Aki squeezed the rock in her hand. Fairy was right: no matter what happened, Aki had to survive and fight. She was the empress; only she had the legitimacy to retake the throne from Gin and restore Kichona to peace. The League of Rogues would have wanted her to carry on even if they were gone. She had to find other allies.

“The mainland kingdoms,” she said out loud. The idea echoed through the tunnel and seemed to grow with each reverberation.

She would dig her way out of here and somehow find her way overseas. The kings and queens there knew her, and she had especially good relationships with the monarchs of Caldan, Brin, Fale Po Tair, and Thoma. If Aki could get messages there, they would help her. Together, they could save Kichona.

She pushed herself away from the tunnel wall. Her people needed her. When this was over and her kingdom was safe again, she would properly mourn all those lost. Until then, she would press on, as an empress should.

Aki dug for two more hours. The closer she got to the sound of the ocean, the softer the clay grew as more water permeated through. She burrowed with more vigor, hope rising like the sun in her chest.

And then she hit solid rock.

“No!” She was so close she could hear the sea just on the other side. Aki tried to dig slightly higher, and lower, and to the left and right, but to no avail. There was only solid rock between her and her escape.

She kicked it. She beat her fists against it. She backed up and hurled her digging stone at it, only to have it break into pieces.

Aki withered onto the ground.

From the other side of the tunnel—in the direction of the grotto—glass shattered.

She jumped—that was the contraption she’d rigged to alert her when Gin or Virtuoso returned. It was part of a larger setup in the grotto, designed to buy her time.

Aki crawled as quickly as she could through the tunnel, using the slick of the clay to slide faster.

Within seconds, she was directly under her cell. She hoisted herself up through the hole in the ground, crawled out from under her mattress pallet, and hurried to the narrow passageway in the rock that led to grotto. It was such a tight fit that even she needed to scoot through it sideways.

She stepped out into the grotto just as her visitors untangled themselves from the net she’d made from knotting together strips of torn bedsheets. The trip wire—a thin rope she’d created from unraveling her cloak, then camouflaged by rubbing it in the clay—lay loose on the ground. Two glass jars—formerly full of dried apricots and biscuits—had shattered.

“Idiotic girl,” the man closest to her spat. “As if your pathetic net would be any match for ryuu.”