CHAPTER 38: THE GREAT CAKE ESCAPE

The palace’s escape tunnels were supposed to be a closely guarded royal secret.

Judging by the cobwebs, mold, and very confused family of raccoons staring at us from the corner, the King hadn’t bothered using them in years.

"Left or right?" Lilith whispered, holding a small lantern.

Vorren sniffed the air like some kind of crime bloodhound. "Left smells like damp stone. Right smells like dried blood and burnt sugar."

I grinned. "Right it is."

We moved in single file, the walls narrowing until my ridiculous gold-trimmed coat was scraping both sides. Somewhere behind us, faint shouts echoed — guards had found the empty cells.

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The passage sloped downward, the air growing warmer. Eventually, the stone gave way to a carved archway. Beyond it was...

"A bakery?" I asked aloud.

Not just any bakery — an enormous subterranean one. Dozens of ovens lined the walls, most cold and abandoned, but a few still flickered with low orange light. Flour dust hung in the air like fog.

Vorren frowned. "This wasn’t here last time I came through."

Jex’s voice dropped to a whisper. "That’s because it’s not supposed to be here."

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Lilith crept forward, brushing her fingers over a table stacked with fresh bread. "Who the hell is running an underground bakery under the palace?"

That’s when a door slammed open on the far side of the room.

A woman in a flour-dusted apron stormed out, carrying a tray of steaming pies. She froze when she saw us. We froze too — partly from surprise, partly because the pies smelled like cinnamon and temptation.

She set the tray down slowly, eyes narrowing. "You’re not supposed to be here."

Vorren took a step forward. "Neither are you."

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The woman sighed, then whistled.

From the shadows, three hulking figures emerged — each wearing aprons, each holding rolling pins like clubs.

I muttered to Lilith, "I think we just found the militant wing of the Pastry Guild."

The lead baker cracked her knuckles. "You’ve seen too much. No witnesses."

I put my hands up. "Easy now. We’re all professionals here. I also bake under pressure."

Her glare didn’t soften. The rolling-pin squad advanced.

Lilith groaned. "Of course. Out of all the secret things we could have stumbled on, it had to be this."

"Relax," I whispered. "How bad could they be?"

The first rolling pin swung, missing my head by an inch and leaving a dent in the stone wall.

"Okay," I admitted, "bad."

The first baker lunged again, swinging her rolling pin like it was forged in the heart of a volcano. I ducked, narrowly avoiding the kind of concussion that comes with a side of yeast. The air filled with the smell of warm cinnamon and imminent violence.

Vorren met one of the bakers head-on, catching a rolling pin with his bare hand and shoving the man backward into a flour sack. The sack burst, coating them both in a ghostly cloud. For a second, it looked like two snowmen wrestling to the death.

Jex darted between tables, swiping a handful of biscuits and cramming them into his mouth as if that was somehow going to help. Lilith, on the other hand, moved with lethal precision — a duck here, a shove there, sending one baker stumbling into an oven door with a painful clang.

"Why are you even fighting us?" I shouted, sidestepping another swing. "We could be allies! I love baked goods!"

The lead baker’s face was a mask of pure fury. "This bakery is the palace’s deepest secret. We supply the King’s special pastries. No one can know."

"Special?" I asked. "Like... poisoned?"

She hesitated just long enough for me to swipe one of the pies off the table.

I took a bite. "Mmm... no poison. Just a frankly suspicious amount of nutmeg."

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That was all the distraction I needed. I lobbed the rest of the pie at her face. She blocked it with her rolling pin, but the filling splattered across her apron, making her slip as she charged.

Vorren roared and barreled through the remaining bakers like a one-man stampede, clearing a path to the back door. Lilith yanked me by the collar. "Move it, before you start a pastry war."

We bolted through a narrow hallway lined with shelves of cooling tarts. Jex, naturally, grabbed two on the way out. Behind us, the bakers’ shouts echoed, growing fainter as we plunged deeper into the tunnel system.

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The air shifted again — warmer, with a faint metallic tang. The tunnel opened into a cavernous chamber lit by braziers. Stone pillars rose up like ribs, and in the center... was a massive, locked gate.

Vorren slowed, frowning. "That wasn’t here before either."

I stepped closer. The gate was carved with strange symbols — wheat stalks intertwined with crowns, loaves of bread split in two, and what looked disturbingly like a severed baguette over a royal seal.

Lilith touched the cold iron. "Whatever’s behind this... the King doesn’t want anyone finding it."

I grinned. "Then we’re obviously going in."

Jex smirked. "Finally, something interesting."

Behind us, faintly, the bakers’ angry voices echoed again. We didn’t have much time.