Diomedes hadn’t been in the kitchens in a few months. However, both he and Ellayne had spent their childhoods—and his teenage years—sneaking in to steal pastries and other goodies. One of his favorite memories of Ellayne was when she had been four, nearly five years old, and he had ordered the chef—his name started with a D, though Diomedes couldn’t remember it at the moment—to give him raspberry biscuits for the both of them. Ellayne had smeared the jelly all over her face and had quickly gained the sweet tooth she still possessed.
Checking around the corner, Diomedes ducked into the shadows of the kitchen while the head chef, Trina, turned to scold one of the younger maids on the way she was kneading bread.
“It’s sticking all over the counter. Use more flour.”
Flour. That was exactly what Diomedes needed. He watched the young maid nod, scurrying over to a shelf nearby. Diomedes pressed farther against the wall, holding his breath when he heard the girl wrestling with a large sack. In his mind, he begged her to leave it out and accessible to him.
His wish worked. As soon as he heard the women return to their business, he slinked around the corner of the cupboard and grinned when he saw the bag of flour open on the nearest counter. Scanning his surroundings, he found a bowl nearby. It had the royal crest, a dragon with a sword through its chest, imprinted inside on the bottom in bright red ink. He dipped the bowl into the flour, pulling it out rather full.
“Hey!”
Diomedes froze, not wanting to turn around. Maybe if Trina didn’t see his face, she wouldn’t know it was him.
“What are you doing?”
He took a deep breath, preparing himself to be caught. Again.
“You can’t boil that. It’s supposed to simmer with low heat. Now you’ve gone and ruined the whole dish. We have to start over. Get more vegetables from the storage.” Trina kept talking, but Diomedes stopped listening as he took the bowl of flour and left the kitchen, exhaling only when he had made it to the servants’ corridor without being seen by a round of guards.
When he got to the end of the second servants’ hall, he gently knocked on the door he had told Armannii to go to. No one responded. The door creaked as he pushed it open, revealing a room absent of any other occupants. All of the servants’ quarters came with a single cot, a trunk, a chair, and a small desk. Diomedes walked over to the desk and placed the bowl of flour on it, wiping his hands on his pants until he noticed them leaving white smears.
The door complained just as much when Diomedes closed it. He didn’t want to risk one of the other servants seeing him. Hopefully it wouldn’t take Armannii and Blanndynne that much longer to meet him there with the other remaining objects needed for the spell. He sat on the edge of the trunk, drumming his fingers on the surface.
Being in the castle without anyone knowing was strange. Despite having grown up inside its walls—knowing each and every hallway like his own reflection—he was an intruder. It must’ve been how Armannii felt every time he snuck in to visit. But if the sleazy feeling was what needed to happen for him to find a way to stop the war, then he would suffer through it.
The fear that’d been whispering through his mind tickled his ear as he sat in silence. What would his father’s reaction be to his clear rebellion? How difficult would it be to return to his life after he found the answers he was looking for? How disappointed would his father be if he knew what he was planning to do, if he knew the magic Diomedes was involving himself with just to prove that the war was devastating the land? Would his father even allow him back?
Disinheritance.
The word trickled through his mind, and he tried to get rid of it by reminding himself that he was doing the right thing. But was it? The doubt tasted bitter in his mouth. The catacombs had been a failure. Who was to say finding one of Raylee’s belongings, let alone Raylee’s remains, wouldn’t end up the same way?
Diomedes startled when the doorknob turned, and Armannii slipped in, followed by Blanndynne. The elf shut the door softer than Diomedes had thought possible for the rusty hinges.
“And here I thought we made good time. You still beat us, Didi.” Armannii grinned at him, patting him on the shoulder when Diomedes stood up.
As always, the elf had a knack for lightening Diomedes’s mood. The thoughts of failure and disappointment faded away upon Armannii’s entrance into the room.
Blanndynne had gone directly to the bowl of flour on the desk. “This will work.”
“Good. Then do the spell,” Diomedes said, handing her the poor man’s knife, which he had been fiddling with while waiting for their arrival. The handle was balanced better than he’d initially thought, which made spinning it more entertaining than most of his blades.
She took the knife, placing it on the desk. “The paper,” she said, holding her open palm out to Armannii, who pulled a slip of parchment out of his pocket and placed it on her hand. She took it and ripped it into pieces, choosing one of the smallest to write Raylee’s name on. “Okay, I need enough blood to soak this scrap of paper.”
“Fine,” Diomedes said, placing his hand faceup for her to cut.
Blanndynne, however, shook her head. “Unless you don’t want to be able to hold anything again anytime soon, I recommend your forearm.”
He shrugged, rolling his sleeves up farther. Diomedes let her manipulate his arm so it was over the scrap, which she held in one hand. With careful precision, Blanndynne dug the tip of the knife into Diomedes’s skin. He inhaled sharply, grinding his jaw. His nose wrinkled, and he bit down on his tongue, drawing as much attention away from the bite of iron as he possibly could. The warm blood trickled down his elbow, splattering on the parchment with Raylee’s name written in Blanndynne’s neat handwriting.
It felt like several minutes before Blanndynne was content with the amount of blood now saturating the parchment. She handed the knife to Armannii, who stepped next to his friend, handing him a cloth to press against the cut. Diomedes dipped his head in appreciation, holding back a hiss as he moved his arm down. Though his skin still felt as though it was on fire, his curiosity about the magic spell Blanndynne was beginning helped to distract him.
The genie took the crimson parchment and dug a hole in the center of the bowl of flour with one hand. Because of the blood covering her fingers, the flour clung to her skin, tingeing it pink as she buried the paper in the hole. A white cloth appeared on the table, and Armannii and Diomedes exchanged glances.
“From your magic depository?” Armannii asked, nodding toward the cloth.
She laughed as she wiped her dirty hands on it. “Yes.”
“So you have a cloth but no sack? A bowl of magic dust isn’t the most inconspicuous thing to carry around here,” Diomedes said, noting that they had come back without one of the items.
“I’ve got the sack taken care of,” Armannii said with a curious grin on his face. “We’re going to use my sock.”
Blanndynne exhaled loudly but bobbed her head. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a sack. His sock will have to do.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“I know, but we need a place to put the powder when I’m finished with the spell.”
“If you two keep bad-mouthing my sock, then I’m not going to let you use it,” Armannii said, pointing a finger first at Diomedes, then at Blanndynne. “Got it?”
Diomedes snorted, shaking his head once. “How about the canteen I got two days ago? Still have it?” He waited until Armannii fished around in his bag. He pulled out the silvery container, and Blanndynne let out an audible sigh of relief. “All right. Good. Now do the spell.”
Turning her back on them, Blanndynne held her hands over the bowl. From what Diomedes could see, a light began to glow from her. However, as he watched, little ringlets of darkness leaked out and surrounded the light, looping around to form spinning rings. They rotated at different angles, spinning rapidly as they expanded. The bowl illuminated in the light, and the powder took on a deep red shade.
Then she was finished. Blanndynne brushed her hands together as if to remove any dust from them. “Now it should work.”
“How?” Diomedes asked, still clutching the cloth to his arm.
“I’ll show you,” she said, taking the knife back from Armannii. Pinching a bit of the dust between her fingers, she held it above the weapon. “If the powder turns white and glows when it touches the item, then it belonged to Raylee.” She sprinkled the crimson powder over the knife, but it stayed red.
“Well, I wish I could say I believe you, but I knew that knife wasn’t hers. It belonged to a guy who tried to mug me,” Diomedes said.
“The point is,” she said with an exasperated sigh, “we should be able to confirm that an object is hers when we get in the vault.”
“So you two are just going to sprinkle a little magic dust, and voilà, you’ll find a relic?” Armannii asked, looping his thumbs into his pockets. “That sounds believable.”
Blanndynne scowled at him, but Diomedes shrugged.
“I guess if it works, it’ll make the job go a lot quicker. Let’s get it in the canteen.”
“That’s all you,” Blanndynne said when Armannii stepped forward next to her.
He chuckled as he dumped the contents of the bowl into the canteen, managing to spill less than Diomedes had thought he would. Armannii screwed the lid on and shoved it in his pocket
“We should go,” Diomedes said. He adjusted his grip on the cloth. As inconvenient as it was, at least the cloth was stopping some of the bleeding.
“Hold on,” Armannii said, putting an arm out to stop him as he started for the door. “You can’t walk around with a bloody arm. Do you have anything in your magical little storage room for this?” he asked Blanndynne.
She held out her hand, and a cloth bandage materialized. “I have this.”
A minute later, Armannii had finished wrapping Diomedes’s arm, and they began their stealthy trek back through the castle. Armannii signaled every time he heard a patrol approaching by waving his hand in a frantic motion. Then Diomedes would find the best place to wait for the guards to pass before they continued on. They made it to the hallway outside the vault without being seen.
“All right. Armannii, stay outside.” Diomedes kept his voice to a low whisper. “We’re going in. Ready?”
“Good luck,” Armannii said as he pulled his knit cap down once more, making sure his ears were tucked out of sight. With a grin, he strolled around the corner.
Diomedes could hear the guards questioning him, and then silence filled the hallway. “Our turn.” He led Blanndynne around the corner.
“Key and canteen,” Armannii said, placing both items in Diomedes’s hand. “Don’t be too long.”
Diomedes couldn’t help but appreciate that Armannii had already picked through the other keys and found the correct one for him.
The lock clicked when Diomedes slid the key in, and he and Blanndynne slipped into the vault. Diomedes pulled out the light rune stone, shining it in the pitch-black room. All sorts of colors reflected on the walls and ceiling from the jewels and shiny metals scattered about.
“Where do we even start?” Blanndynne asked, running her fingers over a crown with rubies embedded all the way around it.
He held up the canteen, loosening the top. “We start sprinkling. The faster, the better. Here,” he said, handing her the stone. “I assume it’s best if I don’t inhale much of this.”
“Probably a good idea,” she said. Blanndynne directed the light in the direction he scattered some of the powder. Everything it landed on—jewelry, tiaras, small chests, leather sacks, and a plethora of golden coins—became covered in a dusty red powder.
Diomedes grunted, moving to a new part of the vault. He poured a small pile of the soft substance into the palm of his hand and blew it over a series of polished swords and weapons with bejeweled handles.
“Still nothing,” he said after a few more minutes. They hadn’t heard anything from Armannii and the guards outside, but Diomedes knew they were short on time.
“What did Raylee look like?” Blanndynne asked, tilting her head to the side as she examined a portrait resting against the nearest wall.
“Why?” Diomedes found it difficult to keep from frowning. His stomach was already twisting in frustration at having no results.
“Because,” she said as she walked toward the portrait, “shouldn’t a portrait like this be hanging in someone’s room, or in the portrait hall on the third floor?”
“How do you even know about that?”
“Elias and I spent some time up there looking at his ancestors. But that’s beside the point. Come look at this.”
He let out an exasperated exhale before joining her. But before he could make another comment about how they were wasting time, Diomedes found himself staring at a portrait of Raylee and her two brothers.
The siblings were older than in the portrait hanging in the hall up on the third floor. Their light hair color reminded Diomedes of his father, especially when Diomedes remembered paintings of King Butch as a young boy. Both brothers, Ewan and Valryn, stood behind Raylee, who sat in a delicate chair that now sat in one of the two studies on the second floor. But the portrait wasn’t painted in the study, at least not that Diomedes could tell.
The young princess, probably seventeen or eighteen in the painting, had soft round eyes, and a smile peeked out from the corner of her mouth. Diomedes remembered having his own portrait painted after Ellayne had been born. Diomedes hadn’t given the artist any trouble, as he’d sat still and hadn’t smiled, but his sister had been a bit more difficult to control as a four-year-old.
The elder boy, Ewan, glared back at Diomedes, and he almost felt as though he were looking at a fair-haired version of himself. The younger boy, Diomedes’s grandfather, Valryn, had softer cheeks, more like Raylee’s. They both wore matching suit coats, similar to the one Diomedes had sitting in the back of one of his wardrobes. He’d only ever worn it for special occasions.
Raylee wore a light blue dress with a full skirt, the kind Diomedes had seen Ellayne wear during balls and ceremonies. It seemed to swallow Raylee. Still, she sat tall with her legs crossed at the ankles and her hands gently placed in her lap.
“That’s her,” he whispered. But when he sprinkled the magic dust on it, all it did was leave crimson spots on the surface. “I guess it didn’t belong to her though.”
“What happens to a royal person’s belongings when they die?” Blanndynne asked, still eyeing the portrait.
“I’m still breathing, so it beats me.” He shrugged, glancing over his shoulder at the slice of light from the crack in the doors.
“I assume their rooms are cleared out.”
Her words made him pause just as he was about to start sprinkling again. The memory of his mother’s room—cleared overnight—filled his head, and his hands fell to his sides. He had gone the next day in search of her, wanting to count the strange occurrence as a terrible nightmare. But it was true. He had woken up in a different room—his had needed to be cleaned of the bloodstains—and his mother was nowhere to be seen. It was like she hadn’t existed. His father hadn’t answered questions, just sat forlornly on his throne—the sole throne. They had removed his mother’s throne, though they returned it when he married Ellayne’s mother. Not that she deserved it.
“Diomedes,” Blanndynne said, shaking his injured arm. “What’s the matter with you? Why did you do that?”
“What?” he asked, blinking his eyes to clear his head. “Do what?” He pulled away from her, the wrapped wound throbbing from her violent touch.
Instead of responding, she glared at him and directed her finger towards the floor. A small pile of rust-colored powder covered the ground beneath the hand holding the canteen.
“I-I don’t know what happened.”
“Well, whatever just happened, don’t do it again.”
He ground his teeth, nodding. “Right. I won’t.” His eyes went back to the portrait, but instead of going to the people posing, his gaze followed the trim along the background. The room was painted a different shade than he remembered, but something had caught his eye. A new thought crossed his mind. “We need to go.”
“We haven’t found anything that belonged to her.”
Making his way to the exit, Diomedes tightened the cap on the canteen. “Right. But I think I know somewhere we might have better luck.”