"The third basement floor," I said, lowering my voice slightly. "That's where the real relics are kept."
Alice's expression stiffened.
"Are you mistaken? Our family's vault only goes down to the second floor."
Alice's voice was firm, laced with certainty.
Her eyes narrowed slightly, not out of suspicion, but from sheer disbelief.
She had walked these halls since childhood, accompanied her father here on multiple occasions, even hosted minor ceremonies of inheritance.
The second floor—this grand chamber of relics and memory—was the end of the line. Or so she'd always believed.
She wasn't here to take anything, not really.
She had told me once that she simply enjoyed being around them. They were symbols—of history, of power, of lineage. The pride of House Draken, laid bare in glass and gold.
But a third floor?
Even she, a direct heir to the duchy, had never heard of such a thing.
Her disbelief, however, began to waver the moment I posed my question.
