The Lost Queen (Book 1 of The Lost Queen Series)

Chapter Twenty-Three

The room was empty.

Torches burned in the wall sconces around the perimeter, but there was no one in sight. Kai sheathed his sword, shoulders slumping. He'd allowed himself to get his hopes up and only found disappointment.

They were too late again.

"Seems you didn't have to worry, after all," he said to Kestrel as she sheathed her own sword and took the fire globe back from Seraiah.

"Did they use the portal?" Seraiah asked, turning away from them to look around the room. She wasn't quite fast enough to keep him from seeing the sheen of tears in her eyes.

"It's a distinct possibility," he said. "Either that, or they used the same entrance we did."

"We would have noticed," Kestrel said. "My money is on the portal. Although, I don't sense it."

When Kai tried to feel for it, he couldn't find anything either.

Seraiah moved to the center of the room and turned in a circle. "I may not know what a portal looks like," she said, "but all I see is an empty room."

"That's because you wouldn't be able to see it," Kestrel informed her. "Someone who works with magic would be able to detect it, but even we can't see it."

"You're saying I could walk right into it and not even know it?"

"It's possible," Kai said, watching as Kestrel circled the perimeter of the room, "but that's why we control them. They also tend to be in unpopulated locations in your world to cut down on the chance of a human stumbling into it by mistake."

He joined Kestrel in her search, dragging his fingers along the wall in the opposite direction.

"And what are you doing now?" Seraiah asked. He could feel her tracking him as he passed in front of her.

"Looking for this," Kestrel answered. She gave a tug on the wall, and it swung open, revealing another dark tunnel.

The door she'd opened looked exactly like the wall on either side of it and was at least a foot thick. Nothing else could be on the other side but the portal.

"How did you know to look for it?" Seraiah asked, reaching out to touch the door as Kai came up behind her.

"She's good at her job," he said. "Or at least certain aspects of it," he amended.

Kestrel made a face at him. "I've heard a thing or two about this place," she told Seraiah. "As Kai said, it's my job to know about it in the event it was ever needed again. The portal was likely hidden like this in case there was an escape."

Seraiah straightened up from her inspection of the door latch mechanism. "You brought prisoners here from your world, and you didn't want them to find their way back, but it was fine if they ended up escaping into our world?" She directed this accusation at him.

"It was a different time. Things have changed. As you can see, we don't use it for that purpose anymore," Kai said.

The look she gave him clearly said she didn't like his answer. She turned to Kestrel. "So this is the portal then? We walk in, and we will be in another world?"

"No, no." Kestrel shook her head with a small smile of amusement. "This is only the tunnel that should lead us to the portal." Kestrel held out the orb of light to him. "Your turn to lead the way through the dark tunnel."

He grumbled, but took the light from her and stepped inside. He heard the two women step in behind him. This tunnel was similar to the one they had taken to get down to the prison, but unlike the first one, there were no stairs. It was completely flat, gently sloping upwards. The sound of their footsteps echoed in the small place. If anyone waited at the other end, they would know they were coming well before they appeared.