Chapter 111: The Bolt Strikes Again

Hope lasted exactly one more landing.

Then the next landing revealed another obstacle. A big one.

The bottom third of the stairs were gone. Fire had eaten through the wooden support structure and the stone steps that remained were floating islands in a sea of orange. Collapsed timber filled the gap like a funeral pyre that nobody had ordered, flames climbing the debris with the cheerful enthusiasm of something that had found unlimited fuel and was celebrating.

Nova’s jaw tightened. She turned, scanning the stairwell with the one eye that was still producing reliable visual data. Her left eye was a red wash that offered impressionist suggestions at best.

The door.

Three steps back up. A very narrow metal door set into the wall with a maintenance rune above it that was flickering between blue and amber like it couldn’t decide if this was an emergency or a feature.

A service corridor.

They had passed it on the way down and Nova had logged it the way she logged every door in every hallway because those details are the kinds of details slaves look for.

She moved back up the stairs to the door before anyone knew what she was doing. Her hand found the handle. Warm. The kind of warm that meant heat on the other side but manageable heat, survivable heat, the heat of a corridor that was adjacent to a fire and aware of it but hadn’t committed to participating.

Locked.

Alpha Thunderfang was behind her in two strides, already thinking along the same lines. He planted his boot and kicked. The door shuddered in its frame. The lock held.

There is always a key nearby. Nova had learned this early in Starborne’s manor.

She was already checking a wall sconce for one.

Alpha Thunderfang kicked the door again. The frame cracked but the bolt held because tonight’s bolts were apparently forged by the same bastard who built the one in 412.

She gently tapped his shoulder, then pointed at the top of the doorframe.

He looked at her finger. Looked at the doorframe. Looked back at her.

"You want me to check that?"

She gave a single nod before doubling over into another cough. Her hand braced against the wall as her body tried to fold in half.

Alpha Thunderfang’s hand swept across the top of the frame, fingers moving through dust and ash, and stopped. He pulled his hand back.

A key sat in his palm. Small. Iron. Warm from the heat but intact.

He put it in the lock.

CLICK.

The door swung inward.

Air.

Cool, clean, beautiful air rolled out of the service corridor like a gift from a building that had decided at least one of its hallways would survive tonight. The passage was narrow, stone-walled, lit by emergency runes that pulsed a steady blue. No fire. No smoke. A maintenance artery built into the mountain itself, designed for servants and supply runs and exactly the kind of midnight escape that its architects had never imagined.

Alpha Thunderfang was already moving back to Derek. He ducked under his brother’s arm, taking the weight from the side Maria wasn’t covering. Together they moved through the doorway and into the corridor, Derek’s boots finding purchase on dry stone for the first time in minutes.

The air hit Nova’s lungs and her body tried to reject it because her lungs had been breathing smoke for so long that clean oxygen felt foreign. She coughed again, harder, bending at the waist in the middle of the corridor while the others moved ahead. Her hand found the wall. She stayed upright by force of will and the wall’s cooperation.

A stairwell glowed blue at the far end of the corridor. Open. Clear. Leading down.

She pushed off the wall and followed, one boot in front of the other, blood drying on her chin, her burst eye throbbing with each heartbeat.

They descended.

The next floor opened to a wider landing and Tavian Voltcrest was standing in the center of it looking like a man who had been running up stairs for the last twenty minutes and had arrived at the wrong floor three times and was going to have a conversation with whoever designed this keep’s layout when the building stopped being on fire.

His eyes found Maria first. The relief that hit his face was immediate and total. Shoulders dropped. Jaw unclenched. The Beta who had been holding himself together with duct tape and adrenaline exhaled for the first time since his mate had outrun him in slippers.

Then his eyes moved to Derek.

The relief evaporated so fast it left a vacuum. Derek was hanging between Alpha Thunderfang and Maria like a man whose skeleton had filed a leave of absence, his torso burned, his breathing shallow, his head lolling forward.

Then Tavian saw Alpha Thunderfang. Burns on both palms. Burns climbing his forearms where he had been gripping a beam that was on fire because letting go wasn’t an option his body recognized.

Then Nova. Blood running from both nostrils. A burst vessel turning her left eye into something out of a medical textbook. Coughing that sounded like her lungs were trying to evict themselves. Walking on legs that were shaking so badly the tremor was visible from ten feet away.

Tavian moved. No hesitation. No questions. He crossed the landing in three strides and got under Derek’s other arm, replacing Alpha Thunderfang with the practiced coordination of a Beta who had grown up with these two men. No words were needed.

Alpha Thunderfang turned and picked Nova up mid-step.

No warning. No announcement. No asking. One second she was walking, the next she was horizontal in the arms of a man who had been furious with her for the last five minutes and was apparently expressing that fury by carrying her. His jaw was locked. His eyes were forward. He said nothing.

She would slow down the group. It made sense. Nova didn’t protest. Protesting required speaking and speaking required air and air was a resource she was rationing with the discipline of a woman who understood that her next coughing fit might be the one her legs didn’t survive.

"The High Luna is on the floor below trying to get up here," Tavian called, adjusting Derek’s arm across his shoulders.