Page 2 of Sky’s Edge

He went to the dungeons.

Once there, he took the skeleton key he’d demanded, and received, and used it on the antique lock to an area of the castle he’d been told hadn’t been used in four hundred years.

He threw open the old wooden door fortified by iron and instantly recoiled.

Centuries of torment, misery, torture and lost hope had a feel that endured time.

It also, he just discovered, had a smell.

He allowed himself to adjust to it, and after he entered, instead of voicing his command, he turned to the bank of switches at his side which had been installed when electricity had been harnessed for a variety of uses.

Tanyn hit the switches.

The space illuminated.

He’d been told, due to the fact it had not been in use for a very long time, this area had not been updated at all since the early 1900s, and the meagre light fixtures proved it.

He moved through the shadowy first room, which could be considered a form of reception area, though not a welcoming one, if the chains affixed to walls, walls not made of glinting snow but of glittering black stone, told the tale.

Next up was a sort of lounge, with rickety tables and chairs left to disintegrate, plus an old iron stove that had provided warmth back in the day for the guards.

It wasn’t providing warmth now, and this area was certainly not included in the temperate seventy-three degrees that the rest of the castle rested at, regardless of its wintry walls.

More magic.

But no magic down there. It was as cold as the Borea Sea.

He moved through the guards’ lounge, down the long hall made of stone punctuated by wood doors, also fortified by iron, that had small, barred windows to look through to see the prisoners and slit doors at the bottom to shove food inside the cells.

At the end of the hall, there was nothing but a stone wall.

Or, to anyone else, it was nothing.

To him, only to him, it was something.

No.

Not something.

Everything.

He could see immediately his half-brother, Arnaud, had been told this tale.

He could also see further proof Arnaud had never been the rightful king of Sky’s Edge.

There were vicious scrapes and black blast marks marring that wall. A great number of them.

He’d tried to get in.

And he’d failed.

Tanyn simply stood there for perhaps two seconds before all the lights in the room illuminated red.

When they did, he wasn’t practiced at it and the muscles of his mouth found it odd, but even so, they moved to form a smile.

It was then the stones started ticking.

The one at eye level moved out, then up. Then another. Another. A fourth. A fifth. Then the sixth, seventh, eighth.