Torran’s head jerked toward me. “No, absolutely not. If the empress catches you trespassing, I won’t be able to protect you.”

“Then we need to ensure she won’t catch us.”

“It’s risky,” Eli warned. “We don’t know what’s down there.”

“We don’t, but it could be a scared child,” I argued. “We owe it to him to at least check.”

“Or this could be Morten’s plan all along,” Lexi said. “Feed us enough clues so that it looks like Cien is here, and then wait for us to blunder into the palace fully armed and start a new war.”

I winced. She made a fair point.

“I think we should check,” Anja said quietly. “We need to be careful, obviously, but if we run into trouble, we can haul ass out. This is the only lead we’ve found. If we don’t check, we’ll always wonder, and coming back is more dangerous than checking while we’re here.”

Eli and Lexi both sighed, but neither of them protested.

Torran should’ve heard our conversation thanks to his earpiece, but he, too, remained silent. “My team is going to check it out,” I told him. “You are welcome to keep your team here while we do.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Torran’s voice growled in my head.

“It’s over a kilometer to the palace. Let’s at least check the first part of the tunnel. If it looks like it’s full of imperial guards, then we’ll head back.”

“Tavi . . .”

“Please, Torran. Your nephew could be down there.”

“If we get caught, stay still and let me do the talking. And if I tell you to run, you run.”

That was easy enough to agree to because he hadn’t specified which direction I should run. So I could run to him and drag him out with me.

After a final pause, Torran led us to the only door we hadn’t opened. Like the doors before it, it wasn’t locked, and I wondered about the palace’s security. Someone knew this tunnel was down here. Perhaps the empress should be more concerned about that.

I opened the door and Torran stepped through. Like where we’d entered, this side also had a short hallway with another door at the end that swung inward on hinges. I checked on my team before swinging the door open.

Torran disappeared through the doorway without a word. I followed him and found myself in a wide, semicircular tunnel. The walls and ceiling were curved, but the floor was flat. At a little over three meters across, it gave our teams some room to spread out.

Far in the distance, a wide double door in a solid wall blocked our line of sight. We approached it cautiously. Unlike the doors before it, this one was locked.

“Kee, Lexi, you’re up,” I said over the comm.