Creator be praised.
Sure enough, the panel gave in to her touch. An inch. Another. Then a few more, until there was just enough room for her to step through.
As soon as she did, the hidden alcove became a pivoting chamber, transporting her a hundred and eighty degrees.
When it stopped, she was facing a world of damp, permanent nighttime.
Thankfully, the tunnel was equipped with motion-activated wall sconces. They looked fairly modern, though in comparison to the damp and dirty walls, a prospector’s lamp would be state of the art.
She smiled again, already liking the metaphor. Like a prospector, she was hoping for something better than what she had left behind. Hidden gold, only not in the form of shiny nuggets. Right now, all she wanted was an effortless escape. A way to access any part of the palais free from her brothers and their sheepdog ways. Protective love was one thing. Too much slobber was another.
She continued on, using the compass on her watch to gauge her direction. She was northbound, which meant she would soon be underneath the kitchens, administrative offices, and operational hub of the palais. Perfect. She had no intention of startling the staff members in any of those offices, but getting to the hub would likely mean more tunnels to pick from. All she needed was one that led outside…
Escape challenge number one rose up much sooner than she expected. Twice as formidably.
“Damn it.”
The passageway was completely sealed off. A dead-end comprised of bricks as solid as the ones she had just passed through. Though these stones seemed a little fresher than the walls to her left and right, they were nonetheless bricks, and—
“Ohhh. Damn it.”
She let the repetition caress the air like the dawning recognition it was. She even finished it by humming a little Taylor herself—“Shake It Off” for this round—while carefully running her fingertips over every seam of mortar between the bricks.
Until the mortar was not mortar at all.
One spot, up and to the right, looked just like the rest of the hardened clay but was actually a rubberized patch that glowed beneath the heat of her touch. Exchanging “Shake It Off” for a triumphant gasp, she pushed against the plastic—
Until her gasp became a yelp, blending with the whir of activated gears.
Gears that pulled the entire wall into a hidden pocket in the cavern floor.
“Well,” she murmured. “Jamie Bond, reporting for duty.”
Her light giggle bounced around the walls as she continued on.
But all too soon, she was once more not so ready to laugh.
The passage bent several directions, even curving so much to make her think she had just made a massive loop, but never did she come across any forks or crisscrossing paths. She only had two options for her journey: forward or back. Her compass indicated she had veered slightly to the east, but not so far that she was far from her original estimation of a destination.
What was going on?
Why could she not hear at least a faint bustle from the offices and kitchens on the other side of the walls? These stones were not lined with soundproofing foam…
She scuffed to a stop. Emitted a huff to match. Technically, this might be escape challenge number two.
As her head resolved itself to the fact, her heart clenched. She could not change the layout of this tunnel. It was what it was—just like so many other things about life itself right now. About the universe that would go on turning, despite her soul’s pleas that she be let off the wild ride. Better yet, that it would all spin in reverse. That she could be cast back to the night when a towering force of nature strode into a Paris alley and sucked the air from every membrane in her lungs. When that air had returned in the form of a moan from deep in her throat, as he’d pressed her body to a wall and his fingers to her clit in a secret Montmartre warehouse…
Never again.
As the syllables taunted her mind, desolation thrashed her soul.
And her will could no longer hold her tears at bay.
Never again.
“Stop it,” she rasped at her roiling heart. Somehow, as she compelled her feet to drag her forward again, she added, “Stop trying to think it will be any different, damn it!”
Because it would not be.
Time would not rewind. Or reset.
The adventure was over.
And so were she and Brickham.
Even if she could figure out where he had absconded, she was rapidly running out of time to do anything about it. Too late for undoing the damage of Evrest’s interference. Too late to beg Brickham to stay a few days more. Too late to hope that in those days, he would look at her as more than his little Paris asset.
That he would simply look at her as…more.
“Stop. It.”
She bit the words onto the air in time to the way she dug her stomps into the ground. And yes, it really was that by now. Sometime in the middle of her soul’s fissuring, the castle’s concrete foundation had become a hard dirt path. She had not perceived the change until now, when her brain took tactile pleasure in grinding her shoes against the damp earth.
A diversion she was smart to recognize, since it did not last long.
Because the ground was now…emulsifying.
In less than a dozen steps, she went from tromping across packed clay to slorping through a muddy mire.
What on earth?
In the figurative and literal senses…
She would have found a better way to express that, if not for the raw shock breaking in on her brain—courtesy of some new sounds on the air.
Sounds she was not expecting to hear in caverns right below the palais. A resounding rush of water. A bright, foamy fizz. A soft howl of wind.
And all of it smelling like saltwater.
What. On. Earth?
She spurted it aloud, each word punctuated by a couple of her gloppy steps. But after three more turns in the tunnel, nothing changed about her view. So why did the oceanic symphony go on?
Louder.
Louder.
Until it was such a clamor, it drowned out even her stunned gasp. Which, to be honest, was probably more of an outcry. Which, to be more honest, nobody in their right mind would have denied her. Not if they were beholding the same sight that overwhelmed her now.
Jamie Bond, indeed.
This surprise was definitely shaken, not stirred.
And one of the most breathtaking vistas her island home had ever gifted to her.
In theory, she was still in the palais. Just not in the palais.
She was still under it—though she now stood at the edge of a small underground lake. Its sparkling swells were fed by the tides that flowed in from a small cave about thirty meters away. The full moon was high enough in the sky to illuminate the colliding waters, turning them into a liquid swirl of blue, green, silver, and gold.
That was only the beginning of the glory.
While nature had carved out this cavern to begin with, its existence was obviously ordained by the original palais designers. The support pillars built into the rock walls matched the soaring drama of the architecture upstairs, making the grotto look more like a preserved temple of Atlantis.
The effect was enhanced as she took another few steps, triggering the motion-activated lights that were rigged to the top of each column. The lamps pointed down, creating luminescent circles at their bases. Between those rings and the moon’s glow, there was only one spot, directly in the lagoon’s center, that was still immersed in darkness.
Naturally, her gaze was not tempted to spend a great deal of time in those shadows—until she had no choice about the matter.