My Hockey Alpha novel Chapter 241

Nina

Somehow, I managed to daze all of the guards at once.

But Enzo and I didn’t have time to stand around and try to figure out how I did it. There was no knowing exactly how long this spell of mine would last, and for all we knew Selena had already been alerted to our location. We seemed to have an unspoken agreement to run as fast as we could, and that was exactly what we did. We ran across the large lawn that led up to the mansion, weaving through the stupefied guards, and bolted up the steps to another door that was slightly off to the side. We could reuse the same entrance we had used before, but we also couldn’t simply walk in through the front doors. Instead, we used a small wooden door that was tucked into the corner of the mansion; and, much to my surprise, it opened to a set of stairs that were going down.

With one last apprehensive look at each other, Enzo and I shut the door behind us and began our descent.

The stairs led to some sort of old root cellar. The floors and walls were all made of cobblestone, and when I flicked on my phone’s flashlight, I noticed that there were rows of shelves containing all sorts of weapons.

This wasn’t a cellar; it was an armory.

And it was a packed one, at that.

Enzo walked over to a shelf that contained a large amount of swords and picked one up, inspecting it in the light of my flashlight.

“Damn,” he said quietly, turning the blade this way and that. “It looks razor sharp.”

I swallowed nervously. “Put it back,” I said. “We need to move.”

Enzo nodded and slowly put the sword back on the rack. I never explained to him the premonition that I saw in the portal about my life being intertwined with Selena’s, but I had a feeling that he knew something about it. But now wasn’t the time to talk about it.

I had to push away the thought that we might not ever get to talk again after tonight. If I was going to die, then I didn’t want Enzo stopping me. Selena had to be stopped for the sake of both realms, and if Enzo knew that I was potentially marching to my death, then he would let the world burn instead of letting me do it.

All I could do to keep myself going was hope that what the old man said was right; that no one needed to die.

But, of course, those were just the ramblings of an old man.

Enzo and I quietly made our way through the armory, which branched off into several tunnels. The longer we walked, in fact, the more I realized that there must have been an entire tunnel system under the mansion.

“Hey,” I said, peering into one of the dark tunnels. It went so far that I couldn’t even see where it turned. “Do these go under the entire mansion?”

Enzo shrugged. “Probably,” he replied. “It would only make sense; the first royal family that built this mansion probably had all sorts of escape routes. It’s probably how your father and Selena escaped when the Crescents tried to assassinate you.”

“Just thinking about it makes me sick,” I said with a shudder. I wondered what had happened that night; how did it come to be that the Crescents only managed to steal me and kill my mother? Was it just pure luck that my father got Selena out?

“It’s alright,” Enzo replied gently, squeezing my hand. “You don’t have to worry about that now. There are bigger things to think about tonight.”

However, Enzo’s words didn’t make me feel any better. In fact, they only made me feel worse.

I couldn’t hide it anymore. A thick, choked sob caught in my throat and echoed through the damp tunnels. I clamped my hand over my mouth, but there was no stopping it at this point. The tears were already flowing.

Enzo stopped and pulled me close, hugging me tightly while I cried. His chest muffled my uncontrollable sobs, but it wasn’t enough to silence me completely.

“Hey, hey,” Enzo whispered, pulling away just enough to bend down to my level and hold me by both shoulders. “Shh. Talk to me.”

“The banquet hall,” he whispered. “It makes sense that there would be a tunnel entrance here. Assassins love the chaos of parties.”

I swallowed nervously and nodded as I looked around. I could only imagine the terror that would come along with discovering that someone at your own party was poisoned or killed in some other way; the screaming, the people running around, the crying children… I tried not to think about it.

As I looked around, I noticed that the walls were painted with ornate depictions of what looked like werewolves and humans. I took a step closer to get a better look.

The first panel depicted humans and wolves running together with the light of the full moon over them. The wolves were enormous; three times the size of any of the humans. But some of the humans rode on the backs of the werewolves, weapons in hand, as though they were allies.

I took in a sharp breath when I saw the second panel.

The humans became violent. A man stood over one of the wolves with his spear plunged into its chest and his foot on its head, looking victorious. The other wolves scattered and fled. If I closed my eyes for a second, I felt as though I could picture it.

The third panel depicted the wolves, walking solemnly through the forest. They seemed to be following some sort of faint light. But I couldn’t make out what it was, because the next panel was torn to shreds.

“The fourth panel was ruined when the Crescents attacked twenty years ago,” a female voice suddenly said from behind me.

Enzo and I both gasped. I dropped my phone onto the marble floor and spun around, feeling my heart drop when I saw who was standing behind me.

“Selena.”