After moving both shelves, he found it behind the second. Faint grooves in the stone that happened to fit his fingers. It took some prying, but at last he forced open the hidden doorway. Before him waited a two-foot-high tunnel. Cyrus climbed in and then closed the false wall, enveloping himself in darkness. At the start of the crawl his hands brushed a wooden box. Within he found a stash of candles and some flint to light them with. Cyrus took one, lit it, and then began crouch-walking forward. It didn’t take long for his back to protest, so when the tunnel squeezed tighter, he was almost relieved to drop to his hands and knees for a crawl.

Time passed weirdly down there in the candlelit dark, but if he were to guess, it was only ten minutes before the tunnel began to expand. The dirt around him gave way to carved stone and the occasional wooden support. Soon he was crouch-walking again, and then walking with only a slight stoop. The size of the passage, and its tight integration into the building’s construction, sparked his curiosity. How many other tunnels might be hidden throughout the castle grounds? If only he had known about them during his days of imprisonment at the hands of the Usurper King. Not that he’d have known where to go once out of the castle. Perhaps, as begrudging as he was to admit it, things had gone as best they could, with his rescue by Rayan and delivery into Thorda’s hands.

Cyrus suspected himself reaching the end of the tunnel, given the sudden, sloping rise of the floor. Sure enough, the dark passage came to an abrupt halt. He set the candle down to check the wall. A rope hung overhead, with a round bit of metal tied at the end to give it a handle. Presumably this would allow him entrance, but first, to make sure his infiltration didn’t end the moment it began by stumbling headfirst into guards or servants, he put his ear to the wall and listened for several long, painful minutes. Only silence.

Here goes nothing.

He pulled the handle. A thin line of light sliced into the dark as the wall opened slightly. Cyrus pressed his hands to it and pushed, rolling it open a foot. When he slid through, he emerged from the slender gap into a well-furnished parlor. As his ears had predicted, it was empty. He slid the false wall shut, and as he did, an adjacent candelabra clicked upward in place. The sight put a grim smile on Cyrus’s face. Just like something out of the stories he’d devoured as a child. Now he lived them.

“So where are you hiding, Usurper King?”