The taste of blood was the first thing Seven noticed.

  The second was pain—a dull, aching thud in her head like someone was pounding on it over and over again with a mallet. Which, given the evening she’d just had, was probably somewhat accurate.

  Groaning, Seven tried to roll over. Her ribs protested. Her arms screamed. Even her neck complained with a sharp jolt that made her wince. And Thirteen take her, she’d never been so cold in her life. She frowned, trying to piece together why that would be. Hadn’t she been right next to…

  Her eyes fluttered open.

  Seven swore faintly, sitting up on one aching elbow to survey the area. Her scowl deepened as the world swam into view—blurry, yes, but better than before. What she could make out through the haze didn’t fit with the last surroundings she’d seen.

  Gone were the jagged peaks and bizarre cliffs of the deep sector. Gone were the pools of lava, that striking cathedral city spanning out in all directions. Instead, she was lying on a soft mat atop a marble floor—far too worked to be natural. The walls were smooth, their surfaces gleaming faintly. Crystalline shards of glass provided warm light from the ceiling, and a tiny window in the corner glowed faintly orange from behind shutters. The room was otherwise far too normal for Hell’s Maw. A desk sat in the far corner beside a bookshelf, neat and organized despite their surroundings.

  And sitting there…

  “Moore,” she breathed.

  At first, she thought it was a trick. Some cruel illusion conjured by blood loss and desperation. But no—those were the familiar, cragged lines of his face. The way his grey hair stuck out at odd angles from being tangled in his hands while studying legal documents. He was thinner, yes. Paler. But he was still Moore.

  And his eyes softened the moment they met hers. As they always had.

  She shook her head, the motion making her skull throb. “I don’t…I don’t get it. Is this some kind of joke? I—why are you down here?”

  Moore smiled, looking a bit sheepish. He settled down on a cushion in front of the bedroll as she struggled to a sitting position, leaning heavily against the wall for support. Her mangled arm, she noticed with distant surprise, was expertly bandaged.

  “It’s no joke, I’m afraid.”

  “But how? I mean, are you okay? Is everyone at home okay? What happened?”

  The questions tumbled out too fast, panic edging into her voice. Moore avoided her eyes and let out a small sigh, then leaned over to flip the switch on a tiny kettle encased in the glowing coals of dice.

  “It’s a long story.” He paused as something roared outside—distant but powerful enough that the walls shook faintly. Moore’s face went pale, but he spoke anyway, reaching over to snag a cup from a nearby makeshift cupboard. “I suppose I’ve got plenty of time to explain it.”

  He set the cup down carefully before continuing. “I warned you away from LMC for a reason. When your father sent you away, I knew you’d gone this direction. As you probably know by now, I hadn’t heard anything from young Emmet in some time.” His voice grew quieter. “With you headed this way, I tried to send a warning to him. It was intercepted.”

  A wry smile tugged at his lips. “A day later, men from LMC showed up at my doorstep. I suppose they got wind that I was digging around in the legality of their operation, and with my proximity to the crown, they didn’t like it.”

  That smile faded. The bubbling of the kettle filled the room, a gentle counterpoint to the weight of his words.

  “They threw me down here to die, I suppose, though I’m a little insulted at the prospect. I can’t fight, but I’m not a fool.”

  “But surely father would do something,” Seven said, though even as the words left her mouth, she couldn’t help but feel a little foolish for her optimism. “I mean, he had to have sent someone after you. You can’t just kidnap someone from crown property and vanish into the night with them.”

  “Dearest Seventra.” Moore’s voice was gentle, but firm. “You don’t need to spare my feelings. I know what I am in the eyes of your father, and House Veil—a useful tool. No more, no less.” He met her eyes, unflinching. “Your father doesn’t remember where he left the hammer if there’s no more nail to bother him.”

  No more nail.

  There was no malice in Moore’s words, but they hit her just the same. That was all she was to her father, wasn’t it? A loose nail sticking out from the side of a mangled piece of wood. Something to be hammered back into place or discarded entirely.

  “You’re not just my minder,” she said, though her words felt like a lie even as they left her tongue. “You work through the legalities of ruling a kingdom. Surely that’s of some use to him.”

  “Perhaps.” Moore leaned over to pour steaming water over some sort of berries, the fragrant steam curling between them. “But he won’t need my services for some time, I’d wager. Your father’s focus is on the trouble in Veilhome—not on the rest of the kingdom. And in Veilhome, he doesn’t have to bother with frivolous things like legality.”

  Seven scowled at that, taking the offered cup and nearly scalding her hands with it. She shifted her grip, blowing on the surface. “What trouble?”

  Moore shrugged, his eyes going distant. “The same as when you left. Dice, losing their stability, their power. Some cracking without provocation.”

  Seven’s fingertips went cold in spite of the warmth of the mug. Splitting a dice might level several city blocks if it was high tier enough. The devastation would be catastrophic.

  “So it wasn’t me,” she whispered, feeling some sort of relief trickle into her mind—fragile and uncertain. “It was never me.”

  “Not that I can tell.” Moore sipped from his own mug, his eyes worried. “It’s possible you started the degradation, but considering this is happening with dice you’ve never touched at all, I would doubt it.” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “Regardless, Veilhome’s troubles may have some sort of connection to LMC. It wasn’t fortunate that they dumped me down here to die—and apparently you now—but it is fortunate that we can finally investigate them without issues.”

  “You think they’re behind it,” she guessed.

  Moore took some time to respond. In the silence, there was another distant roar that made the hair on the back of Seven’s neck stand up. She could feel it in her bones—whatever was out there, it was massive. Dangerous. When Moore finally spoke, his voice was uncertain.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “I have no reason to believe they are,” he admitted, “but I suspect it strongly.”

  “You’re right to suspect it.” Seven took a sip of the tea, grateful for the warmth. It was fruity and slightly sweet, and her headache ebbed at the taste. “I went digging around in their headquarters and—”

  “You what?”

  She waved him off, ignoring the sharp look he gave her. “You were doing the same thing,” she snapped. “You can’t act like you’re the only one who gets to dig around.”

  “Still…”

  “And I had another reason to be in their headquarters anyway.” Moore let out a heavy sigh, but he didn’t interrupt her again, seemingly resigned to her antics—even in hell, apparently. Seven almost smiled at that. “What I found was just icing on the cake.”

  “What did you find?”

  Seven glanced at him, expecting to find that familiar look of disapproval in his eyes. Instead, Moore looked at her almost like an equal. There was a tiny spark of excitement in his gaze—the look of a scholar who’d just stumbled onto something important.

  “Schematics,” she said. “Plans to modify dice like the one that framed me. If they’re modifying them, then what else are they doing to them?” She shook her head, frustration bleeding into her voice. “I wasn’t able to find out more before I had to leave—”

  She winced, thinking about the fire. The heat. The way the building had groaned as it started to collapse.

  “—but I’ve also found unmarked tunnels filled with equipment, and abandoned. They’re promising miners that we won’t need luck anymore, Moore—that they’ll eliminate it entirely.” She leaned forward, lowering her voice. “They’ve got to be trying to dig up something down here—I just can’t figure out what.”

  “They’ve been saying the same thing back in Veilhome,” he replied, stroking his beard in thought. “But finding proof…” He trailed off, frowning. “You’d have to practically turn the entire mines upside down.”

  Seven stared into her tea, her aches forgotten with the new problem at hand. The steam curled away from the surface, making the room seem far away. Distant. She watched the patterns shift and dance.

  “I think LMC already did.”

  Moore blinked at her, obviously baffled. He was a smart man—brilliant, even. But Seven dealt in patterns. It was how she’d survived under her father’s boot for so long. How she’d risen to the top in Beggar’s Chance. And yet, she’d been so focused on finding the pattern that she’d forgotten that a lack of pattern was just as important.

  “There’s nothing up top,” she explained, her thoughts tumbling too fast from her mouth. “They have plenty of shifts up there, given to no-name miners that they’d just as soon see dead as turn a profit. Those mines are barren of anything of importance, or they wouldn’t let anyone access them.”

  She set her cup down, gesturing as she spoke. “But every time I got close to something—anything—they moved me. If I found new, untouched ore, they’d reassign me. If I caused a cave-in that led to a new sector, they’d give me double overtime in a safer sector.”

  The pieces were clicking together now, falling into place with a certainty that made her heart beat too fast in her chest. “I wasn’t allowed to collaborate with Emmet, and when I did, they stormed into the house to have their way with our stuff.” She shifted, wincing at her aching leg. “Hidden tunnel? It collapses. Schematics or a lead on the dice that framed me? A fire.”

  She tapped her fingers against the cup, the rhythm matching her racing thoughts. “And now you, thrown down in the same place as me. It’s a pattern. Someone’s cleaning up the evidence.”

  “Well, that much is clear, but I don’t see how that helps us.”

  “It does,” she insisted, her words growing faster, more urgent. “If they’d wanted to kill us, they could have done it in Veilhome—to you, at least. I was just a bad accident away from having the same thing happen. One job-site incident, a bad shift, a good shove off a platform.” She snapped her fingers. “Easy. But they didn’t. They brought us here.”

  Moore’s face went pale. His own tea sat forgotten in his hands.

  “They’re not just dumping bodies,” Seven went on, remembering the mounds outside of Luckville. The way the earth had been disturbed, piled high with hasty graves. “They have a place for that. But anyone who knows anything, anyone whose corpse might send the crown to investigate—those, they dump down here.”

  She leaned forward, now certain. The logic was inescapable. “We’re not worth the risk of being found. If LMC has been messing with dice, destabilizing them…if whatever they’ve been doing is tied to this degradation…”

  She paused as another distant roar shook the walls. Her fingers stilled.

  “…then this place is either where it started—”

  Moore’s voice was solemn as he finished her sentence: “Or where they’re trying to bury it.”

  Seven and Moore sat in silence for several minutes. Nothing but the faint roars, the bubbling kettle, and the sounds of Pocket humming in what Seven figured was a kitchen for company. The weight of their discovery hung heavy in the air between them. Finally, Moore sighed.

  “Regardless, we’ve got bigger problems to deal with.” He set his cup down with careful precision. “If we find evidence but can’t find a way out, then all of this was for nothing.”

  Seven blinked, surprised. “I have a way out.”

  “One sponsored by LMC?” Moore asked, his eyebrow raised. Seven winced, and Moore rolled his eyes. “Whatever they promised you, we can assume it’s null and void at this point. But the only other way I know out of here is guarded by one of those…things.”

  “The creature that attacked me?”

  Moore shook his head, his expression grim. “Worse. Bigger. The others look to it as a leader. I’m not even sure what species it is, to be frank with you—I’ve never had the misfortune of getting that close.” His eyes met hers, serious. “And I don’t intend for either of us to get close enough to find out.”

  “I’ll go,” Seven said immediately.

  Moore looked at her like she was crazy.

  “Seventra, I just pulled you from a puddle of your own blood not three hours ago. And you’re…”

  He trailed off, his eyes scanning her. But besides the doubt in his voice, there was something else she could sense just on the edges of his words—a bluff. He knew something. Something he wasn’t saying.

  “You know what I can do, don’t you, Moore?” she asked quietly, meeting his eyes.

  It was a gamble of her own—one that was easy to make, given that it was Moore of all people. But Moore had known what she could do to dice more intimately than anyone she was close to. It wouldn’t surprise her at all if he’d pieced together the rest of it—whatever it was.

  For a moment he stared at her, chewing on his lip. Then he sighed, running a hand through his salt and pepper hair. “I know some of it,” he admitted. “Or suspected, anyway.”

  His eyes found hers again, and he stared at her for a long time before he spoke. “You’ve got to be at the second stack by now, at least.”

  “The second what?”

  “The second stack.” He reached for her hand, and Seven gave it to him. The little triangles on her mottled palm flashed gold once. Moore studied the markings, murmuring to himself. “I dug through some of your family records while I still had the chance, but—Seven, you shouldn’t be able to do anything with it. Whatever this is has been dormant for a thousand years, perhaps. More, even.”

  “I can’t do much with it,” she admitted. “Run a little faster. Hit a little harder.”

  He shook his head, his eyes serious. “You’ve barely scratched the surface. A fully-awakened Veil has access to all twenty faces of the dice.” He tapped her palm gently. “I’m not sure what all of them do, given that nearly every bit of documentation on the subject was burned or hidden, but I’m almost certain you’re an anomaly.”

  An anomaly. The word hung between them, heavy with implication.

  “Anomaly or not,” Seven said, “if you’ve got some shards lying around, I can carve us a path through.”

  She wasn’t sure if there was any real truth behind her words—certainly she’d just gotten her ass handed to her by some sort of furry monstrosity outside—but she had to find a way out of Hell’s Maw somehow. Especially now that Moore was involved. She couldn’t leave him here. Wouldn’t.

  For a moment, he stared at her again, his eyes sad and a little afraid. Then he smiled, nodded, and patted her shoulder.

  “While the mentor in me is screaming many profanities, I’ve been down here far too long to refuse your offer.” He stood, wincing as his knees creaked. “Let’s get you some shards, and I’ll see what we can do.”

  Also, if you'd like to read ahead, or sign up for free for news and updates, you can find my .

  NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s and publisher’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.