Sold to My Killer Husband: His Concubine's Dilemma
Chapter 90: You shouldn’t go alone

Chapter 90: You shouldn’t go alone

The observatory was cold that night, even with the hearth lit in the hallway beyond. Liora sat cross-legged on the marble floor, the map unfurled before her, weighed down by two candlesticks and a leather-bound journal she had borrowed, without permission, from Rowan’s personal collection.

She had copied the strange crescent symbol onto a scrap of paper and matched it against old estate schematics. Something didn’t align. The estate grounds should have ended at the rear wall near the stables, but this map showed a pathway curving deeper, past what should be solid earth.

"There’s something here," she whispered, eyes narrowing. "A tunnel."

A knock startled her. Not loud. Deliberate.

She pushed the map under the journal and called, "Enter."

It was Samuel.

He stepped in with a bowed head, glancing toward the hidden map with faint curiosity. "You missed evening supper. Rowan sent me to check."

"I wasn’t hungry," she replied, then hesitated. "Samuel... do you know of any tunnels beneath this estate?"

He stiffened. "No."

"Not even old servants’ passages?"

He met her gaze evenly. "This estate belonged to the Blackthorne line for three generations. If there were hidden tunnels, they weren’t meant to be found."

Liora studied him. "But you’ll help me find them?"

Samuel exhaled. "I’ll make sure you don’t end up buried beneath stone. That’s the best I can offer."

At the palace, Lucien’s absence from court sessions was beginning to raise questions. Rumors whispered of a rift between him and Alden, fabricated, perhaps, but useful to those with ambition.

And Lord Halric, a new face in court, intended to use that narrative well.

"I hear Lord Lucien grows tired of the estate," Halric said over tea, smiling like a snake wrapped in velvet. "Might he return to the capital? Perhaps to reclaim old alliances?"

Queen Dowager Lilian didn’t respond immediately. She sipped her tea and let the silence stretch like a blade.

"If he returns," she said coolly, "it will not be to reclaim. He never lost what was his. He only learned how to wait."

Halric’s smile tightened.

The court was shifting. And Lilian knew better than anyone—when whispers grew louder than decrees, someone was about to fall.

Back at the estate, Liora stood in the cellar beneath the library. Samuel held the lantern as she brushed dust from an old wooden wall panel. The crescent symbol was faint—scratched near the base.

She pressed her palm against it.

A click echoed, followed by a slow grind as the panel opened into a narrow stone corridor. Cold air poured out, stale and sharp like secrets never meant to breathe.

Samuel raised the lantern.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"No," she answered, stepping in anyway.

As they walked, she didn’t look back.

The tunnel walls pulsed with a damp chill, ancient moss curling up the stones like veins under skin. Samuel’s lantern threw long, trembling shadows across the narrow corridor as he followed behind Liora, one hand on the dagger at his belt.

They walked in silence, until the path forked.

"Left or right?" Samuel asked, holding the light higher.

Liora studied both ends. The right sloped downward and vanished into blackness. The left was narrower, nearly closed by collapsed debris, but something about it called to her.

"Left," she said.

Samuel grunted. "Of course."

They squeezed through the narrow gap, brushing against stone and earth, until it opened into a vaulted chamber. The air was thick with dust, and the walls bore faded murals, once vibrant but now eaten by time. A table stood at the center, draped in a rotting cloth, upon which rested parchments sealed in wax.

Liora reached for one. Samuel stopped her.

"Careful."

She ignored him and peeled the wax away.

Symbols scrawled in Cirisian script lined the paper....ones she had seen once before, in her father’s ledgers. But this was no merchant account. It was a coded treaty, incomplete but ominous.

She read aloud, translating slowly. "’To the Crown of Ciris, we offer safe harbor through the eastern glen, should the kingdom fall into civil unrest...."

Samuel’s expression darkened. "Treason."

She nodded. "And it was written long before Lucien’s disgrace. Someone was planning to weaken the court from within."

Just then, footsteps echoed from the path behind them.

Samuel blew out the lantern, pulling Liora into the shadows. They held their breath as a figure entered the chamber, robed and hooded, face obscured by a mask made of lacquered bone, crescent-shaped, just like the symbol on the map.

The masked figure moved to the table, checked the documents, then added a sealed scroll of their own.

When they turned to leave, Liora caught the faintest glimpse of a signet ring glinting under the lantern’s dim remnants.

Her stomach clenched. "That ring... it’s from the palace."

Samuel nodded slowly. "Looks like we just stepped into a war neither of us were invited to."

Meanwhile, at court, Alden was handed an anonymous letter sealed in plain wax. Its message was brief:

"Your brother was never the traitor. The east was breached long before Lucien fell. A witness returned."

He read it twice.

Then again.

And when he lifted his eyes to meet Rowan’s, they were no longer cold—they were burning.

"Summon the royal archive. I want every decree, every estate map, and every record from the year Lucien was exiled."

Rowan gave a shallow bow, eyes narrowed. "You think someone forged the path beneath his estate?"

Alden answered with steel in his voice. "No. I think someone built it on purpose

The war room’s torches flickered, casting erratic shadows across the long table carved with the map of Valeria and its bordering nations. Queen Dowager Lilian stood at the head, her expression unreadable as Halric, the Minister of the East, took his seat with the stiffness of a man trying too hard to appear indifferent.

A third figure entered, cloaked in merchant browns, face veiled lightly with a sheer scarf, just enough to hide the truth, but not the presence. The guards did not stop her. Lilian had given the order.

"I assume your information is worth the secrecy," Halric said coldly, eyeing the veiled woman.

She chuckled. "That depends. Is truth what you seek... or protection?"

Lilian’s voice was sharp. "Enough riddles. Show us."

The woman reached into her satchel and produced a hand-drawn map, aged at the edges but strikingly detailed. It mirrored the royal estate maps kept in the archives... but with one difference: a second underground route, cutting through the eastern hills, leading to the borderlands.

Halric stiffened. "This is..."

"Built under your watch, was it not?" The woman cut in. "A secret trade route, originally, for smuggling rare herbs. But someone repurposed it. Reinforced it. Now it’s a passage wide enough for soldiers. Quiet enough to be missed by the patrols."

Lilian folded her arms. "And you know this because?"

The woman pulled off her veil.

Beatrice.

Halric jolted. "You...."

"I’ve spent months cleaning the rot from under our feet, Minister," she said. "You can lie to the court. But not to me."

Lilian’s eyes narrowed. "And Lucien?"

Beatrice hesitated only a second. "He knew nothing. He was kept far from the eastern hall. Whatever is happening, whoever built those tunnels did so expecting Lucien to remain disgraced. And quiet."

The map trembled slightly in her hands.

Lilian walked closer. "Then we’ve all been fools."

"No," Beatrice replied. "You’ve all been played."

Meanwhile,

Lucien stared down at the letter Rowan had delivered. It wasn’t signed, but the script was familiar.

"I found the passage. It wasn’t made for you. It was made for a war that’s only beginning."

He folded the paper silently, slipping it into the sleeve of his tunic. Outside, the estate was quiet, too quiet. Samuel and Liora hadn’t returned yet. And for the first time, a tremor of unease passed through him.

Rowan stepped inside. "The palace is stirring. Lilian’s held a private council. They’ve summoned Halric. And Beatrice was seen entering."

Lucien’s jaw tightened. "Then it begins."

"Do we prepare for war?"

Lucien’s eyes turned toward the horizon, the wind catching at the drapes. "No. We prepare to rewrite the truth."

The estate’s southern stables were silent except for the occasional stamp of hooves and the creak of leather. Liora crouched behind the wooden fence, her breath visible in the cold morning air. Samuel knelt beside her, peering through the slats with narrowed eyes.

"There," she whispered. "Third rider from the left. The one adjusting his bracer."

Samuel nodded slowly. "The one with the crescent insignia on his shoulder."

"Exactly. That’s the mark from the mask," she murmured. "The man who passed the message to the guards during the disturbance in the market."

They watched as the man dismounted and passed through a side door into the old storage wing, one that hadn’t been used since before Lucien was sent away from the capital. That alone made it suspicious.

Liora touched Samuel’s arm. "Keep watch. I’ll follow."

"You shouldn’t go alone...."

"I won’t be," she said, slipping the blade Lucien had given her into her boot. "Besides, I need to know what they’re hiding."