“He made the mask.”
The Prince looked down at the broken gold.
“What?”
The Keeper stepped closer.
“The royal metalworker.”
The Queen recognized the implication.
“He hid the key.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because the King knew they would separate him from every ally.”
The Prince asked, “Why not simply give the key to someone?”
“The prison door was not locked from outside.”
Everyone frowned.
The Keeper pointed at the key.
“That is not the cell key.”
The Prince looked at it.
“Then what is it?”
“The sea-gate release.”
The Captain cursed softly.
The Keeper explained.
Beneath the western sea wall lay a network of ancient tunnels built before the present citadel. Most were flooded except at low tide.
One chamber had been converted centuries earlier into a royal emergency prison.
Only two entrances existed.
A narrow internal stair.
And an iron sea gate opening into a cave beneath the cliffs.
The internal stair could be guarded.
The sea gate could only be opened using a counterweight mechanism requiring the black key.
The King apparently realized his captors controlled the palace entrance.
So he had the metalworker hide the release key inside the ceremonial mask.
“Why the mask?”
The Prince asked.
The Keeper looked at him.
“Because no Regent could destroy a coronation relic without attracting questions.”
The Queen stared at the shattered gold.
“Unless he convinced us never to inspect it.”
“Yes.”
The Prince felt sick.
Twelve years.
His father might have been hundreds of feet away.
Under the same palace.
While he grew from a ten-year-old child into a man.
“Is he alive?”
The Keeper did not answer.
The Prince stepped closer.
“Is he alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Eleven years ago.”
The Prince’s heart dropped.
The Queen whispered, “Why?”
“The Regent removed me from the western archives.”
The Keeper’s shame deepened.
“He threatened my grandchildren. I obeyed.”
The Prince wanted to rage.
He wanted to call them cowards.
The Captain.
The Keeper.
Every official who had remained silent.
Then he looked around the arena.
The Regent had spent twelve years building a kingdom in which people feared the cost of truth more than the cost of lies.
That was not one coward’s failure.
That was a system.
The Queen understood the same thing.
“We go now.”
The Captain hesitated.
“My Queen, the Regent has escaped.”
“Exactly.”
“He will know where we are going.”
“Then we reach my husband first.”
The Prince tightened his hand around the key.
“I’m coming.”
The Queen turned.
“No.”
He stared.
“No?”
“No.”
“He is my father.”
“And you are the heir.”
“Which matters if he is dead.”
The Queen’s face hardened.
“Do not say that.”
“You just spent twelve years being told not to question his death.”
“That does not mean I am willing to risk yours.”
The Prince stepped closer.
“You cannot ask me to remain upstairs while you walk into the prison where he may have been kept.”
“I am not asking.”
“That sounds like the Regent.”
The Queen froze.