“Don’t call her that!” hissed Élise, pushing me through the threshold. “Do you want us to get caught?”

“Ain’t no one in these parts that would turn on old Tips,” the man said, gesturing for me to start down the hallway.

I glanced back at him, taking his measure. Behind the scar – and what seemed to be permanently embedded grime – was a young man. I’d eat my left shoe if he was more than twenty-five. “Old?” I remarked.

He grinned. “For a miner, I’m practically a relic, m’lady. But you’ll learn about that soon enough.”

The room we entered seemed to be a common eating area. It was filled with grey-clad half-bloods, mostly boys and girls around my own age. They all looked up when I entered, their expressions curious. “You all know who she is,” Tips said. “So I won’t bother with introductions.”

“What is this place?” I asked, looking around.

“It’s a dormitory owned by the Miners’ Guild,” Zoé explained quietly. “It houses two mining gangs. There are fifteen half-bloods in each gang.”

“Thirty people live here?” The house seemed barely large enough to contain the fifteen miners in front of me.

“Day and night shifts,” Tips explained around a mouthful of porridge. “We only cross paths to and from work.”

“What about your days off?” I asked.

The whole room erupted into laughter.

Wiping porridge off his chin, Tips said, “If you get a day off from mining, you’re likely to spend it trying to outrun the sluag in the labyrinth.”

“I see,” I said.

“Sure you do,” Tips said. “Now tell me, what’s His Royal Highness thinking putting you up to this?”

“He doesn’t know I’m here,” I said. “He’s sleeping.” Which wasn’t precisely true… I didn’t know where he was or what he was doing.

Tips’s eyebrows rose. “And you think when he wakes up to find you missing from his bed, he won’t wonder where you got to?”

I refused to meet his gaze. “That’s not your concern.”

“Oh ho!” Tips cackled. “That’s how it is. Separate sleeping for the royal lovebirds.”

“He has business to take care of,” I snapped. “And you should keep your nose out of other people’s bedrooms.”

“Perhaps the King should have found Tristan a boy songbird to fulfill the Duchesse’s prophesy!” one of the other miners said, and the room echoed with their laughter.

I glowered at them.

“Just jokes.” Tips gave me a companionable swat against the shoulder. “Ain’t nobody more loyal to Tristan than Tips’s gang.” He motioned for the girls and me to follow him into another room. “You sure you wanting to be doing this?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t sure.”

Tips’s remaining eye narrowed. “I need you to be sure, cause once we’re lowered into the mines, we’re down there for twelve hours, no matter what happens. If one of us gets hurt, we tend to it down there. If you get hurt, we’ll help you the best we can, but understand, there is no way out before our shift is over.” He waited to see if I would react before he continued. “We’ll be going further down into the deeps than you probably ever thought possible. The air will taste foul, and there will be times you’ll feel short of breath. And you’ll feel it, the weight of all that rock and earth piled above you. There’s some who can’t handle it – some who’d rather be dead than spend five minutes at the bottom of those shafts.”