Princess Elodi's Arc

Chapter 2 of 55

The next morning Elodi searched the one place her mother never watched. The castle library rose three floors high, its shelves packed with more books than any girl could read. Once the stone walls and blue slate towers had felt like a fairy tale. Now they felt like a cage. Somewhere in these thousands of pages, someone had surely drawn a map of the castle's old passages. She meant to find it. Opal ran through her feet as she climbed the ladder. The little otter was her only friend, a gift from her mother four years ago. Her jeweled collar flashed as she leaped from shelf to shelf. "Careful," Elodi whispered. "If you knock these down, they'll hear it downstairs." She pulled book after book. Histories of Avalonia. Records of grain and gold. Nothing about hidden doors. Her fingers turned gray with dust. The morning slipped away, and her hope thinned with it. She had guessed wrong. The library held no answer. Then Opal squeezed behind the bottom shelf and would not come out. Elodi knelt and reached for her. Her hand found not the otter but cold air. A gap opened where the shelf met the wall. Elodi shoved the shelf. It scraped sideways on a hidden track. Behind it stood a narrow wooden door, low and dark, its hinges thick with rust. No book had shown her this. Opal had. Her heart pounded. She pried the door open. Damp air rushed out, cold and stale. A stone passage sloped down into black. This was the crack her mother had never thought to guard. She took a candle from the reading table and stepped inside. Opal darted ahead. The tunnel curved and dropped. Water dripped somewhere below. She counted her steps and kept one hand on the wet wall. The passage ran under the castle, past the courtyard, past the guarded doors, toward the outer wall. Then the candle showed her the end. The tunnel stopped at an iron grate, bolted into stone. Beyond its bars she saw daylight. Grass. A slope leading away from the castle. Freedom, close enough to smell on the wind. Elodi gripped the bars and pulled. They did not move. She pushed. Nothing. The bolts were old but deep. She had found her way out, and it was locked. Opal slipped through the grate easily. She sat in the grass on the far side and looked back, waiting. Elodi pressed her face to the iron. "I can't fit," she said. "I need to open it." She studied the bolts. They were rusted, but a heavy tool might break them. A hammer. A pry bar. Something from the castle forge. She would have to find one and carry it here without the guards seeing. Elodi called Opal back through the bars and closed the shelf behind her. The passage was hers now. Only the grate stood between her and the road. She just needed the right tool to break it.