ASH STICKS HIS fingers up under the edge of the crossbeam on the ceiling, gently lowering a hatch. When he has it about halfway down, a rope ladder falls to the floor. We all look at one another and it’s one of those moments when everything comes into sharp focus; one wrong move and we’re dead.

“Everyone do a quick check for your knives and for your blow darts. And hand over your phones,” Aarya whispers, and we do. “No mistakes, no fumbles.”

Ash and Aarya grind our SIM cards into the floor and snap our phones in half before stashing them in some old boots. The four of us share a look, affirming that everything is in order. Ash places his lit candle between his teeth and climbs upward, while Ines snuffs hers out, slipping it back into her jacket pocket.

I follow Ash up the rope ladder with Aarya and Ines right behind me. As soon as I reach the ceiling, I pull myself up into a small circular room about the size of a walk-in closet that has nothing in it except a stone staircase. Ash waits with the candle while Aarya and Ines hoist themselves into the room, and after closing the hatch, the four of us start up the steep staircase together.

The stone steps are worn, suggesting that the Lion estate is an old building—possibly a medieval castle or manor house. I run my fingers along the uneven stone wall, sending a silent plea that the braided lock of hair Layla gave me will bring us luck.

Ash stops in front of an arched door. He loads a dart tipped with Angels’ Dream into a blowpipe and we follow suit. When we’re all ready and braced, he grabs the door latch and snuffs out his candle. For two seconds we’re cast into complete darkness, a circumstance that caused me to panic an hour ago but that now feels a million times safer than whatever is on the other side of that door.

Ash cracks the door ever so slowly and a small sliver of light appears. Without hesitation he sticks the wooden pipe through the half inch of space and blows on it. He throws the door open and in one fluid motion runs for the stumbling guard, catching him right before he hits the ground. The three of us emerge from the staircase and I help Ash lower the guard silently to the floor.

We scan what appears to be an extensive wine cellar, blowpipes in hand. There are no other guards in sight, which strikes me as odd. Why only one guard? Are the Lions so confident that no one would have the guts to break in, or that their door is so well hidden that most people wouldn’t find it? Ash and I make eye contact and I can tell he’s wondering the same thing.

We move methodically across the room between the rows of wine barrels, pausing intermittently to listen, but the cellar is unnervingly quiet. I keep hoping I’ll spot a pathway that will lead us to another part of the basement and to the dungeon itself, but no such luck. There are only wine, stone walls, and one flight of stairs. Ines takes the lead, creeping upward with grace.

She stops at the door at the top of the stairs, crouching on the ground to peer under it. Four seconds pass and she stands back up, holding up two fingers, which I’m assuming means there are two guards. She taps her blowpipe and points to her right, then she taps Aarya’s and points to her left, mapping out a plan of execution.

She lifts the latch slowly, careful not to let the metal creak. The instant the latch unhooks, she throws the door open. Ines and Aarya bolt through and a half second later I hear the whizzing sound of two darts. Ash and I are right behind them and we each run for a guard. I barely get ahold of mine, swaying under his weight, and place him silently on the floor. My pulse pounds in my head and my temples throb.

We pause once again to assess our surroundings. We’re in what I would consider an antiquated version of a mudroom. There are iron hooks on the wall with hooded cloaks hanging from them, wooden shelves containing gloves and hats, and winter boots lined up against the wall in varied sizes. Everything is black and matches the Strategia aesthetic. I gulp. The number of items in this room suggests a large household and I’m willing to bet that this isn’t the only entrance or the only mudroom in this place.

Aarya quickly makes her way to the archway leading into the estate. She peers around the stone and, after a beat, waves to us to follow her. And we do, but not before I take another look at the passed-out guards. With all these cloaks, why aren’t we seeing more of them? This feels too easy.

I follow my friends into a wide corridor lit by sconces and hung with oversized paintings of serious-looking men and women posed with lions. The ceilings are so high that the paintings loom above us, requiring us to strain our necks if we want to look at them. But maybe that’s the point—grandeur and intimidation.

Aarya slows as we approach a tall archway. She judiciously peers around it, waits a beat, and gestures for us to follow. I look through the archway into what appears to be an empty study with a fireplace and a large desk. And we keep moving past a sitting room, two hallways, a music room, and three closed doors. I know it’s the middle of the night, but the emptiness seems out of place and it’s starting to give me a sinking feeling.

Aarya pauses again before another archway with an open door, this one bigger than the ones before it. She peers inside and once again waves us on. I peek inside on my way past and my heart nearly stops—it’s a large room not unlike the dining hall at the Academy, with fancy tapestries and portraits on the stone walls. The realization creeps up on me slowly, like a spider you didn’t know was on your arm. My dream! This reminds me of the room from my dream with all the dead bodies—the dead bodies of my dead friends. I immediately break out in a sweat. I want to call out to them, to tell them we have to turn around, but I just stand there unable to form the words. Ash grabs my hand, pulling me forward. I open my mouth to warn him, but he shakes his head as we move toward Aarya and the door she’s standing next to at the end of the corridor.

Unlike the other doors we’ve seen so far, this one has large iron brackets on either side, the kind you would put a wooden bar through. And it has a keyhole. These extra security measures spark a flutter of hope in my chest. There are very few rooms that would require security, and one of them is definitely a dungeon. By the look on Ash’s face, I can tell he, too, thinks we may have found it.

Despite the progress we’re making, I can’t shake off the image of the room from my dream. “My nightmare, Ash, I saw—” I breathe, but Aarya gives me a death stare.

“One more word and I’ll knock you out with a blow dart,” she whispers back, and looks through the keyhole.

And I believe her. I shut my mouth and glance over my shoulder, certain there is some great danger lurking there. Aarya stands and makes eye contact with each one of us, as if to make sure we’re ready. Ash gives her a nod and she turns back around. She presses on the latch with painstaking slowness, moving it only a millimeter at a time, her face scrunched in concentration.

The latch unhooks. Only Aarya doesn’t crack the door like Ash did, she pulls it fully open. On the other side a guard is whipping around to face us. I strike him with a dart in the neck and Aarya grabs him by his shirt. But he’s big, and as his legs go out, Aarya stumbles forward under his weight. I lunge, grabbing his arm, and together we lean him against the wall.

Aarya winks at me. I don’t understand how she could possibly be relaxed enough to have a wink in her. We slink down the stairs side by side, blowpipes in hand and ready for more guards.

At the bottom of the stairs there’s a narrow hallway and at the end of it is another door with a metal grate that forms a crude window, and no door handle. We crouch low and move toward the door as fast as possible.

Ash cautiously looks through the grate and drops back down to face us. He and Aarya start gesturing and pointing. It takes me a couple of seconds before I realize they’re speaking in sign language, or arguing, from the looks of it. And by the way they point, I’m fairly certain it has to do with the no-door-handle issue and how the heck we’re going to open it. But whatever the conflict, it resolves quickly and Ash pulls out a metal hook tied to a piece of black cord.

Ash counts down on his fingers—three, two, one. And Aarya pops up from her crouch. She sticks her blowpipe through the window and I hear the familiar whizzing sound of her dart. Two seconds later there’s a thud. Ash stands in the same instant, slipping the hook and cord through the iron grate. He jiggles it for a moment and pulls. Metal clicks and the door unlatches.

Ash pulls it open and we cautiously go through. We step onto the dirty stone floor, and the smell nearly knocks me over—damp rot, urine, and hay. I gag silently and inspect the cells on either side of me. We pass two that are empty and one that contains a skeleton hunched in the corner. Bones protrude from the person’s torn clothing and iron shackles hang loosely around the wrists. I turn away, wishing I had never looked in the first place. Dad, where are you?

We reach the end of the corridor and there are two archways to choose from. Ash and Aarya negotiate with sign language once more, resulting in me and Ash taking the archway on the right and Aarya and Ines taking the one on the left.

Ash and I creep along the filthy stone, and once again the absence of more guards is unnerving. My dad’s supposed to be some big prize for Jag, and yet this dungeon is practically empty. Wouldn’t Jag have this place on lockdown?

We approach a large cell on our right and my breath catches in my throat. On the far side, slumped on the floor with his arms and legs in chains and his head hanging, is my dad. I run to the cell door, gripping the wrought iron and fighting back a sob. My dad’s face and clothes are streaked with blood.

Ash slips his lock-picking tools into the lock, making the faintest clicking sound, and my dad’s head whips up. The moment he sees me, his eyes widen like he can’t believe I’m here. He left me that note; did he not think I would come? But the look of surprise and panic on his face is unmistakable.

My dad shakes his head. “Run!” he mouths without making a sound.

Ash puts away his tools and slowly pulls on the cell door; even at his glacial pace, the metal whines.

And then we hear it—a girl’s scream.

Ash abandons his attempt to be quiet, throwing open the cell door.

“Run!” my dad commands, this time aloud, but before he can get out another word and before Ash and I can set foot in his cell, ten guards rush into the passageway, surrounding us.

Ash and I lift our blowpipes and I grab the lightning poison from my belt.

“I would reconsider if I were you,” says a man’s voice.

The guards part in front of us, making way for an older man with shoulder-length silver hair. Jag. He has the same jaw and nose as my father. His movements are neat and precise, like his black clothes, and he appears to be in no particular rush.

Behind Jag are seven more guards, including the tall bouncer from the pub, who has Ines’s limp body slung over his shoulder. Meanwhile a short, stocky guard holds a knife to Aarya’s throat.

“You look surprised, granddaughter, although I don’t know how you could be,” Jag says, and the word granddaughter hits me like a punch to the gut. His boisterous demeanor from the ball is missing, replaced by a more conservative, almost professorial air. But his charisma is still present—he is a natural leader who doesn’t need to shout but can command you with a mere look. “Did you think I wouldn’t be waiting?”

Suddenly it all makes sense, the lack of guards at the entrance, the clear path to the dungeon. I scan the passageway. We are so vastly outnumbered that fighting isn’t an option; even if Ash and I could hold our own, they would kill Aarya and Ines before we could do anything about it.

“Just kill him, November,” Aarya spits, her anger in sharp contrast to Jag’s comfortable confidence. But even if I were willing to let her and Ines die to attempt it, there’s no good path forward. Throwing my knife isn’t an option. The guards would cut me down before it left my hand.

Jag frowns at Aarya like he’s disappointed. “And I thought we were getting along so nicely these past few days.”

I’m looking from Jag to Aarya, trying to decipher the meaning of his words, when I hear the faint clicking of boots on stone. Around the corner comes Logan, his unkempt dirty-blond hair falling around his face, a healing burn on his cheek, and a satisfied smile on his lips. My eyes widen.

“You treacherous little—” Aarya seethes, but Jag cuts her off.

“Enough, Aarya,” Jag says without raising his voice. “It only stands to reason that someone who would readily betray their friends deserves betrayal in return.” It’s a simple statement, one made without fanfare or overenunciated words, as though he were discussing nothing more than the weather, but it bowls us all over like a tidal wave.

Aarya’s mouth hangs open and we all stare at her. Has Aarya been speaking to Jag—has she been planning this with Logan from the start? Was Ash right about her all along? The force of the realization nearly knocks the wind out of me.

“How effing dare you!” Aarya manages, and looks like she might fight him, regardless of the knife pressed to her throat.

Logan watches her struggle.

Aarya’s face turns bright red, and she slams her boot into the shin of the guard who’s restraining her. Jag flicks his hand and the guard knocks her so hard in the head that she slumps in his arms. I glance at Ash, who looks like his worst fears are coming true.

Jag returns his gaze to me, examining my frozen stance, with the vial of lightning poison in one hand and a blowpipe in the other. “I think it’s time you put those down, don’t you?” he says, like I’m a child who brought my slingshot to the breakfast table. “Or are you going to fight to the death here and now?”

I look over my shoulder at my dad, who’s watching every word and every movement but hasn’t interjected. His eyes are full of frustration, and somehow I understand him. Jag would probably use Dad’s concern as an invitation to hurt me.

“He can’t help you, November,” Jag says.

I look back at Jag, whose placid expression hasn’t wavered, and as I meet his eyes, I feel as though I’ve shrunk.

“I’ll put down my weapons if you’ll let the rest of them go,” I say, forcing myself to maintain eye contact.

Jag sighs. “A compromise is essentially a loss. I never barter,” he says, and pauses. “And tell me, what is it that you’re threatening me with in that tiny vial?”

My eyes flit to the poison, terrified of handing it over to Jag.

“It seems I’ve made a very simple request that you are unable to fulfill. Maybe we should just use it on the small one to give you incentive to move things along?” He gestures to Ines and my heart jumps into my throat.

“Angels’ Dream,” I lie.

Jag tilts his head, reading me, and it’s obvious by the way Logan smirks that they both know I’m lying.

I drop the vial and blowpipe, but to my dismay the small vial stays intact. Ash follows my lead and drops his blowpipe and his knife. And in a last act of defiance, I stamp on the glass, smashing the poison and grinding it into the damp floor.

Jag looks me in the eye, and for just a moment his calm expression turns threatening. Then he sighs, like he’s thought better of it. “I’m surprised your father never taught you that an undisciplined mind only leads to suffering.”

“I hope he burns you alive,” Logan murmurs, clearly still bitter about the fire I started in his smithy.

Before I can open my mouth to respond, there is a sharp pain near my temple and the world goes black.