent me to the border post at noon. When I got there the post was empty and nobody had called for me."

I pressed the blade a little harder.

"My father never sent you for nothing."

"No," Garrick said. "He never did."

Above us, the tunnel shook with running boots.

Someone shouted that the north tunnel was open.

I had maybe a minute.

I looked at the man in front of me.

I did not know whether he was a liar or the last honest man in Wilton.

My father had trusted him with his life, and that was not the same as trusting him with mine.

Garrick looked at the ring clenched in my other fist.

"That is the Seal," he said. "The king is dead, and you are carrying it. You are going to sit the Test."

It was not a question.

"How do you know?"

"Because it's the only door they can't shoot through."

I lowered the knife one inch.

He went down on one knee in the tunnel dirt, with the bleeding arm hanging at his side.

"Rhiannon Courtenay," he said. "I swore my sword to your father, and I swear it to you."

"I didn't ask you to."

"I know."

"If you lie to me once, I'll put this through your throat."

"You'll be right to," he said.

He took the knife in his own hand and held it by the blade, and gave me the hilt.

Blood ran down his palm.

"I will be your sword and nothing else," he said. "I won't touch you unless you order me to fight. That is my oath."

I took the knife back.

My hand was shaking, and I was crying without having noticed when I started.

He looked away so that I could wipe my face.

"Get up," I said. "You're bleeding on my dress."

A smile touched his mouth and was gone.

He stood.

"The Keeper of the Test lives in the Hollow," he said. "She can open it tonight, and she can enter your name before the council meets in the morning."

"The council meets in the morning?"

"Percival called it to vote himself regent at noon."

I swore, and my wolf growled with me.

We ran together down the long tunnel toward the river.

Garrick stopped at the end, where a grate gave onto the dark hillside.

Far down the slope, torches were moving in a line up the hill toward the old stone court at its top.

There were at least fifty, and the pale blue coats were in front.

Garrick's face went white in the moonlight.

"Dorian's wolves," he said. "They are heading for the Hollow. We have to reach it first."

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