And she wasn’t going to give up her power. Not to Lord Nirol. Not to any of them.

Especially not to her father.

Chapter Seventeen

A thin stream of moonlight flitted across the dirt floor of the cellar as it broke through a crack in the wooden door.

Dell gripped the leg of the broken chair he’d found among the barrels of root vegetables and casks of wine.

He stood on one of the rickety steps leading up to the door and slammed the wood into the rusty lock over and over.

Nothing.

He grunted as he pounded on the door and released a howl of frustration.

His brother couldn’t do this to him.

He jumped from the staircase to search for something to ram into the wood hoping to break the door since the steel lock wouldn’t budge.

He gripped the edges of a wine cask, rocking it back and forth to slide it across the floor to access the space behind it where he knew a few tools were kept.

Dell couldn’t remember the last time he’d had reason to enter the cellar.

His stepmother’s men who were a constant presence at the estate came and went regularly with loads from the ships that came in.

Dell had long known there’d be no reason to keep legal merchandise hidden below the house. Most of his father’s goods were transferred from the ship to a warehouse near the docks before being delivered to shop keepers or sent on to one of the other kingdoms.

But the items in the cellar were… different. He wondered if his family only wanted to avoid import fees or was there something else? Most of their goods were kept in warehouses by the docks, not their personal residence.

The wine was easy to explain. It was for the family’s consumption.

Other than the wine, bolts of silk, pounds of fine sugar, and a few other items took up the space.

But there was no time to consider all his brothers’ illegal activities when only one truly mattered: treason.

Dell had to get to Edmund and soon.

He felt his way along the barrels until he reached the other side where an open bucket held tools. Wrapping his fingers around the first one he saw, he pulled it free.

A shovel with a dirt-crusted iron head. He climbed the stairs once again and stuck the sharp end of the shovel into the crack running the length of the door.

Wrenching on the shovel, he put all his strength into it.

It wasn’t enough. He needed more leverage. Shifting his feet so all but his toes hung off the step, he yanked down with such force it pushed him back. His feet tilted and he barely had time to think before he fell back. The shovel clattered to the ground seconds before Dell slammed into one of the barrels on his way down.