The Prince uttered a deep chuckle that startled her even while it sent warmth flooding through her.

“It isn’t that bad.”

She found herself smiling back at him. “Well! Thank god! It sure feels horrible, though.”

Thankfully, she discovered it wasn’t quite as bad as she’d thought. She had the tangles out fairly quickly and her hair was mostly dry by that time.

Drak felt that smile like a forceful kick to his solar plexus. It knocked the breath from him, almost seemed to stop his heart. Fortunately, she was intent upon raking the tangles from her hair and by the time she finished he had managed to collect his wits.

Noelle stared at the bundle of furs she discovered Drak was holding when she turned to return his comb. He took it and tossed it toward the bed and then helped her into the heavy hooded cape he’d brought.

“Where are we going?” she curiously.

“Dungeon,” he said succinctly.

Noelle gaped at him. The word had roughly translated as the English historical reference to a place used for jailing captives and often torturing them. She hoped like hell that wasn’t actually what he meant. Unfortunately, it threw her into such a state of disorder that she couldn’t think of the word for jail to ask if that was what he meant.

He confused her even more when, instead of heading toward the stairs they usually took to reach the great hall, he turned the opposite way and led her down the long corridor to the far end where she discovered there was a steep, narrow stair leading down. Taking a torch from a holder on the wall, he lit it with something he took from his pocket and started down the stairway ahead of her. “Take care. These are treacherous. Make sure you hold tight to the railing along the wall.”

Nodding shakily, Noelle gathered the cape more tightly around herself with one hand and gripped the railing with the other, very carefully placing each foot on each tread. It seemed to take forever to reach the bottom—which convinced her that the stairs led directly to the basement, or dungeon. It was possible they passed a landing at some point along the way. Maybe two. It was so dark beyond the madly flickering flame on the stick that she couldn’t make out anything but ghostly shapes that might be nothing more than the stones that made up the wall or could’ve been columns supporting another floor. Eventually, they came to the end of the stairs, however, and followed a paved corridor that looked to have been hewn directly from the stone.

The corridor seemed to go on for a mile or more. It wasn’t entirely level. It almost seemed to roll, descending for a while and then climbing again, almost as if they’d gone under something.

“These look as if they were carved from rock,” she said after a little while when the eerie quiet that enveloped them was beginning to weigh on her nerves.

“Lava tubes.”

Shock rolled over Noelle. “Lava …. Oh my god! We’re in a volcano? You built the castle on top of a volcano?”

He made a sound that might have been of amusement. “Where did you think the hot water came from?”

“A hot water heater!” Noelle muttered irritably. “No wonder I couldn’t adjust it!”

He didn’t say anything for several moments. “The castle has stood here for six generations … that I know of. My father was not prone to reminiscing nor did he have any interest in antiquities. He didn’t actually have much interest in the future beyond his plans for the season.

“But we have a teller who keeps the history of the people. It’s his family’s calling—to speak the history so that the next generation knows the great feats of their father’s father and so forth.”

There was a trace of … almost of contempt in his voice that Noelle couldn’t figure out. Was it because he thought it was absurd to dwell on the past? Or was it something else that she didn’t understand because she didn’t know his history?

She leaned toward the ladder. He was clearly a very intelligent man and she hadn’t seen anything to suggest that he held the traditions of his people in contempt. It must be something more personal, she decided.

They came at last to a heavy door. Two men waited there. Noelle recognized both. She wasn’t sure of who they were or what their place was, but they were close to the Prince.

The Prince pulled a metal key from a chain he wore around his neck and fitted it into the heavy lock on the massive door. When he’d pushed it open, the two men who’d met them there moved inside first with the torches they carried. Noelle saw when she finally was allowed through the doorway that the two were moving about the room lighting lanterns. As the room was illuminated, however, her gaze was redirected to the objects within the cavernous room.

Curious, she moved to the closest without considering she might not be allowed to touch and lifted the object to study it.

It seemed almost as out of place in this setting as she was!

It was mechanical and made primarily of metal of some kind. She studied the gears when she discovered that time had frozen them in place. Giving up on solving the mystery, she glanced at Drak and discovered that he was studying her as intently as she’d been studying the artifact she’d picked up. “What is it?”

Something flickered in his eyes. Disappointment? “I have no clue. I thought you might.”

Noelle gaped at him and then lifted her head and scanned the contents of the room. These were relics from their distant past, she realized.

She assumed.

It might be that these things had been left by a different civilization entirely—or that their ancestors had stolen them in raids on other civilizations. Their ship might be antiquated now, and in dire need of upgrades and upkeep, but it had been a marvel of engineering, she didn’t doubt, in its time.

“These things are from before the rogue planet destroyed the civilization your people had built?” She said it questioningly, but she was certain she’d guessed right. Everything she could see was mechanical in nature and indicative of a civilization far more advanced technologically than those currently occupying the sister worlds.

She had no idea, naturally enough, of exactly when the rogue had wandered into their system and forced the planet out of its original orbit, but she knew it would have created catastrophic natural disasters and that it had probably wiped out more than their technology. It would’ve been disastrous enough to cause a widespread extinction event.

She returned her attention to the object she held, studying it more carefully. She was no engineer—mechanical or otherwise—but she was a techno junkie. She’d always loved playing with new technology and she was pretty damned good at figuring it out and using it. That was yet another skill that had earned her a place on the colony ship.

She thought she might be able to figure out what the device had been used for, but she wasn’t convinced it would work even if she managed to get the gears to moving again.

Vaguely disappointed, she set that piece down and began to study the next piece that caught her attention. She became so engrossed in studying it that it wasn’t until she began to feel cramped from standing in one position so long that it occurred to her that she’d been studying the thing for a lengthy spell. That brought her out of her trance enough to look around for Drak.

The Prince, she discovered, had abandoned her … to plunder, she assumed. The older man that was so frequently with him was standing guard at the door. The younger man—barely old enough to be considered a man in her book, was leaning against the wall, watching her. She recalled abruptly that he’d called Drak father—so another son? And the other man? Kulle? Not related to Drak, surely, or he would’ve been the ruler since he was clearly older.

“I don’t suppose there’s … a stool or something I could sit on? Tools of any kind? This looks like it might actually work.”