The city's underbelly was older than the palace itself.
Before there were thrones, there were tunnels. Before noble bloodlines, there were blood rituals. Before kings, there were wolves.
Elara stood before the sealed gate known as the Maw of Arodan—a forgotten relic built into the city's foundation, now sealed with molten iron and holy sigils. Behind it lay the old crypts, and something far more dangerous.
Zela looked uneasy. "We don't need to go this far."
"We do," Elara said. "Myra has the High Temple, the coin houses, and three noble armies. If I don't gain ground now, we'll be crushed by morning gossip."
Zela glanced at the sigils. "There's a reason these gates haven't been opened in a hundred years."
"When the bush rat runs into fire, it's either chased—or it has found another door."
Elara raised the moonstone ring.
It pulsed with a sickly violet.
The sigils sizzled.
The gate opened.
The crypts breathed.
They descended in silence. The tunnels stank of incense, time, and forgotten bones. Flickers of torchlight danced across old carvings—wolves with twisted fangs, humans kneeling in chains, blood spilled in spirals.
Zela muttered, "The Pact of Broken Moons. This was where they sacrificed nobles to end the first war."
"They didn't end it," Elara whispered. "They buried it."
At the final chamber, they found him.
The Bone Warden.
Not quite alive. Not quite dead.
A priest once, now something else.
He sat on a throne of skulls, wrapped in bandages of ash and salt.
His eyes were crows.
"You disturb the pact," he croaked. "What price do you offer?"
Elara stepped forward.
"I offer secrets."
His laugh was hollow and long.
"Everyone offers secrets. Few survive giving them."
Elara unpinned a scroll from inside her sleeve. A map. One of the palace's secret underground routes—sealed since the wolf uprisings.
She laid it before him.
"I give you a path into the world again. In return, I want the crypt code—the old signal. The one that makes spies stand down. The one even the nobles forgot."
The Bone Warden's hands flexed, brittle like bark.
"You walk like Lycaena."
"I walk because Lycaena never finished," she said.
He stared.
Then nodded.
And spoke seven words in a forgotten tongue.
Elara repeated them.
The walls seemed to hear.
The pact was made.
"The old man's staff may be cracked, but it still points the way home."
Back in the palace, the rumors grew thicker.
Elara was consorting with the dead.
The high priestess still could not speak.
The prince's loyalty was bending.
And so the Council summoned Caelum.
In the upper solar, under the light of amber suns, the nobles stood like hawks—draped in their crests, blades disguised as jewelry.
Duke Alakori of the Western Reach spoke first.
"Your wife has now crossed three lines: the temple, the court, and the crypts."
"And yet," said Caelum, "you summoned me, not her."
"She may be clever," sneered another, "but cleverness without restraint is poison. If you don't control her, we will."
Caelum stood.
His voice was steel wrapped in snow.
"Your fear isn't that I can't control her. It's that I don't want to."
Silence.
A few nobles stiffened.
Others whispered.
But Duke Alakori narrowed his eyes.
"Then you best be ready to bury her," he said, "because if she rises higher, she'll draw blades you can't block."
"The cow that grows too fat for its rope must learn to run."
That night, Caelum found Elara in the Moonspire's abandoned observatory.
The stars burned overhead like judgment.
He said nothing at first.
She offered him wine.
He didn't take it.
"You made a pact," he said. "With Arodan's crypt. The court knows."
"I needed leverage," she replied. "The priesthood silenced me. The nobles ignored me. So I built elsewhere."
Caelum stared hard at her.
"You're changing."
"So are you," she said. "Except I'm not hiding mine behind a crown."
He looked down.
Then, quietly: "Do you still want this marriage?"
"When the firewood is dry, the flame doesn't ask permission."
She stepped close.
Her breath warm against his.
"I want power."
A pause.
Then—
"If staying married to you gives me that, then yes."
Caelum flinched, just slightly.
"But," she whispered, "if I find a better path—I will walk it."
No apology.
No venom.
Just truth.
Caelum closed his eyes.
And nodded once.
The truce between them was no longer love.
It was warcraft.