The natural pathway across the landscape ceased to exist.

“Start the curve now?” Leander shouted over his shoulder.

“Yes. A wide curve, not a sharp one.” Sander couldn’t spot landmarks any longer, but was going by gut instinct rather than sight. He hoped his inner compass led them in the right direction.

The snowmobile slowed to a crawl.

“You want me to take over?” Sander asked when, after fifteen minutes, the pace didn’t increase.

“I’m wondering if we should stop and make camp. Ride it out for a few hours. I have to be honest, Sander: I think I’m taking a wide curve, but I can’t be sure. Everything looks the same. Driving into blowing snow only makes the disorientation worse. Maybe we’ll catch a break if we give it time to pass over,” Leander replied.

“We haven’t even covered two miles yet,” Sander said. The pressing need to continue overwhelmed him. Realistically, somewhere deep inside, he knew Leander was right. They should stop before they got seriously lost.

“Think this is the right heading?” Leander asked.

“It’s close. We won’t run into any serious ditches for a while.” Sander wished he felt as certain as he sounded.

“Unless we’ve gotten way off track,” Leander said. “If we’re still on the trail, then no. There aren’t any killer ditches for another several miles. But there are nasty ditches off the road.”

“We have to keep going,” Sander said. “If we stop, and the blizzard lasts for days, we’ll put ourselves at risk of running out of food sooner than later.”

“Food won’t matter much if we flip over and the snowmobile lands on our heads. I know your head is hard as a rock, but mine . . .” Leander let the tepid joke trail.

“Let’s go. We have to keep moving.” Sander felt certain of that. Death awaited them if they hunkered down and attempted to ride out the blizzard. Maybe death waited in a ditch, but that was a risk they just had to take.

Certainties versus maybes.

It sucked either way.

Leander gave the snowmobile gas and slowly drove into the storm.

Chey’s search for matches in one of the desks and a holder near the fireplace came up empty. She wasn’t surprised. Nearly all useable resources had long been gathered and moved to more suitable rooms.

Peering through the gloom, Chey decided to finish her current search. It was better than sitting and twiddling her thumbs until someone came to the door. Which could be hours from now. She needed to be active, to move. To use her time wisely.

As she pressed her fingers along the seam of the molding, Chey had a startling thought.

What if Helina had chosen this room because she knew there was a secret entrance? What if the whole thing was a setup, part of making her death look like an accident? Without light, she could easily get lost in the maze of tunnels. She might trip up a set of stairs, or down them.

Chey paused and thought harder about her decision.

With her out of the way, Helina only had to get rid of the children. Chey envisioned Helina using Elias’s bravado and honor against him, pretending to send the kids off to the docks where their ‘mother awaited’. Leaving Elias, who could not fully understand the imminent danger, in charge of leading his siblings overland.

Into certain death.

A chill gripped Chey’s spine. She shuddered, pressing her hand flat against the wall for support.

Helina wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t condemn children to death despite her desire to retake Latvala. All the posturing and veiled threats are tools to upset me. Chey was not sure she believed her own reasoning. The argument raged on in her head for long minutes until she started her search again. She pried and pushed and prodded at the molding, reminding herself that it wouldn’t be the first time the former queen wanted someone dead. The babies were Helina’s stepgrandchildren, not related by blood, which probably made the unspeakable task easier.

Maybe, too, Helina had become more unhinged in exile, forced away from the castles and thrones she was used to. Unhinged enough to do whatever necessary to regain control.

Another thought struck as Chey rose on her tiptoes to reach higher along the wall. What if, by some divine miracle, Helina had forgotten about the tunnels? What if this had been the nearest, most convenient room to put her in, and Helina hadn’t plotted any intricate demise other than the ones she’d blatantly stated? That would mean Helina wouldn’t be expecting her to turn up elsewhere in the castle, and Chey might gain an element of surprise after all.

“There has to be a doorway here.” Chey set aside her concerns over premeditated murder plans and searched more diligently for a tunnel entrance.

A half hour later, exhausted and having failed to find a door, she sank into the comfortable cushions of a couch and put up her feet. She needed five minutes to rest. Five minutes to think. Maybe she was missing the obvious.

Throwing an arm over her forehead, she evened out her breathing and studied what details she could see in the gloom, hoping for inspiration.

Perhaps something would jump out at her from a position of distance instead of right up against the walls.

Fireplace, bookshelves, molding. She’d pushed and pulled and sought hidden levers in them all.

Her gaze landed on the dark shape of a hall tree and moved on.

Then it snapped back.

A woman’s hat and two scarves hung off the coat hooks, as if someone had recently put them there. So casual, unassuming.

Putting her feet on the floor, Chey threaded her way carefully around a settee and a chair, approaching the hall tree straight on.

She’d overlooked this twice already, bypassing it because it seemed so . . . normal. Too mundane to hide a doorway. But wasn’t that the point? To hide something so well in plain sight that everyone overlooked it?

Putting her hands on the wood, she began again.