Chapter 2 - The Sound of the Bell
The marble lid of the royal vault weighed nearly a ton. It was designed to stay closed for centuries, to resist the pressure of shifting earth and the desperate pushes of tomb-robbers. Six men with wooden levers and iron rollers had struggled to slide it into its groove less than an hour ago.
Elara threw her shoulder against the cold stone, her muscles screaming as she pushed with every ounce of strength she possessed.
Nothing moved. The stone was seamless, wedged tightly with lead and mortar that Master Vane’s men had slathered along the edges.
Clang!
Another violent yank of the silver wire above made the bell shriek. It was no longer a rhythmic ring; it was the frantic, tearing thrash of someone suffocating in the dark, fighting for oxygen in a space no larger than a coffin.
“Hold on!” Elara cried out, tears of frustration hot against her freezing cheeks.
She looked around wildly. Her eyes landed on the heavy iron crowbar Jorah had left leaning against the stone bench near the entrance. She lunged across the muddy grass, grabbed the iron bar, and jammed its tapered end into the narrow seam between the lid and the base of the vault.
Her hands, raw and calloused from years of handling rough timbers and cold flesh, slipped against the wet iron. She bit her lip until copper-tasting blood filled her mouth, planting her boots firmly against the uneven flagstones.
“Open!” she snarled, throwing her entire body weight onto the lever.
The metal groaned. The ancient stone scraped against stone with a sound like a dying beast. A microscopic fraction of an inch—just enough to let the dead air escape.
When the seal cracked, a gust of wind rushed out from the interior of the vault. It smelled overwhelmingly of sweet almonds, mixed with the sharp, metallic tang of fresh sweat and terror.
And then came the sound that would haunt Elara until her dying day: a ragged, tearing gasp from inside the dark.
“Please…” a voice whispered, thin and broken, barely louder than the rustle of dead leaves. “Please… dark… can’t…”
Elara didn’t hesitate. She jammed the crowbar deeper, using it as a fulcrum, and heaved upward with a guttural roar that tore her vocal cords.
Crack!
The mortar gave way in a shower of white dust. The heavy marble lid shifted sideways, sliding six inches off the opening.
Elara dropped the crowbar, fell to her knees in the mud, and thrust her hands directly into the dark aperture. Her fingers brushed against cold silk, then warm, trembling skin.
She grabbed the princess by the shoulders and pulled.
Aurelia tumbled out of the dark stone box like a broken doll, spilling onto the wet flagstones of the crypt floor.
Elara hauled her clear of the opening, cradling the young woman’s head in her lap.
The sight that met her eyes made her breath catch in her throat. Princess Aurelia’s immaculate bridal gown was stained with dark, jagged smears of blood. Her fingernails—manicured and painted with gold leaf only hours before—were completely torn away, the quicks exposed and bleeding profusely where she had clawed furiously at the solid wood of the inner coffin until the boards splintered beneath her hands.
Her eyes were wide, dilated to the point where the irises were nearly invisible, staring up at the gray sky with a look of animal panic.
“You’re out,” Elara panted, pressing her fingers against the princess’s throat. A pulse fluttered there—weak, erratic, but undeniably alive. “You’re out, Your Highness. Breathe. Look at me. Breathe.”
Aurelia’s chest hitched. Her lips turned a dangerous, mottled blue, and then she convulsed violently, turning onto her side and vomiting a dark, viscous stream of liquid that smelled intensely of bitter almonds and stale wine.
The poison. They had given her a paralytic—a draft used by executioners and assassins alike to simulate death, slowing the heart rate to an imperceptible crawl while keeping the mind fully, agonizingly awake behind a wall of paralyzed flesh.
“They… they gave me the cup,” Aurelia gasped, her voice raspy, tearing through her throat as fresh air hit her lungs. She grabbed Elara’s coarse woolen shawl with bloody fingers, pulling herself up so hard her knuckles turned white. “My uncle… the King… he said it was for the peace of the realm. He said I knew too much about the northern trade tariffs.”
“Don’t talk,” Elara urged, rubbing the princess’s icy back. “Save your strength. We have to get—'”
A sudden, sharp glare of torchlight cut through the gathering gloom of the cemetery.
“Well, well, well,” a cold, smooth voice echoed from the iron gateway.
Elara stiffened.
Master Vane stood at the entrance of the crypt, flanked by four royal guards with their broadswords unsheathed and gleaming in the torchlight. The physician’s face wore no expression of shock, no horror at the miracle of resurrection before him. Only a mild, bureaucratic annoyance, as if he had arrived to find a clerk filing the wrong paperwork.
He did not look surprised to see Princess Aurelia breathing.
He looked like a man who knew he had left a job half-done.
“Elara Veyne,” Master Vane announced, his voice carrying effortlessly across the wet grass. “Step away from the corpse.”
“She is not a corpse!” Elara shouted, rising to her feet and placing herself squarely between the princess and the advancing guards. Her hands were stained with Aurelia’s blood. “Look at her! You buried her alive! You and the king!”
Vane sighed, pulling a white silk handkerchief from his sleeve to dab at a stray drop of mist on his doublet.
“The princess died of a swift and virulent affliction of the heart,” Vane recited smoothly, as if reading from an official royal gazette. “Her burial was sanctioned by the high council. What you have done here, girl, is an act of grave robbery and black magic. You have desecrated a royal tomb.”
“She was breathing!” Aurelia cried out from the ground, her voice cracking with fury and fear as she tried to push herself up. “Vane! You vile snake! You poured the draught down my throat at the banquet table! You told me it was a toast to the solstice!”
“Your Highness,” Vane said, dipping his head with mock reverence, though his eyes remained as cold as winter iron. “Your grief-addled mind is playing tricks on you. The dead do not speak. And common criminals who violate the sanctity of the royal crypt are dealt with swiftly.”
He raised his hand.
“Arrest her,” Vane commanded the guards. “And if the ‘corpse’ attempts to interfere, ensure she stays in the ground this time.”
Before Elara could reach for the iron crowbar, two guards slammed into her from behind. Strong, armored arms pinned her arms to her sides, driving the wind from her lungs. She kicked backward, her heavy boots connecting with a shin, but a third guard brought the hilt of a sword down hard across her shoulder blade.
Pain exploded through her body, dropping her to her knees in the mud.
“Elara!” Aurelia screamed, but a guard stepped forward, pressing a thick, oil-soaked cloth saturated with the same sweet almond sedative directly over the princess’s face.
Aurelia thrashed wildly for three seconds, her fingers clawing at the guard’s leather jerkin, before her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed limp into the mud.
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Vane watched the scene with a detached, clinical indifference. He looked down at Elara, who was spitting blood into the wet grass, her eyes burning with an unquenchable, lethal fire.
“Take the princess back to her chambers under heavy guard,” Vane instructed, turning away. “And take the executioner’s daughter to the lower cells beneath the palace. Let her spend her final night where her father used to work. At sunrise, construct a scaffold in the public square. Let the city see what happens to those who disturb the royal sleep.”
