“I know what I saw,” Seven snapped, pacing through Moore’s makeshift living area. Her hand buzzed faintly, as if synced with her own agitation, and she shook it out, ignoring the curious look from Luca as she passed. The bedrolls had been shoved against the wall in a stack, and Moore had brought his low kitchen table into the room before shoving it against the wall where he and Emmet sat picking at a plate of dried fruit. Seven’s stomach rumbled, but she ignored it, too irritated to settle down.

  “I don’t doubt that,” Moore said, “but…Seven, I must admit that I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

  “I’m saying that Luck is liquid,” she explained, feeling almost insane as she did so. “Or at least, it’s liquid when it’s that concentrated. It looks like magma in that lake, but it’s liquid Luck—the same stuff in dice. The same exact stuff in me. They’re mining Luck itself.”

  “It sort of makes sense,” Emmet said, slumped against the wall slumped against the wall with the studied casualness of someone pretending the last week hadn't nearly killed him three times over. Seven might have called him on it if she weren't doing the exact same thing. Frankly, they were all taking it remarkably well in her opinion. It wasn’t every day that you were thrown into a magma dungeon and chased by demons.

  “What about any of this makes sense?” Luca muttered. He sketched a map of the city on a spare piece of paper Moore had dug out of a forgotten home, his lines precise, his numbers tiny and almost illegible.

  “Their motto is, ‘Your luck is our profit’,” Seven replied, pausing to tap her foot against the floor as she thought. The pieces in her mind clicked together like a position on a Gambler’s Chance board, only this time she couldn’t find the winning move. “Moore, when did LMC go into business?”

  Moore tilted his head in thought, his expression darkening. “A few months ago,” he replied. “Just before your trial.”

  “Right when the dice started failing,” Seven said. She resumed her pacing, her footsteps quickening over the marble floor. “Think about it, Moore—father wanted to blame me, but I’ve been around all this time. The only new change in the kingdom at the time—besides the usual political nonsense—was LMC starting up their operation.” When Moore didn’t reply, Seven went on, her words tumbling from her mouth too quickly at the realization of it all. “They hoard the best dice. They have a patent for dice that roll more consistently than anyone else's. Dice haven't been firing right since they opened. And they framed me with a tampered die. They’re obviously knee-deep in it all.” She paused, glancing at Luca. “What doesn’t make sense about that?”

  “I don’t mean whether LMC is guilty,” Luca said, still not looking up from his sketch. “I mean—who does this? What kind of corporation digs out a tunnel, finds the source of Luck itself, and dams it off from the entire kingdom? Why take that risk?”

  “Profit,” Emmet and Seven said in tandem.

  “Even for profit, it seems insane,” Luca continued. “I mean, if they’re successful, they make money, sure, but they destroy the entire system—hard to sell dice if no one trusts them. And if they fail, they hang for treason.”

  “They never planned to fail.” Seven’s voice went quiet, the words barely escaping her lips at the realization of it all. She paused in the middle of the room, her pacing now forgotten, and felt her stomach twist. “They were going to control the narrative. Blame House Veil—blame me specifically.” She forced herself to go on, though voicing the words made it all feel far too real. “They frame the cursed heir, people lose faith in Veilhome’s forges, and LMC swoops in to become the only trustworthy source of dice in the entire kingdom. They gain a complete monopoly.”

  Luca’s pencil finally went still, and for a moment, Seven felt the weight of it all. Of Rook’s framing, of her trial, her exile, and finally, what would have been her tomb if it hadn’t been for her Luck.

  They’d destroyed her life as a business strategy. Exiled her. Ruined her reputation. Made her a kingdom-wide joke. She’d been an easy target, already the laughingstock of Veilhome for many years before she’d clawed her reputation back through Gambler’s Chance. She’d been the perfect scapegoat, an easy target for LMC’s plans. Her family hadn’t defended her, and her kingdom had simply accepted her behavior as unsurprising. No one had been there to vouch for her, and LMC had known that somehow—had known that no one would come for the House Veil spare.

  And she only knew about it now because of sheer dumb luck. She hadn’t seen it from the surface—hadn’t had time to even process the information she’d found in LMC’s main offices. She hadn’t had a chance to investigate the fires, or who set them. She hadn’t managed to do much of anything besides survive. She was still too late. Still lucking her way into the right answer.

  It was tempting to wish she’d done it on purpose. That she’d been able to subtly manipulate her Luck to get her tossed down here, but that seemed ludicrous, even to Seven. Maybe she could manipulate Luck now, sense its flows, but surely she hadn't twisted fate deliberately enough to throw herself into the one place with answers.

  She shook her head, suddenly dizzy. The very idea of having that kind of control over everything sounded ludicrous, really—and besides that, it would drive her insane trying to navigate that sort of nonsense.

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  “There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Moore said, scratching his beard. “The source of all Luck is…well, a fairytale, I’m afraid. Perhaps LMC has found a very large quantity of it—enough to cause problems in the Wheel, even—but it can’t possibly be the source.”

  “But one dammed-up river is still enough to affect the rest of the environment,” Seven argued. “And whether it’s the source or not is irrelevant; if LMC even thought they’d found the source—if Rook thought he’d found the source—they’d do anything in their power to make sure they controlled it. They’re siphoning it to the surface. Refining it, maybe.” Her footsteps grew faster as she realized the implications of it. “If Rook’s family could claim that House Veil was losing our touch and that our dice were poisoned or cursed while theirs were blessed, what could they do with that kind of power?”

  “That’s why they framed you,” Emmet agreed, his tone far too soft. Seven couldn’t even look at him. “An exiled princess is the perfect end to their story.”

  Seven slid down one of the cool marble walls, grateful for whatever ancient magic kept Moore’s makeshift home livable despite the heat outside; she was still sweating from her flight through the city—and the knowledge that LMC hadn’t intended to let her see this and live.

  “No wonder they didn’t care about worker safety,” she said. “No wonder they weren’t worried about the crown coming after them. If they’d finished what they were doing down here, they’d practically be the crown.” She shook her head, letting out a shaky breath, then met Moore’s eyes. “We have to get this information back to Veilhome. If we can convince my father that it’s real, he might send troops out here to investigate. He won’t believe me, but he might believe you, Moore.”

  Moore’s expression went carefully blank, but Seven recognized it anyway—the one he wore before he was about to tell her that an idea wouldn’t work. “Seven—“

  “I know what you’re going to say.” She cut him off before he could air the same doubts she had. It was better that way—better to keep them from becoming tangible. “I know he won’t listen. I know he’ll suspect that it’s something I put in your head, and I’m obviously the last person he trusts with something like this. But what choice do we have?”

  Moore sighed, wincing as he shifted on the hard floor, “We’ll need to avoid LMC’s tunnels—and preferably Luckville entirely.”

  “The shaft where we fought the centipede,” Emmet said, moving to peer over Luca’s shoulder at the map. “Does it lead away from the city?”

  Luca shrugged without looking up. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. “It’s not owned or controlled by LMC—otherwise it would connect to the rest of the structure here.” He tapped his pencil against the map. “But that doesn’t mean it goes anywhere useful.”

  Seven forced herself to her feet and settled down again at the table to study Luca’s drawings. Most of his precise marks clustered near their current shelter—the sweeping, elegant architecture that looked exactly like Veilhome.

  Exactly like home, but impossibly ancient.

  Seven's took a shaking breath. Someone had built this place first. Her entire city, her family's legacy—it was a copy. An echo of something ancient that had existed here, beneath the earth, long before House Veil ever claimed power.

  What did that mean? Were her ancestors connected to this place? Had they known about it? Had her father? What if, in unveiling Rook’s plans, she’d found something far worse? A sort of rot at the center of House Veil? A secret festering so long that it had practically been forgotten?

  Mother and father were never particularly keen on sharing anything about our family, she thought. Only Aleph—the oldest—had been privy to any of the old family secrets as far as she knew. And he was as closed off as one could possibly be. Her oldest brother had probably said fewer than a hundred sentences to her in her entire life. What if he was hiding the family secrets?

  She forced the questions down. Later. She could unravel her family history later. For now, she had to focus on getting out of this mess.

  "You're right," she said, comparing Luca's work to one of LMC's orientation maps. "The old shaft can't connect to their system—not without collapsing half the caverns. Even LMC isn't that reckless." Mineshafts, Seven had quickly learned, weren’t exactly drilled out and shored up by the people running the mine so much as chipped away at. There was only so far LMC could go before chipping too far and caving in the wall.

  “That doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence,” Emmet said, running a hand through his hair. Still, he didn’t argue.

  “Let’s try the shaft,” she said, suddenly sure of herself. “Hopefully it dumps us out on the outskirts of town. Then maybe I can steal a horse and get to Veilhome before it gets worse.”

  “What about the bracelets?” Emmet asked. “Or had you forgotten?”

  She shook her head, twisting her bracelet around her own wrist. “I haven’t forgotten,” she said. “I’ve got a plan for those too—and I can do it in a pinch if I have to. I think. I’ll check tonight.”

  Emmet and Luca exchanged a look that Seven ignored. She was used to being doubted—had built a career out of proving people wrong. But this time the stakes were higher than any tournament, and if she was wrong, people would die.

  Still, she’d been experimenting on her own bracelet for weeks, pushing against that subtle energy that she now recognized as Luck. The trick was dealing with many bracelets at the same time—because she was certain she wouldn’t leave Luca, Emmet, or any other miner trapped beneath LMC’s boot if she had the chance to fight back.

  “It’s as good a plan as any,” Moore said, though his mouth twisted into a frown. Seven couldn’t blame him. There really was no plan. But the information had to get out somehow—and they were the only ones alive who knew about it.

  “We’ll leave tonight,” she said. “Or whatever passes for tonight down here. Everyone get what rest you can.” She stood, already mentally going through the conversation she’d have to have with her father when—if—she made it back home.

  She had the information she’d spent weeks dreaming of finding. She only had to hope she could get it to the right people.

  Or die trying.

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