The Last Dahlia

010

When Yuehwa came to, she felt as if her head had been pounded relentlessly with a hammer. Looking around, she realised that she was seated on the floor at one corner of the fabric storeroom, the surroundings still shrouded in the darkness of night.

"That bastard!" she scolded out loud the minute she remembered what had happened. The silver needle that Shoya had pricked her with was likely soaked in some sort of sleeping draught that knocked her out cold within seconds. She picked herself off the floor and searched around the storeroom for any sign of him, but he was nowhere to be found.

Ember, who had been patiently waiting for his owner to awake, now flapped his wings and perched himself on top of the chest of liquid gold. He went that way, the bird pointed his wing towards the tapestry on the wall.

"Ember, that's a wall. Human beings can't walk through walls."

Of course I know that's a wall, I'm more intelligent than you. Shaking his head, Ember flew over to one corner of the tapestry, where the curious snowflake emblem was printed. Using one of his wings, he gently lifted the corner of the fabric, gesturing towards something that was behind.

Yuehwa took his cue and lifted the tapestry altogether, peering curiously behind. Beneath the huge tapestry lay a heavy, stone door, hidden from view from any unsuspecting palace maid who came in to retrieve bolts of fabric. If not for the fact that Ember had seen Shoya disappear through that door with his own two eyes, neither of them might ever have realised the secret that lay behind the tapestry.

The door was made of granite and had a perfectly smooth surface with no handle, save for the engraving of the exact same snowflake emblem that was on the tapestry, right at the centre of it. Putting her weight behind the door, Yuehwa gave it as hard a shove as she possibly could, but the door did not budge.

"Are you sure he went in there?" Yuehwa turned to Ember and asked.

Her companion nodded his head.

"Wait a minute, this snowflake... I've seen it somewhere else before," she murmured. Running her fingers along the engraving, an epiphany struck. "The princess!"

Yuehwa flew out of the storeroom as quickly as she could, running back to the princess's quarters.

It was still a couple of hours before daybreak and everyone was fast asleep in their beds. Creeping into the princess's bedroom, she tip-toed towards the bed where the girl lay sleeping. Under the illumination of the dim moonlight that was streaming in through the windows, Yuehwa could see the jade snowflake pendant that hung around Naying's neck. Reaching out, she deftly untied the pendant, taking extra care not to awaken the girl in the process.

She held up the pendant in front of her eyes, studying it carefully. She hadn't been sure if it was an exact match with the engraving on the stone door, but now she was fairly certain it would be.

"I'm just borrowing this for a while, I'll return this as soon as I can," she whispered.

Standing in front of the stone door once more, Yuehwa took a deep breath as she placed the jade pendant against the engraving in the granite. Just as she expected, the pendant fit into the grooves perfectly. The minute the pendant was in place, she could hear the distant sounds of rotating cogs as some hidden mechanism kicked into action. Ember counted to five, and the heavy door slowly swung open, revealing a flight of stone steps leading downwards.

"A hidden passageway, of course." Yuehwa rolled her eyes and took a step down. "Come on, Ember, let's go see what the bastard is up to."

Do we have to? Ember wrinkled up his face at the smell of the mustiness that was coming from the passage. Great, let's go and get ourselves killed.