“Princess down.” Urath turned and headed into the dark tunnel. We all followed. Soon, there were no torches in the wall. The tunnel reminded me of the drainage pipe underneath St. Michael’s Street in the arroyo near Granny and Pop Pop’s house. Pitch black. I could barely see the outline of the griffon next to me. I reached out and put a hand on Gruffy’s feathery ruff to steady myself. He seemed to be able to see just fine.
At least now we were getting somewhere, though. Less fighting. More doing. Except I had a million questions. Who was the Ink King? Why would he steal my family? And if the princess was imprisoned during the same storm, as Gruffy seemed to think, did she have anything to do with my missing family?
“Why did the Ink King take the Eternal Sea from the princess?” I asked Gruffy.
“Who can say why villains do what they do?” Gruffy replied.
I frowned. That wasn’t an answer. “Well, I want to know why he took my family. Maybe they’re related.”
“Indeed,” Gruffy said. “Let us pose this question to him when we have brought him to his knees.”
“Um, yes. But isn’t there any way to know—”
Loreliar … a voice whispered. This one was completely different than the first whisper. It felt like someone was trying to pour oil in my ear.
I shook my head and turned around, peering into the absolute black behind us.
“Doolivanti?” Gruffy asked. “Are you well?”
“Did you hear that?” I asked.
The griffon peered up the hallway, then at me. “I heard nothing, Doolivanti. Does something follow us?”
“No. I thought I—”
Ahead in the tunnel, Urath said, “Princess here,” and stopped.
I waited a long moment for the whisper to return, but it didn’t. I gave one last glance up the dark hallway, then turned and jogged up to the bulky shadow of the grimrock.
There was a straight, faintly glowing blue line where the wall met the floor: light leaking underneath a door. I knelt down and put my fingers by the blue glow.
The door was made of thick wooden planks bound with iron. An iron lock the size of my head was just below the curved iron handle.
“What’s this glow?” I asked.
“Princess,” Urath rumbled.
“The princess is glowing?” I asked.
“Open the door,” Gruffy said to Urath.
“No key,” he replied.
Gruffy put his talons over the giant handle and pushed. His feathers rippled, wings flexing, and the muscles in his lion legs bunched, but he finally let out a breath and shook his head.
He turned to Urath. “Can you bash it down?”
The giant swayed back and forth. His stomach rumbled like he was hungry again.
“This bad idea,” Urath said. “Cannot get princess. Cannot stop Ink King.”
“No.” I put my hands on the grimrock’s forearm, and it felt like the cold stones by the stream where we had camped in San Isabel. “It’s a good idea. Do you want to be his prisoner forever?”
“Ink King leave Urath to starve.” The grimrock shook his tiny head, making a sound like rocks scraping together. His hands slowly balled into fists.
“Urath, no!” I yelled.
Gruffy let out a screech, feathers standing up on his back.
A loud grinding and a metal kronk stopped us, and we looked back at the door.
Squeak emerged from the enormous keyhole of the lock. He was breathing hard, and he dropped the piece of wire he’d been holding and shook out his little paws. He looked at me and Gruffy in turn, then nodded.
“Squeak!” He jumped to the floor.
Urath stood there, his fists still balled up, but he didn’t swing.
“See?” I said. “We got this door open. We’ll get you out, too, okay?”
Urath didn’t say anything, but he unballed his fists.
Gruffy pushed hard on the handle. It gave way with a rusty groan, and the door swung open, filling the hallway with blue light.
A girl with light blue skin lay sleeping on a stone bed, which rose up from the floor like the rest of the room had been carved away from it. She didn’t move, despite the racket we had caused in the hallway. Was she in some kind of magical sleep?
Her arms were crossed over her chest, and her hair looked like a dark blue river with sparkles of light in it. Her dress looked like someone had poured blue paint over her and … it just stopped that way. It covered her entire body except for her webbed blue feet.
This was the girl who had lost her kingdom to the Ink King the same night I’d lost my family. It made us sisters, bound together by the doofus deeds of a bully.
Well, we were going to fix that.