Chapter 127: The Key

Astrid Vale

"You want to get inside the restricted ward," Liora said, more statement than question, when I finally laid it out plainly for her.

"Yes."

She sat across from me, wringing her hands together in a way she probably didn’t realize she was doing. "I’ve spent years believing the doctors and Maximus are protecting Elaris. That everything they do down there is necessary, even the parts I don’t fully understand."

"I know," I said. "I’m not asking you to stop believing that. I just need to find my friend."

"And once you reach her?" Liora asked. "What then?"

"Bring her back," I said simply.

She was quiet for a long moment, and I let her sit with it instead of pushing. Finally, she exhaled, something settling in her expression that looked less like certainty and more like resolve despite the doubt still sitting underneath it.

"Maximus’s office is near the medical sector," she said. "He usually leaves it unattended during his morning rounds, the same hour he spends checking on patients. If I go while you keep him occupied, I can get inside."

"What are you looking for?"

"A device," she said. "Small, metal. I’ve seen him carry it near the ward’s outer seal. If it’s kept anywhere when he’s not wearing it, it’ll be there."

We agreed on the timing the next morning, and I spent the walk to breakfast rehearsing exactly how compliant, how curious, how easy I needed to seem.

Maximus greeted me with obvious pleasure when I sat down across from him without hesitation. "You seem in better spirits," he said.

"I’ve had time to think," I said, letting a small, careful smile settle into place. "About everything you’ve shown me. Elaris is remarkable, honestly. I didn’t expect anything like it."

He looked genuinely pleased by that, and I kept the conversation moving, asking about the gardens, about how the crops adapted to artificial light, about whether children here ever asked to see the surface the way Liora had. I watched him relax further with every question, his guard easing exactly the way I needed it to.

Somewhere behind us, I knew, Liora was slipping away from her usual duties, making her way toward an office that wasn’t hers to enter.

I kept talking, kept eating slowly, kept my hands steady on my cup even as my mind raced through everything that could go wrong. If Liora was caught, this wouldn’t just cost me my slim chance at reaching Ivy. It would cost Liora everything, her training, her position, possibly far worse in a place that clearly didn’t hesitate to lock people away without explanation.

"You’ve been asking a great deal about our people lately," Maximus said, studying me with something sharper than his usual pleasant curiosity. "Why did you come to Moonshade, originally?"

"A scholarship," I said, keeping my voice even. "I needed somewhere to go."

"And these two you mentioned before. Reed and Xander."

My chest tightened at their names, but I forced my expression to stay neutral. "Friends," I said. "From the academy."

"Do you miss the surface?" he asked.

"Sometimes," I admitted, because a lie too smooth would have sounded wrong. "It’s strange, being away from everything I’ve known."

"If given the choice," he said, watching me closely now, "would you stay in Elaris?"

I made myself pause, as though genuinely considering it, before offering a small, careful smile. "I think I could learn to," I said. "Everyone here has been kinder to me than I expected."

He seemed satisfied by that, and the conversation drifted onward, though something in his gaze lingered a moment longer than comfortable before finally releasing me from it.

Meanwhile, Liora moved quickly through the corridors leading to Maximus’s private office, her heart hammering with every step. The door was unlocked, exactly as she’d hoped, and she slipped inside, closing it softly behind her.

The room felt different from the rest of Elaris, heavier somehow, lined with old books and stacks of medical reports, maps of the settlement pinned along one wall, and symbols carved into a wooden panel near his desk that she didn’t recognize but felt instinctively wrong looking at too closely. She moved past all of it, focused entirely on the desk drawers, searching methodically through each one.

Several small metal objects sat together in the second drawer she opened, keys of different shapes and sizes, none of them obviously marked. She lifted each one carefully, turning them over, trying to remember exactly what the device near the ward’s seal had looked like the handful of times she’d glimpsed it from a distance.

Then she found it, smaller than the others, engraved faintly with the same symbol she’d seen etched into the outer door of the restricted section during her training rotations. She closed her fingers around it, relief flooding through her chest.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside.

Liora froze completely, every muscle locking in place. The footsteps grew louder, unhurried, approaching directly toward the office door. She glanced around desperately and slipped behind a tall cabinet in the corner just as the door handle turned.

Someone stepped inside. She held her breath, pressing herself flat against the wall, the key clutched so tightly in her palm that the edges bit into her skin. Whoever it was paused for a long moment, long enough that Liora was certain she’d be discovered, before finally turning and walking back out, the door clicking shut behind them.

She stayed hidden a moment longer, waiting for her heartbeat to slow enough that she trusted her own legs to move, before finally slipping out from behind the cabinet and making her way toward the door herself, the key hidden carefully inside her sleeve.

Back in the dining hall, I noticed a small folded cloth appear near the edge of a serving table, exactly where Liora and I had agreed she’d leave a signal if she succeeded. My heart jumped, but I forced my expression to stay exactly as it had been, calm, pleasant, entirely absorbed in whatever Maximus was saying.

I couldn’t react. Not now, not with him sitting close enough to notice the smallest shift in my composure. I nodded along to something he said about the settlement’s agricultural systems, laughed softly at a comment that wasn’t particularly funny, and kept my hands steady around my cup even as everything inside me wanted to leap up immediately and find Liora.

Eventually the meal ended, and Maximus excused himself toward whatever obligation waited for him next. I rose slowly, deliberately unhurried, and made my way toward the corridor where Liora was waiting, half-hidden near a support column, her face pale but her eyes bright with something like triumph.

She met my gaze from across the space between us and gave the smallest nod imaginable.

We had the key.

I reached her side, and she pressed the small metal object into my palm without a word, her fingers trembling slightly as she did. I closed my fingers around it beneath the fold of my sleeve, colder against my skin than I expected metal to feel.

Somewhere behind those locked doors, Ivy was waiting, alive, close enough now that I could almost believe I’d reach her.

And tomorrow, I was going to find her.