Read Chapter 25: The Crypt's Secret

The crypt stank of damp stone and old bones, but Tom barely noticed. His fingers traced the box’s seam for the hundredth time, feeling for a catch, a hinge, anything the swordsmith’s words might have hidden. Nothing. The iron was cold, indifferent, a stubborn beast that refused to yield its belly.

A scrape of boot leather on stone made him freeze. A shadow lurched from behind a pillar—a thin man with a lantern held low, his face half-eaten by the dark. His coat was crusted with dirt, his nails caked black.

“You’re in my house,” the man said, his voice a dry rustle.

“Your house is a grave,” Tom said, keeping his weight on the balls of his feet. “I’m just borrowing the quiet.”

The man laughed, a wheeze that turned into a cough. “Quiet’s all I sell. That and the occasional ring or tooth.” He tilted the lantern, and the light caught the box in Tom’s hands. The man’s eyes went wide, hungry. “That’s a fine piece. Reliquary work. Vittorio the Younger, if I’m not mistaken.”

Tom’s grip tightened. “You know it?”

“Know it? I’ve robbed a dozen crypts that held his handiwork. That clasp, that iron—that’s not for keeping bones. That’s for keeping secrets.” The man shuffled closer, and Tom tensed, but the grave robber only squatted, studying the seam with the reverence of a jeweler. “Mortimer’s the name. You’ve got yourself a lockbox, boy, and a stubborn one. Whoever built it didn’t want it opened by force or wit.”

“Then how?”

Mortimer’s grin was a row of yellow teeth. “These old makers, they had their fancies. Some used keys. Some used words. But the oldest ones, the ones who worked for popes and kings…” He tapped the seam with a filthy finger. “They used blood. Royal blood, mind you. Pure as a priest’s lie. Anything less and the mechanism seals itself forever.”

Tom’s heart hammered. He thought of the phoenix mark on his chest, the burning bird that his mother had etched into his skin before she died. The swordsmith had called it a sign of royal descent. He’d thought it a fairy tale. Now, in this stinking crypt, with a grave robber grinning at him, it felt like the first true thing he’d learned in years.

He pulled his knife, and Mortimer flinched back. “Easy, boy—I ain’t after your purse.”

Tom ignored him. He pricked the tip of his index finger, a sharp sting, and a bead of blood welled up, dark and glossy. He pressed it to the seam of the box, where the iron met iron, and held his breath.

For a moment, nothing. Then the box warmed—not the heat of a summer day, but a sudden, fierce glow that made Tom gasp and drop it onto the stone floor. The iron pulsed with a dull red light, like a coal waking from sleep. The seam shimmered, and Tom thought he saw it widen, just a hair’s breadth, before it snapped shut again with a metallic clang.

Mortimer stared, his mouth agape. “By Christ. It’s true. It actually answered you.”

Tom snatched the box up, cradling it against his chest. The heat faded, leaving the iron cool again, but something had changed. He had felt it—the mechanism inside had *stirred*. It had recognized him.

“It wants more,” he muttered. “More blood. Or something else.”

“More blood won’t do it,” Mortimer said, his voice hushed. “The old makers, they didn’t just need any royal drop. They needed the founder’s line. The one who started the order. If you’re that blood, it’ll open when the time’s right. If not—” he shrugged. “It’ll burn you to ash trying.”

Tom looked down at the box. The phoenix on his chest seemed to pulse with the same rhythm as the fading glow. His mother’s letter had said the mark was older than the crown. Maybe it was older than this box too. Maybe the box was waiting for something he didn’t yet know how to give.

A crash echoed from above—the heavy doors of the crypt groaning on their hinges, then splintering under a boot. Tom’s head snapped up. Boots thundered down the stone steps, a dozen of them at least, and torchlight flooded the darkness.

Percy’s men.

Mortimer cursed and scrambled toward a crack in the far wall, vanishing into the shadows like a rat. Tom had no such escape. The steps were the only way out, and they were filling with steel and leather.

He pressed himself against the cold stone of a tomb, the box clutched to his chest. His finger still stung, the blood not yet dry. He could run—but where? The crypt had one entrance, and it was crawling with armed men.

The first of them appeared at the bottom of the steps: a hulking brute with a scarred face and a cudgel in his fist. Behind him, more poured in, fanning out to cut off any hope of escape. At the rear, a slimmer figure stepped into the torchlight, his cloak the color of dried blood.

Red cloak. The same red cloak Nell had described.

The man’s eyes found Tom, and a thin smile spread across his face. “The Flea. Lord Percy sends his regards.”

Tom’s mind raced. He had seconds, maybe less. The box was warm against his chest, still humming with that strange, half-awakened energy. He thought of his mother, of the letter hidden in the dirt, of the names locked inside this iron cage—names that could bring Percy down, names that could clear her, names that could save his sister.

He couldn’t die here. Not in a grave robber’s hole, with the truth six inches from his hands.

“Tell Percy,” Tom said, his voice steady despite the fear clawing at his throat, “that I’ve opened the box. I know what’s inside. And if I don’t walk out of here, the whole city will know it before dawn.”

The man in the red cloak laughed—a cold, brittle sound. “You’re bluffing, boy. The box is sealed. We both know it.”

Tom smiled, and it felt like a snarl. “Ask your maker if his mechanism likes the taste of my blood. Go on. Ask him if it glowed for him.”

The man’s smile faltered. For the first time, uncertainty flickered in his eyes. He took a step forward, and the men around him tensed, waiting for the order.

Tom backed against the tomb, the box pressed to his heart. The heat was returning, faint but unmistakable, as if the box itself knew the danger and was gathering its strength.

“I don’t bluff,” Tom said. “I survive.”

The red-cloaked man’s hand drifted to his sword hilt. “Then let’s see how long that lasts.”