“Then we die,” Kaelen said flatly. “Or worse. You know what she does to those who resist. The ones in the Spire aren’t dead. They’re kept .”
The corridor beyond was vast, lined with statues of the queen in her various forms—beautiful, terrible, serene, enraged. Each statue had eyes that seemed to follow the intruders. Sera avoided looking at them directly. Kaelen counted his steps. The hooded figure kept one hand on the God-Killer.
The stair was narrow, winding, and lit by torches that burned with green flame. Each step upward felt like a step into a deeper cold. By the time they reached the door to the throne room corridor, Sera’s breath was fogging in front of her face, and Kaelen’s limp had worsened to a near-drag.
“I always do.”
They emerged into the lower kitchens at the height of the feast’s chaos. Cooks shouted orders. Spit-boys turned carcasses of strange, dark-fleshed beasts over roaring fires. No one noticed three extra bodies slipping through the steam and smoke, heading for the servants’ stair.
The Heartstone shattered.
And then the demon queen spoke, though her body was nowhere to be seen. Overthrow- The Demon Queen 1
She smiled, and her teeth were needles.
She was not there.
The voice from under the hood was strange—neither male nor female, young nor old. It was the voice of someone who had already died once and had not enjoyed the experience enough to want a repeat. “Then we die,” Kaelen said flatly
The wave of force that followed threw Kaelen across the room. He hit the bone wall hard, felt something crack in his ribs, and slid to the floor. Sera was already down, unconscious, her daggers scattered. The guardians had dissolved into harmless smoke.
“The last seal is in the queen’s own throne room,” said Kaelen, tracing a finger through the dust on a cracked wooden table. His voice was low, gravelly—the voice of a man who had forgotten how to laugh. He was the strategist, the one who had once been a general before Malachar had turned his bones to glass and then back again, leaving him with a limp and a permanent ache. “The Heartstone. If we break it, her hold on this world shatters.”