An incessant rapping on the door yanked me out of my perfect slumber. "Ella, you can come in," I grumbled.

The door opened slightly. "Yes, but can I?" Lyon poked his head through.

I let out another groan, not bothering to budge from my place. "Yes."

The prince stepped inside. He was fully dressed in a leather outfit complete with a cape. His dark brown hair was uncombed and his deep blue eyes seemed black. He still retained his childish features: a button nose and slightly chubby cheeks. He was not the most physically adept prince I had seen, but he was fast. I had once seen him sic an arrow into a given target without knowing he had even moved the bow. He was sixteen years old, but was literally the only other smart person I knew in this palace. He was also my only friend beside Ella.

When I first came here, I was weary of befriending him, what with him being the king's son and all, but soon I realized he was more than his title revealed. He was wise as well as he was kind. He disagreed with almost all his father's doings, but didn't hate him, unfortunately. He did his best to help the people and was pure at heart. He was the best friend I had had in a long time.

None of that mattered at the moment. I was having the best sleep and he woke me up! I reached over to the curtains, still on the bed, and pulled them back. A dark void stared back at me.

"Lyon, it's not even dawn yet!" I complained.

"No," Lyon said, coming around to my side of the bed, "it is almost dawn. Now get up, there is something I want to show you."

I let my head sink into the soft, comfortably warm pillow and wrapped my blankets tighter around my body. "Can't you show it to me at a more godly hour?"

"I am not going to leave until you get up," he said.

"Then be prepared to wait," I huffed, scrunching my eyes shut. But after five seconds of him shaking my shoulder I gave up.

"Fine," I grumbled, sitting up. "If the palace is not on fire, then may the gods help you. Get out."

"Do not go back to sleep," warned Lyon as he shut the door behind him.

I stuck my tongue out at the door and got dressed. I wore a dress that ended right above my ankle and wore tights under the skirt. I found it best to dress up in something that would serve its purpose for running when I was around Lyon. This was not the first time he had woken me up at unmentionable hours of the night. After our friendship had thickened, he had taken me to see so many things it was a wonder that boy slept at all.

I strapped my dagger around my thigh and tied on my boots. I even tied my hair into a ponytail so it wouldn't get caught.

"I was hoping to make use of the darkness outside, but apparently that is not to be since you are taking so long to simply get dressed," Lyon said from outside.

"Ha-ha," I swung open the door. "You asked for me to come, so you will have to put up with whatever it is I do."

The pre-morning air was cold and biting. I shivered as we crouched behind some bushes in the courtyard. We could see the fountain from where we hid: four women made to represent water nymphs stood gracefully, facing a direction each. They held vases from which flowed water into the basin. From behind the fountain, we could not even see the front gates.

"What are we waiting for?" I hissed.

"The guards patrol the courtyard at an interval of twenty minutes," he said, more to himself than to me.

As if on cue, a pair of guards marched past and we both instinctively hunched closer to the bushes.

"So?" I whispered once they had passed. Lyon got up and walked in a straight line towards the fountain. I followed, aware of the fact that the fountain was so wide that even if Lyon and I stood shoulder-to-shoulder the guards at the gate couldn't see us.

Lyon reached for the hand of the nymph facing us and pulled. Her hands bent down and I felt a soft rumbling under my feet. It was more of a feeling than a sound.

The tile right next to the one I was standing on slid back to reveal a dark staircase.

Lyon's face was positively ecstatic.

Now, in the six months I had lived here, I had excavated every possible inch of the palace. I knew the shortcuts and where to duck if I wanted to lose pursuers. I knew the secret passages and trap doors. Yet, I had never found this one.

Of course, I did not think anyone would be stupid enough to create a secret passage outside. 

"Come on," Lyon said and pulled me into the passage. I couldn't see very far into the stairs as there was no light from either end. As soon as I ducked under the stone, Lyon silently whispered, "Aha!" and pulled a lever. The tile slid shut, shrouding us in absolute blackness.

We listened for a while. There was no sound to indicate someone had seen or heard us. The positioning of the passage was clever, I had to admit. You could keep twenty people behind the fountain and as long as they stood in a straight line and made no noise, no one would even know they were there. Well, from the front, anyway. It still seemed too simple to me.

We waited a minute for our eyes to adjust, but absolutely no light penetrated to this place. We were in complete darkness. The damp smell of being underground swamped us.

"There's a staircase," I noted, my voice hushed. It felt wrong to disturb the sickening tranquility of the place, but I felt a sort of vulgar triumph at doing so. "There are no torches, so we are going to have to make our way forward by feel. Beware for traps."

Lyon's hand found mine and I found comfort in knowing there was another mortal here with me.

"How did you find this place, anyway?" I asked after a while. I was slightly miffed I had not found it myself.

"I found it last night," he said, "after the dinner you did not attend."

"Sorry," I apologized. I had not wanted to see Kirin's face again. It would have surely broken me.

"I came out after I had finished eating," he continued. I traced my fingers against the mud-caked wall. The damp smell clung to my skin and bathed my lungs. I would be smelling this damp for days. "The feast was so loud I could not hear myself think. I was on one of the upper balconies when I saw a servant of father's enter this passage. I wanted to follow, but was not sure if I ought to go in alone. I thought to call you, but you were asleep."

The stairs seemed endless and time crawled slower than the sweat trickling down my back. I wondered if this thing ended at all, but a servant had come through so it had to lead somewhere.

"Light!" whispered Lyon excitedly.

My eyes had been focused so much on the darkness that the gentle shift into vision had not registered. I could see the silhouette of the stairs now and far below I saw the soft orange glow of torches.

We moved faster now that we could see. As the descended, the light grew, but so did something else.

The stairs stopped at a square room a good few feet across. On the other side of the room was another corridor that stretched endlessly, lit at intervals by torches. Two torches framed either side of the corridor on both ends.

Yet, both Lyon and I hesitated. The sound I had heard while climbing down the stairs was loudest here. It was a low humming, like that of a drawbridge lowering, but muted.

We looked around the room.

"This is too easy," I said. We hadn't moved from the bottom of the stairs. I pressed my ear against the wall. The humming continued. I was right. It was the unmistakable drone of machinery. Something here had been activated, or had always been active.

I let my eyes roam over the walls again, looking for oddities. Some of the bricks were wrongly aligned, but that could have just been the architecture. Was it just me, or was the floor inclining? All these faults seemed ordinary enough, but when so many faults come to you immediately, it probably does not mean good.

Lyon had seen it, too. "It's a trap," he said.

I undid a boot and tossed it into the middle of the floor.

As soon as it touched the ground, it was impaled by three spikes that shot out from bricks that had slid open. The floor then opened like a set of double doors, conveniently dropping the boot into an endless void.

There was no sound except for the floor resetting itself.

"That was brilliant," I marvelled.

I crouched down as low as I could go and inspected the floor. "Do you have any idea how much precision it would take to install such traps? Your calculations have to be precise and if you make even one mistake, this whole thing could fall apart. Literally."

"Yes, yes, it's all fine," Lyon said, impatiently. "Can we get to the part where we figure out how to not get impaled?"

"How good is your jumping?" I squinting at the other corridor. The room was twenty feet across. Even I couldn't jump that far.

"Oh, lovely, yes, let's jump," said Lyon sarcastically.

"Hey, at least I am trying."

We were allowed three feet of space before we stepped on the opening floor so we did our best to keep to our limits. We searched the walls, pounding and pushing on bricks. We even tried to move the torches, but that would have been too easy and I would have really started to worry about the person who built this.

I was stomping on the  stairs when I heard the unmistakable sound of the secret passage sliding open. Lyon and I exchanged panicked looks. Whoever was climbing down was doing nothing to keep quiet. I figured it was a man because his footsteps pounded as he climbed down.

I cursed silently. There was nowhere for us to hide. I slunk into the corner, racking my brains to think, think, think. We were going to have to sabotage him when he came down. That was our only way out.

No, it can't be. Think, Thalia, think. A servant can do this. How hard can it be. Now, if it were you, where would you hide a secret deactivation panel? Somewhere no one would look, but the problem was there was not really that much space No, the problem is, your thinking is flawed. Whatever the architect has done so far is blatantly obvious: obvious traps, obvious secret passage, and yet you didn't see it. Now, if I were hiding the panel somewhere noticeable, then I should be sure no one would look there.

I looked up at the ceiling. It can't be. It could not be so simple, could it? I walked to the corner of the room. The very last stone that created the ceiling was inscribed with an 'x'. 

"Oh, ingenious," I whispered. Lyon turned to me with a questioning look. I pointed. He frowned, probably wondering if it was really possible.

The footsteps were closer now, and we didn't have much time. Lyon locked his fingers together and I put my bootless foot on them. The ceiling was low, but not so low that a person of average height could reach it on their own. Using Lyon's hands as leverage, I pressed the brick and it slid back with a sigh. Immediately the humming stopped.

Wasting no time, Lyon and I raced across the room. As soon as our feet touched the other side, the mechanism started again. 

We didn't stop, continually looking over our shoulders to see if we were being pursued. It wasn't as if we were very quiet or anything. I could feel the walls reverberate with our pounding feet, but no one was chasing us just yet.

We had been so focused on looking back that we didn't see the stairs until they were right in front of us. I stumbled to a stop, but Lyon ploughed right into me. We shrieked as we tumbled down the stairs.

My arms and back ached from where I'd hit the stairs and my knees were scraped. I sat up gingerly, not wanting to incite any other wounds.

"Are you alright?" I asked Lyon, nursing my arm. 

He sat up and shook his head, wincing as he rubbed his side. "Yes," he said.

Our screams must have alerted whoever was behind us, because now I could hear loud boots thumping in a fast pace. I grabbed a fist full of Lyon's cape and pulled him along.

We didn't have long to go, for the passage suddenly split into three: left, right and centre.

"Right," Lyon said, the same moment I said, "Left."

"Go," I pushed him in the direction of the right corridor.

"What? No, come with me."

The footsteps were closer now. I spoke in a fast, hushed voice. "Listen to me, if we split up now, there is a lesser chance he will catch the both of us. There is no reason he should find us both. Give me your cape."

Lyon looked confused, but gave me his cape, anyway. I shoved him towards the right corridor and I made for the left one. I didn't go more than a few feet, though. The corridor wasn't lit until a few paces ahead, but this would do. I quickly tied the cape around my face, covering everything of me but my eyes. I undid my other boot and waited.

Seconds later, a tall, bulky man stopped at the intersection. Lyon's footsteps could still be heard echoing in the distance and he turned towards it.

I flung my boot and it slammed into the side of the man's face. He stumbled in surprise and turned to me.

That's when I realized I didn't have anything planned after this moment.