Page 115 of The Nymph King

Imani swallowed hard. “If he’s here, I bet my life he’s inside the lost city.”

“Below this, we lose all manner of a plan,” Esa warned, licking her lips. “No mapped corridors. No guard patterns we can predict.”

Lore scuffed his boot against the uneven floor. “And no easy exits. If something goes wrong, we don’t know if we’ll be able to get back.”

“I know of one way in and out,” Imani stated.

He looked at her. “How much of Zorah do you actually know, though?”

Imani gave a tight shrug. “Not much. One entrance and exit, plus a section. The library. I didn’t explore the rest.”

Esa ground her teeth. “So, we go in blind.”

“Yes,” Imani said, unflinching. “Deeper means less oversight from them. That’s the point.”

“I’m going,” Meira said. The words tore out of her before anyone else could speak. Her ragged breath came in gasps, and her eyes focused on some distant, invisible point. “If he’s down there, I’m not standing here while you debate the risk.”

Esa’s violet eyes darted between them, her posture going rigid as she weighed the crushing unknown. Finally, she exhaled and gave a curt nod. “We won’t have the time to hesitate once we’re in.”

“We won’t,” Imani said. “But we will have to go deeper.”

With nods of agreement, they turned their backs on the dungeon.

Imani set a relentless pace, unsure when the guards might return. The oppressive silence behind them felt like a trap. Moving instinctively, she guided her shadows to slip ahead in uneven, restless pulses that pushed the limits of her control. The path ahead seemed to stretch endlessly, the palace’s architecture shifting wildly—corridors narrowing, widening, then narrowing again. Despite this, she kept them moving, following a ghostly route she had once taken.

When they finally reached the lower vault levels, their breath fogged before their faces. The stone seemed even older, and the silence pressed on their ears with tangible force.

The royal vaults lay sealed behind ancient, layered protections, but Imani didn’t hesitate. Her shadows lashed out first, testing the surface. She stepped up to the stone, drawing Drasil’s power through her veins to unravel the wards binding the entrance. The magic pushed back, hot and resistant, before finally giving way. Kiran’s signature was woven into the casting; their bond would have granted her easy passage, but it would have violently rejected her companions. She refused to rely on it.

The passage beyond was long and swallowed by darkness, offering no hint of what waited at the end.

But Imani knew it was the door. With a deep breath, she guided them forward into the blackness.

CHAPTER 35

With wand tips glowing, they pressed into the suffocating hallway. The passage ended at a blank stretch of stone, with a wall that was smooth and unbroken, as if no door had ever been there. Imani’s fingers brushed the rough rock. Her eyes focused on a spot no one else noticed, already convinced of what was hidden below.

I know this door, Imani reminded herself.

The others hung back, sensing the wards. Esa exhaled, a low, tight sound. “That’s Kiran’s work.”

Lore angled his head, studying the barrier. “Layered. Defensive. Meant to stop us in our tracks.”

“Or worse,” Esa added.

“It won’t stop us,” Imani whispered.

Esa arched a brow. “It might. You’ve seen what Kiran can do with this kind of magic.”

“Yes,” Imani said, her voice steady as she reached for the stone again. “I have.” She paused, then added louder, “And I’m still here.”

Imani lifted her hand, and shadows spilled from her skin. Her focus narrowed onto the ward until everything else receded, and the shadows responded to that concentration, thinning into searching strands as they flowed over the stone. She directed them into the seams with small movements of her fingers, keeping each strand separate as they probed for weaknesses in Kiran’s spellwork.

In her other hand, her wand shimmered with light and magic. She raised the Drasil, channeling its raw energy into the shadows to counter Kiran’s layered spells.

The wards flickered and pushed back instantly, but Imani maintained the pressure. She carefully directed the force into each layer, gradually dismantling the connections instead of ripping them apart.

Irritation stirred when the wards resisted, and several shadows thickened in response before she forced her attention back onto the individual layers. Anger would give them more force, but less restraint, and ripping blindly through Kiran’s magic could trigger whatever protections he had buried beneath it.