The wide passageway, which allowed for three winged amüli larger than us to stroll side by side in fair comfort, seemed narrow and uninviting as we hurried down it. Our shoes slapping the rug-covered stone echoed off of the walls—whapwhapwhap—and ahead, I spotted signs of disturbance.
A chair had been knocked over, and further along, one of our servants righted a torn tapestry while another rekindled the braziers. We burst from the shadows into orange, flickering light, yet even then, the servants paid us no mind. Mizen strode in front of me, and I matched his steps with ease, despite my short height.
Someone had broken in.
Many of our servants had interesting mixtures of less-pure blood; holly tainted with grass and lemons, or some other familiar blood-scents. Ones I had known my whole life. But there was something else behind those familiar scents, something so light and mild that I almost missed it.
I sniffed again. “Mizen, do you smell that?”
He stopped and took in a deep breath, his pale purple gaze whipping across the hallway. “Yeah. What is that?”
I closed my eyes and took another whiff, something creamy, smooth, but strangely mild with a hint of sweet spice hitting me. The unique flavor took me a moment to pin down. “Saffron,” I said at last. “And... is that ambrosia?” No, too rich to be ambrosia. The sweetness meant only one thing, and Mizen caught it before I could.
“Honeysuckle?”
Both of us frowned at each other. Honeysuckle was a common blood-scent from the east, one I’d smelled before, but spiced with saffron, it was so mild and soft to the senses that if I hadn’t known something was wrong, I might never have noticed it.
“It’s stronger over here,” Mizen said, and he pointed down the hall.
I sped up and matched his quick pace. Just as he’d said, the smell grew stronger and stronger. I dared not speak for fear of distracting Mizen. He made a quick left, but I paused and sniffed the air. The scent was stronger to the right, not the left, but when I turned to call out to him, only an empty hallway met me.
“Mizen?”
No response came.
I turned down the right-hand passage, following the tender smell of saffron and honeysuckle into the cramped, dark hallway. Back here fresh air was almost nonexistent, which was probably why Mizen had mistakenly gone left. My stomach cramped, and when the down on my wings stood to attention, I considered backtracking after him. Surely he’d find me once he realized he’d made a wrong turn.
As I inched deeper into the servants’ quarters, the honeysuckle and saffron faded a bit, and twice I had to backtrack and take different turns before I found the scent again. Whoever had come this way was cleverer than I first anticipated. He knew how to hide his blood-scent, which meant he was dangerous.
As I ventured deeper and deeper into the mountain, every sound made me want to jump and turn running, so I pulled a dagger from my belt. The small steel blade helped ease my fear but not enough, and I stopped in the middle of the hall, staring toward the next passage. If I turned back, there was a good chance the blood-scent would be lost, and not even our family’s personal guard could track it. Who knew how soon I could find another amüli to come down here with me?
My fingers tightened around the knife’s hard leather hilt, and I wiped my other hand over my face. My hands shook, as did my breath. This trespasser could be dangerous enough to hurt me, and badly.
“Stop it,” I whispered. No one else would do this for me. I had to at least find out which way the intruder was headed, watch from somewhere hidden, and then return to find help. After another, deep, trembling breath, I started forward again, as quietly as I could.
At the end of the last turn stood a door made of solid rock. Scrawled across the door in swirling Beokasvo script was a single character: tyl. The Catacombs. Beyond this door resided the pitch-black maze where convicted criminals served their sentences. I’d never been inside, but Mizen had. As the future lord of our House, he had to know the ‘Combs inside and out.
Why anyone would go in there without knowing the way out was beyond me. The criminals inside remained lost in the turns and passages, even after dozens of decades within the blackness. The walls of the ‘Combs shifted every few minutes, often cutting amüli off and preventing them from finding their way out. I’d heard of amüli who had starved because they were stuck inside of a single, small room of rock.
Starving wasn’t lethal to amüli, and neither was thirst. They were discomforts, and like drowning, would eventually do permanent damage, but an amüli couldn’t die unless their Soulbound did. Even then, I knew amüli—like my mother and father—who had lived for several hundreds of years, because when one Soulbound died, the amüli moved their soul to another human in the same Soulbound Family.
We also healed rapidly, which meant that if the intruder was injured, he likely wouldn’t be for long. I rested a hand against the cold stone door, the normal thump of the hollow space inside my chest speeding up—whump-whump-whump. There were hundreds of amüli inside, and each one of them made a kind of noise, like an echo cutting short when the beating of the empty soul casing in my chest—my Center—struck them. Amüli soul casings might be empty, but they still guided our emotional energy throughout our bodies, which was why they beat like a heart. Each pulse signified the energy pushing through my limbs.
The door itself was a bit intimidating, if plain. No handles, no locks—just the slab of rock that acted as a barrier between me and the screams beyond. Only magic could open it, so this was where my trek ended.
The ‘Combs weren’t a horizontal maze, either. Sure, passageways moved horizontally, but they also grew downward and upward. Mizen had talked about the floor opening up between him and my father during one visit, and he’d almost fallen in. Somehow, though, Father knew the ‘Combs well enough to get them out—almost like he grew up in them.
A chill hung in the air around the door, and when I exhaled, my breath came in steam. While I could still smell the intruder’s blood-scent, there was something... off about everything. I realized then that this was not where the scent led, but where it originated, though that didn’t prove much of anything. No scrapes in the ground from the door moving, no signs the intruder had come through here, but the chill around the door suggested something worse than someone coming through this way.
My fingers and legs tingled in a wash of pins and needles. Someone had cast a spell from this spot. Magic held the blood-scent of the one who cast it, which was why the odor led me this way and why it smelled stronger here.
I shuddered to think what this meant. If one convict could make it out of the ‘Combs and into our manor long enough to weave a spell, so could more.
I followed the blood-scent back toward the main chambers of the estate, though by now, it had mostly faded into all the other usual smells. The farther from the door, the less I smelled honeysuckle and the more I caught notes of lavender. Moonlight appeared ahead, and I exhaled a heavy breath.
Mizen was just down the hall, standing at the doorway of my father’s study. His brow was drawn and his lips tight, arms folded over his chest and his mallard drake wings twitching at the slightest sound.
“Where were you?” he said, brushing his mousy hair from his face when I reached him. Though he tried to keep his voice low, a snap of anger steamed behind the words.
“Sorry,” I said. “I tried to call for you, but you vanished.”
“I thought you were right behind me. The blood-scent disappeared, so I turned back.”
“It didn’t disappear, though,” I said. “It led to the door of the ‘Combs.”
Mizen’s pale purple eyes widened, and his nostrils flared, but he said nothing else. Instead he nodded toward my father’s private study.
Within, half a dozen amüli cleaned the remains of my father’s items from our Soulbound Family in China. Mother slid books back onto shelves in slow, methodic movements, and Father stood behind his desk, glowering as he thumbed through ledgers and documents.
Tonight, my father was garbed in fine trousers of soft brown leather and a vest of emerald green. The vest had two tails in the back, and two shining rows of copper buttons ran down the front, with embroidered ducks around them and along the hem. His wings—mallard drake wings, like Mizen’s—fit neatly through a hole on the back of the vest. A green ribbon gathered his long, black hair at the nape of his neck, and unlike many of my uncles, Father’s beard was neat and trimmed with only a few scant gems and beads.
My uncle Jyntre, captain of the Krune Guard, was there as well, along with two soldiers. Cut emeralds glittered in the black curls of his beard, and a few beads of brown stone and wood almost vanished against the dark hair. Unlike Father’s Western garb, Jyntre wore a green shirt and vest of a master warrior along with traditional Chinese trousers.
