Chapter 13: The Traitor in the Dungeon and the Sister Who Vanished
625words
That came from Raccoon, face pale like he’d just come back from a ghost tour.
I was holding breakfast—pot in one hand, flatbread in the other. “You’re telling me there’s a dungeon under our warehouse?”
He nodded hard. “I fell in. And I saw someone—someone locked up down there!”
My brow lifted. I didn’t hesitate.
“Alright. Night raid on the dungeon.”
“Can’t we do it during the day?” Amy asked.
“‘Night raid’ sounds cooler,” I said.
So that night, under a sliver of moonlight, we snuck back into the warehouse. Between heaps of torn cloth and old grain sacks, we peeled away a floorboard—and sure enough, there was a narrow hole, sloping into the dark like a serpent’s tongue.
Firewood lit a small lamp. “Feels cold down there.”
“Good,” I said. “That’s where the truth likes to sleep.”
The dungeon wasn’t big—just three cells. In the last one, a woman sat behind the iron bars.
Her back was to us, hair tangled, shoulders wrapped in a filthy cloak. Her skin was pale, almost translucent.
When we stepped closer, she turned her head.
And I froze.
She looked… exactly like me.
“Who are you?” I asked.
She stared at me for a long moment. Then in a soft voice, she said:
“...Are you Daphne?”
My heart skipped.
“You know me?”
“Of course,” she smiled faintly. “I watched you being born.”
“I’m your sister.”
My world flipped sideways.
“I… I have a sister?”
“You had one,” she said gently, though exhaustion weighed down her every word. “But no one wanted you to know I survived.”
“They said I was crazy. ‘Unstable.’ So they locked me away.”
“I thought Father would save me, but instead… he chose your mother.”
I clenched my fists. “Why? What did you do?”
Her eyes held both sorrow and steel.
“I tried to abolish slavery.”
“I pushed for reform. I gathered support from younger nobles. But your mother found out. She wrote a petition herself—claimed I was ‘tainted by wolf blood,’ and mentally broken.”
“After that, I disappeared.”
“She made sure you became the only ‘legitimate daughter.’”
My heart thudded painfully in my chest.
“Why does she hate us?”
“She doesn’t,” my sister said quietly. “She only loves herself.”
I knelt by the bars, gripping the cold iron. “I’ll get you out.”
She shook her head.
“Not yet.”
“You’re still too low in rank. If you free me now, they’ll know you were here. They’ll know you’re digging into the truth.”
“I can wait. But you… you have to rise higher.”
“High enough that they can’t touch you.”
I was quiet for a long time, then gave a slow nod.
“Alright.”
“Then tell me—what’s her real plan?”
Her gaze sharpened, voice dropping to a near whisper.
“She’s building a new king.”
“A wolf-blooded ruler she’s raised and tamed.”
“And you… you’re the old piece she plans to sacrifice.”
Just then—footsteps echoed from above.
“Go!” I hissed. “No time to close the trapdoor!”
I looked back at her. She just smiled.
“Don’t worry. I won’t tell them you came.”
“You’re my only hope.”
We scrambled back to the Gray Tower, breathless and shaken. Outside, the moon spilled silver over the cracked rooftops.
Raccoon hugged his knees and whispered, “Boss… you really have a sister?”
I nodded. “She’s been locked up for ten years.”
“And I’m the only family she still dares to trust.”
Sitting by the bed, I clutched the folded list in my hand.
And for the first time, I understood.
My mother hadn’t started her schemes just recently.
She’d made her first move the day I was born.
But now?
Now she would learn something new—
This pawn had started playing her own game.
