His helmet tilted slightly. "My lady?"
"The west wing," she repeated, her voice steady.
"Now."
He hesitated — just for a second — then nodded. "As you wish."
They moved through the corridors in silence, the guard a step ahead, Beatrice following with the book tucked under her arm and her heart pounding with a purpose she hadn't felt before today.
The west wing was quiet. Empty. The portraits on the walls watched her pass — empresses from centuries past, their eyes following her with what felt like knowing silence.
She stopped at the end of the corridor, where it curved out of sight.
The pull was stronger here. Closer to the surface. Like standing near a fire after too long in the cold.
"Leave me," she told the guard.
He shifted uncomfortably. "Lady Laporte, I cannot —"
"Leave," she said again, her voice carrying an authority she hadn't known she possessed. "This is between me and the palace."
He looked at her for a long moment.
Then, slowly, he bowed his head and stepped back.
Beatrice walked around the curve alone.
The corridor ended at a heavy door — old wood, reinforced with iron, sealed with a golden rune that pulsed faintly in the dim light.
The entrance to the underground chambers.
She pressed her palm against it.
The rune flared once — bright gold — then dimmed.
The door creaked open.
Darkness beyond. Stairs descending into shadow.
And below — far below — a pair of glowing green eyes opening in response.
"I'm coming," she whispered.
Beatrice stepped forward.
The rune on the heavy door flared once more—brighter this time, a pulse of gold that lit the stone steps descending into absolute black. Cold air rolled up from below, carrying the faint scent of damp earth and iron and something warmer, something alive. The pull surged through her chest like a second heartbeat, urgent now, almost pleading.
"Beatrice."
The voice cracked through the corridor behind her like a whip.
She stopped mid-stride, one foot hovering above the next stair, every muscle locking at once. The book slipped slightly under her arm; she clutched it tighter, heart slamming against her ribs so hard she felt it in her throat.
Footsteps—quick, deliberate—echoed off the marble.
She turned slowly.
Prince Henry stood at the mouth of the corridor, half-lit by the nearest sconce, snow still dusting the shoulders of his dark coat. His jade eyes were wide, not with anger but with something sharper, something raw that looked almost like fear. His gloved hand was outstretched as though he'd been about to grab her sleeve and had frozen at the last second.
"What the hell are you doing?" His voice was low, but it carried. "The west wing is restricted after dark. You know that."
Beatrice's mouth opened, but no sound came out at first. The pull beneath her feet tugged harder, impatient, like a hand yanking at her spine. Lucian was down there—close enough now that she could almost taste the echo of his grief on the back of her tongue. And Henry was here, blocking the only way back to the corridor, his posture rigid with the same stiff protectiveness he'd worn when he'd ordered tea and food and carriage delays he pretended meant nothing.
"I—" She swallowed. "I needed air. The snow—"
"Air." Henry's laugh was short, humorless. He took a step closer, boots ringing on the stone. "In the sealed stairwell? With the imperial crest glowing like it's about to burn the door down?" His gaze flicked to the rune, then back to her face. "Don't lie to me. Not after the way you looked at dinner—like something was ripping you apart from the inside."
The book felt suddenly heavier against her ribs. Her own handwriting. Three hundred years of truth no one was supposed to remember. She could feel Lucian's presence pressing upward, a silent roar vibrating through the stone under her soles.
Henry's eyes narrowed. He closed the remaining distance in three strides and caught her wrist—not hard, but firm enough that she couldn't pull away without a struggle. His glove was cold from the snow; beneath it, his fingers were warm.
"Talk to me," he said, quieter now. Almost pleading. "You've been… different since this morning. The garden. The dining hall. The way you flinched at nothing. And now this."
He gestured at the open door with his free hand. "That stair leads to the old foundations. No one goes down there. Not even the priests without my father's seal. So tell me why you're standing here like you're about to walk into a grave."
Beatrice looked at him. The careful mask he wore in court was cracking. For one wild moment she wanted to tell him everything: the dreams, the voice, the book, the man chained in the dark who had once sat in the rain because it was quieter.
But the pull surged again, sharper, and she heard it—not with her ears, but inside her bones.
My Beatrice...
She closed her eyes for half a second.
When she opened them, her voice was steady.
"Because someone I loved is down there," she said simply. "And they've been waiting three hundred years for me to come back."
Henry's grip loosened—not from shock, but as though the words had struck him physically. His face went very still.
"Three hundred—" He shook his head once, sharp. "Beatrice, that's… that's the old stories. The sealed prince. The beast. It's a fairy tale they tell to scare children. It's not—"
"It is," she cut in. Her free hand pressed the book tighter to her chest. "And I wrote the truth myself. Before they erased it. Before they turned him into a monster so no one would remember he was just a man who loved too much."
Henry stared at her. For a long moment the only sound was the distant howl of wind against the palace windows and the faint, steady drip of melting snow from his coat onto the marble.
Then he let go of her wrist.
He stepped back.
Not away—between her and the open stair, his body angled like a shield.
"You're serious," he said. It wasn't a question.
"I am."
His jaw worked. "If you go down there… if any of this is real… my mother knows. My father knows. They've reinforced that seal every decade for a reason. Whatever's down there isn't the man you think you remember. It's—" He swallowed. "It's what's left after three centuries of nothing but rage and chains."
Beatrice lifted her chin. The pull was a living thing now, wrapping around her ribs, urging her forward.
"Then I'll remind him who he was," she said.
Henry's eyes searched her face—desperate, almost angry, the fieriness she had always sensed in him twisting into something new.
"And what about me?" The words came out rough, cracked. "What about the man who's been watching you for years, watching you drift away into the wind as if you don't belong here, who—" He stopped, throat working. "What about the one who's still here? Still breathing? Still trying, even when you look straight through me?"
The words landed between them like something dropped from a great height.
Beatrice stood very still.
Henry's chest rose and fell with the effort of having said it — the effort of a person who has carried something heavy for a very long time and has just, without entirely planning to, set it down in the open where both of them could see it. His jaw was tight. His eyes were steady on her face with the particular intensity of someone bracing for impact.
He had never said anything like that to her before.
In all the months of cold words and sharp dismissals and carefully constructed distance, he had never once let anything this honest reach the surface.
Beatrice looked at him.
Not through him. Not past him toward the pull and the darkness and the three hundred year old grief pressing up through the floor beneath her feet.
At him.
The snow melting from his coat. The slight unsteadiness in his breathing. The way his gloved hand had curled at his side after releasing her wrist — not reaching for her again, not pulling back entirely, just hovering in the uncertain space between.
She thought about warm tea arriving on a tray. Kitchens dispatched without acknowledgment. A single word delivered in a doorway — rest — that had contained, poorly hidden inside its bluntness, something much more careful.
"Henry," she said quietly.
His name. Just his name, spoken simply — not Your Highness, not the formal address she always defaulted to when she needed distance. Just Henry.
Something moved across his face at the sound of it. Brief and unguarded before he could shut it down.
"Don't," he said, his voice rough. "Don't say it kindly. If you're going to tell me it doesn't matter — tell me plainly. I'd rather have the truth than something gentle."
Beatrice was quiet for a moment.
"I'm not going to tell you it doesn't matter," she said. "Because it does."
He looked at her sharply.
"What I feel for what is below this floor," she continued carefully, "is something I don't have words for yet. Something old. Something that was already there before I understood what it was." She paused. "But what you just said — what you've been carrying — that matters too. You matter too. I don't know how to make both of those things true at the same time, but they are."
Henry stared at her.
"That is —" He stopped. Started again. "That is possibly the most complicated answer anyone has ever given me."
"I know."
"It doesn't resolve anything."
"I know that too."
A beat of silence.
The wind moved through the corridor, carrying the smell of winter and cold stone. The rune on the door behind Beatrice pulsed once, softly, then settled.
Henry looked at the door.
Then back at her.
His expression had shifted — the rawness still there, but rearranging itself into something that looked, reluctantly, like resolution.
"You're going down regardless," he said. It wasn't a question.
"Yes," she said.
"Even knowing what my mother said. What my father believes. Even knowing what's been chained down there for three centuries and what it cost to put it there."
"He chose those chains," Beatrice said. "Not because he was dangerous. Because someone he loved was standing in the room and he wouldn't risk her." She held Henry's gaze. "That's not a monster."
"That's the opposite of one."