Chapter 34: House Vallen

The Vallen estate sat on a hill at the northern edge of the city, and when you looked up at it from the bottom of the road, it looked like a black tooth poking out of all the overgrown foliage around it.

The deed was rolled up in Mira’s hands and sealed with the King’s emblem, but she hadn’t unrolled it once since they left the palace. She just held onto it as she walked up the hill, gripping it so tightly that her knuckles turned white, and nobody said a word to her the whole way up.

When they were halfway up the hill, Elowen stopped and turned towards a hedge on the left side of the path, and even with her blindfold on, she was staring directly at it.

"There is a person hiding in that hedge," Elowen said. "She is glowing brightly, and she is not very good at concealing herself."

Princess Seris popped out of the hedge with leaves stuck in her red hair, wearing a gray maid’s dress that was at least two sizes too small for her. The sleeves only came down to the middle of her forearms, and the skirt barely covered her thighs.

"I am a maid," Princess Seris said.

Elowen’s sword began to glow a blinding white, so bright that Garrick had to shield his eyes from it.

"Lie," Elowen said.

"Okay, fine, I am a princess who stole a maid’s outfit," Princess Seris said, tugging at the hem of her dress. "My father told me I could not come with you, so I will not be coming with you. I am merely following you."

[Her heart rate is elevated. She is excited, and she also thinks you are staring at her legs]

"I am not staring at her legs," Kai whispered.

[You are]

Mira turned and looked at the princess, then at Kai, and then she kept walking up the hill without saying a single word, which was somehow worse than if she had yelled at him.

The gate to the estate had rusted open, and the garden behind it had grown completely wild, with roses strangling the old fountain and weeds pushing up through the cracks in the stone path. The house itself was nothing more than a shell of what it had once been, its windows pitch black and empty, and the roof had caved in on one side where the fire had burned through it.

Mira walked up to the front steps and stared at the door, which was still standing, scorched black by the fire but somehow unbroken.

"My room was on the second floor," Mira said softly. "My father’s study was right underneath it. My mother used to sit in that window over there and read, and she would yell up at me every time I climbed the rose trellis to sneak out."

"Did you sneak out a lot?" Kai asked.

"I snuck out of my window every single night," Mira said.

Kai looked at her and couldn’t help but smile.

"We have that in common," Kai said.

Mira let out a laugh, but there were tears in her eyes, so she looked away and wiped them before finally unrolling the deed the King had given her and reading it in silence.

"It’s mine," Mira said. "All of it."

[Faith gained. Mira Vallen: +4%. Status: Home.]

They spent the next hour exploring what was left of the house while Garrick checked every wall to make sure it was sturdy enough before anyone walked near it. Most of the house had burned down to bare stone, but there was one room on the ground floor that the fire had never reached, a study with a large oak desk standing in the middle of it, buried under a thick layer of ash.

Mira ran her hand across the top of the desk, wiping a clean path through the ash.

"My father used to let me sit under this desk while he worked," Mira said. "He told me no one would ever find me under there."

Kai watched her standing in the middle of her father’s burned study, and he wanted to do something for her, even though he knew it would most likely go wrong.

[You are going to try something]

"Yes," Kai whispered.

[It will not work]

"Probably not," Kai whispered.

Outside the broken window, there was a rose bush that had somehow survived the fire, burned black but still holding a single wilted red rose. Kai pointed at the rose and tried to imagine it blooming again, bright and alive, just for Mira.

"Minor Blessing," Kai whispered.

The little golden orb shot out of his finger, flew right past the window, curved sharply back into the room, and hit the floor directly underneath the desk.

The floorboards began to glow, and then a square section about the size of a rug popped up out of the floor with a soft click, revealing a hidden hatch with an iron ladder leading down into a small dark room.

Everyone stood there in silence, staring down at it.

"That is not a rose," Princess Seris said.

"No, it’s not," Kai said.

Mira fell to her knees beside the desk and stared down into the hole in the floor.

"He told me no one would ever find me under there," Mira whispered. "He wasn’t talking about the desk."

Garrick held up a candle, and Mira climbed down the ladder first, with Kai right behind her, while Elowen and Seris crowded around the hatch at the top, because the room below was only big enough for two people to stand in. Small shelves had been carved into the stone walls, and a single wooden chest sat in the center of the floor.

Mira opened the chest with trembling hands, and inside were dozens of leather ledgers stacked neatly on top of each other. When she opened the first one, its pages were filled with columns of numbers written in her father’s handwriting.

"These are the iron shipments from Ironwatch," Mira said, flipping through the pages faster and faster. "All of them, for the past five years. This is what Draven was reporting to the crown, and this is what he was actually sending. He was stealing half of it." She turned another page and froze. "And these are payments to the Radiant Church. Every single month, with the High Priestess’s seal on every one of them."

Kai looked down at the ledger in her hands.

"Your father found all of this," Kai said.

"And he hid it before they came to kill him," Mira said through her tears. "He knew they were coming, and he hid it where only I would ever look."

Mira clutched the ledger to her chest, just like she had held her father’s letter in the Cathedral, and she stood there in silence for a long time. Then she turned around and hugged Kai so hard that he hit the wall behind him.

"You missed," Mira said into his shoulder.

"I was aiming for a rose," Kai said.

"I know," Mira said. "Thank you for missing."

The chime that rang in Kai’s head was much louder than he expected it to be.

[Faith gained. Mira Vallen: +10%. Status: Believing.]

[Mira’s faith is now at 76%. She is getting close, Kai]

Kai stood there with Mira’s arms wrapped around him, and he realized that he didn’t want to move away from her, not even an inch.

"Getting close to what?" Kai whispered.

[You know what]

"Excuse me," Princess Seris said, clearing her throat from the top of the ladder. "I know this is a special moment, but there is a man at the front gate, and he does not look happy."

They all climbed back up into the study and rushed out to the front steps, where a man was standing at the rusted gate. He was even larger than Garrick, with a shaved head and a face covered in old scars, and he wore heavy iron armor with a black hammer painted across the front of it. He didn’t walk towards them, but simply held up a thick plate of iron engraved with words and slammed it into the ground in front of him so hard that it stood upright in the dirt.

"The Church of the Iron Father has learned of a false god within your city," the man said, and his voice sounded like rocks grinding together. "The Iron Father will not allow false gods to exist. In three days, at noon, you will meet his champion in the city arena for a trial by combat."

"I don’t have a champion," Kai said.

"Then you will face him yourself," the man said. "If you refuse, the Iron Father and every other church in Veyrath will know you are a coward and a fraud."

The man turned around and walked back down the hill without another word, leaving the iron plate standing in the dirt behind him.

For a long moment, nobody said anything at all.

[Kai, I would like to remind you that you have never hit anything you have aimed at]

"I know," Kai whispered.

[In battle, you will need to aim]

"I know," Kai whispered.

Princess Seris looked at the iron plate, and then at Kai, with a fierce kind of determination lighting up her green eyes.

"I am definitely not going home now," Princess Seris said.