"Who is there?" Brantley jumped out of the chair. There was nothing when he looked back.

For the next twenty four hours, they had searched and combed the entire castle and even the city, but they couldn't find any suspect who could lead them. All of them were now panicky that Elize must have gone very far. Caleb had to be sedated strongly all over again as he had become violent and wanted to leave Ixoviya to find Elize. The problem was that they didn't want him to go on a wild goose chase.

​​

They were all standing around Caleb wondering what to do next when Ileus said, "I think we should look once again in the castle. Yesterday Brantley was talking about secret passages. We should start looking into them. Most of these passages are attached to every chamber as they circle around the castle and end into the backyards or the kitchens or into the towers."

The memory of him being trapped into a tower flashed across Daryn's mind and he stiffened. "We should, but I have no clue as to where the hell those are!" Daryn said exasperatedly. He had asked Dawn to go back to Bainsburgh and was increasingly becoming hypersensitive about her security. Her chamber was now guarded by four soldiers outside the door. There were at least a dozen outside Caleb's room, each standing in a pair at regular intervals in the corridor that led to his room.

Ileus ran his hand through his hair. "Let's just scour through the castle once again in that case."

Daryn took a deep breath. He looked at Brantley and asked, "Will you be able to sit with him?"

He nodded. The wounds had healed completely. "I can," he replied with a serious note in his voice and the others left on his assurance.

While watching over Caleb, Brantley couldn't help thinking about Dawn. He wished she was away from all this chaos and back in Bainsburgh but she should stay at Silver Arcade so that Neal could protect her. He rested his head back on the chair and closed his eyes. He thought he heard a creak, but then shook his head thinking that he had imagined it. There was so much tension going on that there were knots in his shoulders and back muscles.

Suddenly a man's sharp voice from behind made him jump, "Die!" He was jabbed with something very sharp.

Brantley winced in pain as he saw the man standing behind him with a sharp edged dagger in one hand. With disheveled hair and clothes that were stinking, he looked like he had walked out of a hellhole.

"Who are you?" asked Brantley with wide eyes, shocked as hell. He felt the warm blood gushing out of his wound on his shirt. Where the hell did he come from?

"I am Levi. This bastard king here—he killed my father, who had been Sedora's chef from over a century," the man snapped. "I will avenge my father and kill him now!"

"Are you mad?" said Brantley as he tightened his fists. "You will not be able to escape out of this place if you think you can kill the king!"

The man ground his teeth and lunged at Brantley with his dagger to kill him, but Brantley moved his fist and pounded him with such force that the man fell backwards. Immediately the man jumped back to his feet. Brantley lunged at him but the man rolled to the right and Brantley fell flat on his stomach. By the time he balanced and got up, he saw that the man was near Caleb.

Brantley's mind froze. He looked at the man as he lifted his dagger to plunge it into Caleb's throat. With fierce energy Brantley lunged at him and before the man could plunge the dagger, he had pounced on him and together they fell on the other side of the bed. In the tussle that followed, with a chilling roar, Levi sank his dagger into Brantley's arm. Blood gushed out like a fountain. Brantley bellowed in pain. His claws projected and he slashed Levi's face in a way that his skin ruptured to the bones. Even though a lot of blood flowed out of his wounds, Levi barreled into Brantley's chest and together they crashed into the bed's headboard near a dazed Caleb. The wood splintered into hundreds of pieces.

Not able to understand what was happening around him, Caleb got up. There was a throbbing headache and the noises only made it worse. He tried to focus his vision in front of him and all he saw was two immortals fighting at such speed that it was impossible to follow their movements.

The pair had rolled off to the floor and when they got up, they were still fighting to kill each other.

"Brantley!" a voice boomed.

---

When Daryn and Lazarus heard the roar in the castle, they darted back to Caleb's chamber. Daryn's heart dropped to his stomach. Brantley was covered in a lot of blood and was fighting with a man who looked as if he was on a spree to kill him and at the same time was taking his shot with a dagger towards Caleb.

"Remove Caleb from the bed while I take this son of a bitch!" Daryn said to Lazarus and charged towards the man. Even though he was tempted to use his magic, he knew that if he did, there were chances that Brantley would hit.

Lazarus immediately dragged Caleb out of the bed and made him sit on the chair at the far corner of the room. Caleb looked at him with blurry vision. "Where is Elize?" he asked.

Along with Brantley, Daryn suppressed the man in a few minutes. Daryn waved his fingers and the man was bound in white lights that roped around him and sputtered to burn his skin every time he tried to move.

Brantley spat blood from his mouth and said, "He is the Jhun's son, Levi!"

"Where did he come from?" asked Daryn, bewildered because when he left other than Brantley and healers, no one was there.

Even though he was horribly wounded, Levi laughed like a madman. "This bloody castle has way too many spells otherwise I would have easily killed this bastard and gone!"

"How did you manage to enter?" he asked.

He spoke in a labored voice, "I was one of the servants who brought Caleb and that woman to the royal chamber. None knew when I slipped inside the bathroom and opened the door to the secret passage."

Daryn frowned. "How did you know about the secret passages?"

The man shifted to sit on his hips and grunted when the lights burnt his skin. "My father had mentioned long back about this passage when he was a cook with our queen. I was waiting for the perfect opportunity to kill him from a day," Levi said.

Lazarus raised his eyebrow. "So you had been hiding here from a day to find an opportunity?"

"Yes," Levi hissed.

But Lazarus wasn't convinced. Something was missing. "Don't you know about the spells of the castle? After all you've been here longer than any of us?" he asked in a cold voice. Why would a man hide to kill the king knowing very well that he was fully trapped?

"I didn't…" he hissed again. "I came to know about them when I hid in the passage."