Ira Hale regained her senses in a place as dark as the belly of a river. She lay slumped against a metal wall, and as her sight adjusted to the lack of light, found Valeri not far away. The man was laid on his side, his torso twisted awkwardly. It looked like someone had tossed him down with little care of how he would land.

"What sort of animosity is there between you and Valeri Beaufort?" Ira asked.

Her voice echoed up tall walls. The room was built like a bottle, the base large and flat, the walls curving upward to a narrow opening far above Ira's head. After a moment of quiet, gentle laughter flowed down.

"How did you know that I would remain?" Orlova asked.

Ira said nothing. It had been a guess, but one based on her observations of the woman – or that is, that particular side of Orlova. The woman was markedly more malicious when in her vampire form. She would wish to see them after they awoke and discovered her deception, if only to gloat at their desperation.

Orlova leaned into view. The circular opening at the top was large enough to frame her face and upper body, her skin pale against the dark.

"Do you know where you are?" Orlova asked.

"I do not," Ira replied.

"This room is used to store water. There are pipes behind the panels that feed into the city. Some of the water is used for the machinery. Most goes to the city's inhabitants, and their homes," Orlova explained.

Ira did not need to inspect the storage room to know that there was not a drop of water left in Chervnik's reserves. Her mind turned, realigning the information gathered over the last few days. "What need is there to drug the water?" she asked.

"You are too cruel, Miss Hale!" Orlova exclaimed. "Would you rather those poor souls be aware as they are crushed to death?"

Valeri stirred. He had been aware for a while, Ira knew, but listened quietly until he could bear it no longer. "You mean to destroy the town?" he snarled.

Orlova laughed again. What amusement she had not found in Ira, she reaped by provoking Valeri. "That is exactly right!"

"Fane will never allow it," Valeri dismissed, but he sounded unsure.

"That lunatic? He plans to be buried with his precious city and die a martyr," Orlova told them, openly gleeful.

Valeri's expression stiffened. He looked at Ira, possibly seeking another explanation. Upon seeing Ira's face, his eyes dimmed.

"The ring," he said softly.

Ira nodded. Whatever Lord Fane's feelings for her biological father, he and Ira were still but strangers. The ring was too great of a treasure to be given out lightly.

When Lord Fane said he no longer had use for it, he really meant every word.

"What does he stand to gain from this idiocy?" Valeri asked, jaw tight.

Orlova shrugged. "It does not matter."

"It does," Ira said quietly.

Motives were a crucial point in any investigation, shedding light on present difficulties and future hurdles. Ira did not need Orlova's input to puzzle out Lord Fane's goal, but did agree with Orlova's evaluation of the man's state of mind.

"He means to blame the humans in his halls for the disaster," Ira said.

Valeri looked as if he had been struck. Details such as Lord Fane's leaving the maintenance of Chervnik machinery to humans suddenly made a grievous amount of sense. "There must be survivors," he said at last. Someone would need to spread word about the disaster and its cause.

"That was your purpose," Orlova drawled. "Hardly fair, is it not? A whole city will die, but you two will be spared simply due to the circumstances of your birth."

"You were meant to survive, as well," Ira said. Lord Fane would not trust Ira and Valeri to speak on his behalf, were they to be called upon to account for Chervnik's demise. Moreover, he appeared to care for Alexandra Orlova and would certainly not wish to see her dead.

Orlova sneered. "Was I? The old bastard planned to have half of me die with him. I cannot wait to disappoint."

Orlova disappeared from view. Ira shot to her feet, and called after her, "Where are you going?"

The woman reappeared, her eyes gleaming. "Apologies, dear guests, but I need to run. I have a vampire lord to kill and my human half to collect. Do try to die quickly when the time comes."

A heavy metal lid swung into place, blocking Orlova's smirking face from view and securing the reservoir's only exit.

"She left us to die," Valeri said softly.

Ira was surprised to see sadness in the man's face. "She did not seem to like us much," she offered hesitantly.

Valeri only shook his head. Ira recalled that he had known Orlova as a mortal man. The two were likely on better terms, likely before Valeri's transformation.

"She was once my friend," Valeri said, confirming Ira's suspicions.

"What changed?" Ira asked.

"I do not know. Alia's personality was always more intense when she was not human, but she was not so obviously consumed by hatred. It is as if," Valeri hesitated, afraid to speak his doubts out loud.

"As if she is losing control of her instincts," Ira finished for him.

It was not a rare sight. Humans who were forcibly turned into vampires would often degenerate, dying outward or losing their senses to the predator in their blood.

"Do you believe Lord Fane is aware?" Valeri asked.

"He is, but he thinks the reason to be Orlova's human side," Ira told him. "In fact, it is quite likely the opposite."

Valeri frowned. His distress was clear; it appeared that the man did not give up on friends readily. It was a rare quality, and somewhat troublesome, given their current predicament. Nonetheless, Ira found her heart warm with admiration for her companion.

"We should think on what to do with what we know, once we are free from this place," Valeri sighed.

"I fear that will not be an easy matter," Ira said. The walls could be scaled, and between the two of them, they would find the strength to break through the sealed exit.

However, where were they to go then?

Chervnik was an underground city. There was no telling how many tons of earth separated them from the surface world. They could not hope to find a way out in time, not without help.

"There may be something of use in the ring," Ira said.

"I would not trust Lord Fane's gift," Valeri scoffed. "What if it traps us in some damned place? If it does anything at all, that is."

Ira noted the lightness of the man's tone with some surprise. "You do not seem concerned," she said. Valeri was by no means a coward, but neither was he a soldier trained to brave through desperate situations – and their straits were quite dire.

If the city imploded, Ira and Valeri would be incinerated and die right along Chervnik's human residents. This was the preferred outcome. Ira did not wish to consider the possibility of being trapped underground, crushed by metal and earth as her body cycled through death and rebirth.

"There is no need for concern," Valeri said. "I could not mention it before, lest Alexandra overheard, but we are due for a rescue quite soon."

Valeri whistled in a pattern. Ira heard nothing at first, then distant rumbling. The walls vibrated with growing urgency.

"Stand back," Valeri urged.

They scrambled away from the wall just in time to watch it bow inward and split apart. A pair of hooves speared through the metal, then retreated. A moment later, a large head poked through the hole.

"Well done, old friend!" Valeri praised.

Zenith leveled the man with a look of such obvious disdain that Ira could not contain a surprised chuckle.

"Does your horse have moles in his ancestry?" she asked.

Valeri smiled, his expression losing some of its grief. "Zenith is a remarkable beast. He saved my life once, when I was still human." At Zenith's snort, Valeri added, "And many times thereafter, I am sure he believes."

"What happened?" Ira asked.

"I fell through the roof of an abandoned mine," Valeri said. "I was alone, and broke my leg in the fall. It was dark and damp, the air too heavy to breathe. I truly thought I would die there, and no one would know."

"Until a horse tunneled through a wall?" Ira said, only partially in jest.

"Precisely so," Valeri affirmed. "I thought I'd gone mad from fright. But there the horse was, no matter how hard I blinked. I do not know how I managed to mount, exhausted and injured as I was. Zenith brought me to the surface, and then to Iavor."

Zenith finished demolishing the wall while they spoke. The horse stomped inside the room, hooves clanging against the metal floor. He brushed past Valeri and Ira and headed for the opposite wall, which he attacked with great gusto.

"Where did Beaufort find such a beast?" Ira wondered, eyes wide with bemusement.

"Iavor encountered him during a visit to another kingdom. He always said that Zenith chose to follow him back home," Valeri said. His voice softened noticeably, as it often did when he spoke about his late Sire.

There were no other kingdoms beside Samodevia, at least not in the world known to Samodevia's residents. That left two possibilities as to the beast's origins: The Kingdoms Below, or the Kingdoms Above.

Ira raised her gaze and found Zenith watching her, red eyes laughing.

One possibility, then.

The floor shook suddenly, hard enough to nearly take them from their feet. Some unseen mechanism was grinding to a halt deep within the city.

"We must go," Valeri said grimly.

The reservoir appeared to be an appended space at the outskirts of the city. The place Zenith had chosen to destroy opened to a wall of earth.

"There is no tunnel," Ira noted.

"Zenith can take us through," Valeri told her.

Ira nodded once. She made to mount first, but Valeri caught her arm.

"I will take the front," he said.

Ira frowned in immediate denial. "We are to go through earth and stone. If you were to take that seat," she began.

"I am aware, Miss Hale," Valeri interrupted shortly. "I am not one of your soldiers. If you believe that I would allow you to be hurt for my sake, then you do not know me at all."

Ira wished to argue, but Valeri's stubborn expression stayed her tongue. There was no time to squabble, she told herself. The hint of hurt in Valeri's eyes at the suggestion that he would put her in harm's way for his own comfort was surely not the reason her heart was moved in favor of his reasoning.

They left the city for the darkness of the underearth. The journey was as terrible as Ira had imagined; exposed skin was rubbed raw and bleeding, the earth shifting around them with great reluctance. Hidden behind Valeri's body, Ira was spared the worst of the friction. Valeri did not make a sound. Ira heard his bones break. She gritted her teeth and waited for the darkness to end.

There was an earthquake, then a wave of terrible heat. The city had fallen in a blaze. A quick end, at least, although that would hardly comfort the souls lost to Lord Fane's madness.

The earth closest to the explosion turned molten. Ira's back burned, but they were far enough to be spared the worst of the fire. The constant shaking of the ground loosened the earth and lessened their struggle – a small mercy.

In the end, it still took a good half hour to reach the surface. Ira helped Valeri down, squinting against the dirt in her eyes. Valeri was in far worse shape. His arms and legs were broken in not a few places, and as he had abstained from blood during their stay in Chervnik, the injuries were slow to heal.

Ira coughed what felt like half a lung's worth of dirt out, then scrubbed her eyes clean. She looked to Zenith next, and was unsurprised to find the beast in perfect health.

"Where are we?" Valeri asked once he unclogged his own throat.

"In a field, four days' travel from Mira," Ira said. The Queen's Tower speared toward the havens in the distance, impossible to miss.

Valeri laughed without mirth. Lord Fane had taken them as close to the capital as he could without risking detection from the Queen's Court.

"He loved that damned place as if it were his own child. Why would he do such a thing?" Valeri rasped.

"Let us ask him," Ira said.

Valeri followed her eyes to a body propped against a tree at the edge of the field. He inhaled sharply.

"Alexandra-"

"I see her," Ira said softly.

The body beneath the tree belonged to Lord Cheryl Fane. The man was battered, his blonde hair matted with dirt and blood. Nonetheless, he was conscious, and his whole being was focused on the shadow that towered above him.

Alexandra Orlova –

Or what remained of her.