The hive breathed around Weylan. A slow, constant movement of air pulsed through the corridors. The air tasted faintly of honey and wax. Pale blue fluorescence bled from every seam in the comb, just bright enough to rob the dark of its comfort.

Weylan kept his shoulders narrow and his steps soft. The steward's bracelet felt cool on his arm. The ultraviolet‑flash vial tapped the inside of his coat whenever he moved too quickly, so he did not. Slow beats fast, he told himself, then sucked in a shallow breath and slid along a rib of wax to get higher up to a web of bracings spanning the cave below the ceiling. There he was above the traffic of giant bees. He slid forward.

Ahead, the net of bridges branched. The left fork sloped down. The air from the high tunnel smelled sweeter, like crushed flowers. The right fork climbed toward rough stone where the comb thinned and patches of natural cavern broke through. He took the right, since his target was higher up.

The flapping of wingbeats neared.

Weylan flattened into a shallow recess. Chittering voices clicked past the mouth of the tunnel and a train of were‑bee workers flowed by below each with a burden clutched in segmented arms. Fungus-like loaves. Bulging jars of amber. Grey meat that he could not identify, and did not want to.

He dared not to breathe until the last of them had turned the far corner and the hum of their wings faded away.

He moved again. To the next bend. Condensing water dripped from the ceiling. The bridges he walked on ended and the cave narrowed in a dark mouth, open to a vertical shaft ribbed with stone and comb.

Perfect for things that fly. Less perfect for a human assassin.

Weylan slung his weight onto a crack in the walls rock and tested it. Solid. He put his toes on a smear of wax where the bees had sealed a crack and hauled himself up. Slow and careful. His fingers found a damp ridge and he paused, listening. The hive hummed on, indifferent. He climbed again, one movement at a time, placing each foot as if the stone might argue with him about it.

Halfway up, voices drifted down through the shaft. Wingbeats. Slower, but louder, harder.

That sounded like a patrol. It was time. He drew a circle around the city's seal on his bracelet and the enchantment activated.

Status Effect Gained: No‑Scent Aura Duration: 1 hour Effect: Suppresses user's scent.

Weylan pressed into a shadow cut by a curtain of old stalactites and held still. The patrol entered the shaft below him. Three half human warriors with twitching antennae. Their chitin armor gleamed with a wet blue sheen. Each carried a spear with a barbed stinger bound at the end.

One of them stopped and tilted its head. Its antennae swept up and down, listening, feeling for air movements, smelling.

Weylan did not even dare to blink.

The warrior chirped to its squad. They moved on. The hum faded.

Only then did Weylan allow himself a small breath. He climbed again, swung onto a narrow ledge, and found a low tunnel that bypassed the worst of the shaft. Wax returned under his palms. The blue glow brightened, then narrowed into tight bands that crisscrossed the passage like veins in marble.

The corridor here was higher, the ceiling domed and gleaming. Bands of runes, each a different script, had been melted into the comb in careful, overlapping arcs. They curled like vines, intersected like netting, and pulsed with a faint light that twitched in time with the hive's hum. The double door ahead was not a true door so much as a pair of thickened sheets of wax, reinforced with wood and chitin in a pattern that reminded him uncomfortably of ribs.

A sweet, musky scent pooled in the corridor. The Queen's breath, he suspected. Toned down that could be the base for a nice perfume. That probably would attract bees like mad, so not a good idea.

He pulled back behind a corner and forced his pulse to slow. The plan was simple. Cross the ward without triggering it, get in, confirm Ulmenglanz's vision, get Fliedabarr's artefact if it was still there, get out. Simple did not mean easy. He felt the weight of the steward's bracelet.

"All right," he whispered. "Do not let them smell me."

He made sure he still had the silence enchantment on his boots active. No squeaks and no creaks would betray him. He breathed against his hand to test for smell. The bracelet's enchantment still seemed to work. Nothing but the sweet bite of the hive. He stepped forward.

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The first ward band lay like a river of light across the floor, symbols curving and overlapping. He set his foot on the far side of it. The band did not brighten. It did not sound an alarm. The hum of the hive did not change.

Weylan took another step. Then another. He moved slow enough that nothing jerked, fast enough that the time window to the next guard patrol did not close while he was in the open. He hoped. He should have waited for the next patrol and timed their interval.

The air grew warmer as he neared the door. The noise behind it took on a low, throbbing quality.

He reached the double sheet of hardened wax. Up close, he could see the reinforcement under the surface, wood and chitin latticed together. Natural, but still strong. His mind pulled at the shadows and slowly, very slowly, gathered them around the doors seams. He pressed his fingertips to the door and pushed.

The door gave by a finger width. He held the gap closed with shadows. Light from the tunnel would not shine through and from a distance, the opening wouldn't be visible on the other side. He hoped.

He pushed more. The seam widened just enough for him to slip through. He did so.

The Queen's chamber was not a room; it was a cathedral. The ceiling arched high into darkness, lit by blue glowing plants in pots and enchanted crystals. Columns of patterned comb rose like trees. In the center, a broad platform of woven branches and hardened wax formed an empty dais big enough to hold a wagon.

At the far edge of the dais stood a shrine. It was simple. A ring of carved branches, leaves made from wax and some natural leaves covered by it. An antler painted with silver color was mounted above it. At its heart, half hidden by layers of translucent wax, lay a shiny piece of antler, polished to a soft glow. The symbol Ulmenglanz had seen. The thing that called her.

Weylan's mouth went dry. He had not expected to find it so easily.

Were-bee workers were busy repairing damage to the walls and floor. Molten areas, walls peppered with tiny darts and slashes. There was some damage on the floor, but no trace of Team Grey.

He took one step onto the chamber floor.

The floor moved. A vibration rolled through the room, a crack, slow and heavy.

He froze.

To his left, a cluster of workers paused as one. Antennae raised. They turned in a ripple, like a field bending to wind. Their heads tilted. After a time that seemed endless to him, they continued their work.

At least the workers were more concentrated on smell than sight and the bracelet was working. For now.

Weylan quietly lifted his foot from the main floor and slid along the outer wall, using pillars of comb as cover. The shrine sat next to a wall of hexagonal honeycombs filled with a bright blue substance and blocked by a transparent sheet of hardened wax. One was broken open, the sticky blue substance gone, apart from a trail leaking to the floor. Workers were busy carefully collecting the substance and putting it in a wooden bowl.

Air moved inside the room and brought with it a breath, warm and wet, that washed across the room and raised gooseflesh along his arms.

He paused and looked for the source, but there was nothing. Was it air circulating from another room? Where was the queen? The dais was empty. Did she retreat into a safer room after the fight?

He waited, counted ten heartbeats, then crept forward again.

The shrine rose ahead of him. The antler gleamed.

He knelt by the shrine. The antler sat behind a veil of comb so thin it looked like frost. He slid his knife and traced a line, slow enough that the cut made no sound. The comb parted. Cold air blew across his fingers.

He reached for the silver artefact.

The room paused, as if the whole hive took one long inhale together. A new scent cut through the sweetness, sharp and clean, like earth after rain. It was not his. It was not anyone's he knew. It was authority, made smell.

Something heavy moved on the dais behind him.

The workers landed and bowed their heads in a slow, reverend wave.

Weylan froze and did not dare turn his head. He knew what he'd find if he did.

Then a rich, low female voice sounded from the dais. Grand and deep.

"I would prefer if you did not touch the holy relic. It would be troublesome removing it from your mangled corpse if you do."

He slowly pulled his hand back and turned. The moments ago empty dais, was filled with a massive being. A female upper body clothed in rich silk led to a giant egg laying organ.

A half ring of Were-bee warriors poured from hidden chutes in the ceiling, wings buzzing to slow their descent before they landed hard on clawed legs. Each held a stinger tipped spear. Their sharp chitin claws alone seemed enough to rend an armored knight to pieces.

More guards entered through hidden entrances all over the throne room. Four of them took position in front of the now closed door he'd entered through and crossed their spears.

Weylan turned to the queen and gave her a respectful bow. "My queen, I apologize for this intrusion."

The queens voice turned menacing. "Would you mind telling me what is going on today? I heard of an excursion of first years, but I did not expect your professors to make a sport out of robbing me. First you lot steal some of my Gelee Royal, then you sneak in, again, to try to snatch the holy relic. I don't much mind were-folk pilfering some of my honey, but this is unacceptable. A firm note, placed into the mouth of your severed head, should adequately demonstrate my annoyance."

Weylan gulped, his mouth suddenly too dry to say something witty. He swallowed again. "I'd… prefer to keep my head. By all due respect, your mighty highness."

The queen's eyes glowed blue and a slight smile seemed to appear for a fraction of a heartbeat, but he wasn't sure if he'd imagined it.

He glanced around in secret desperation, searching for any way out. The door was sealed, no exit in sight. Yet there had to be one. There just had to. His mind raced. The room had no windows, so where did the air come from? The warriors had dropped from hidden holes in the ceiling; surely some of those connected to ventilation shafts. But which ones? Were others concealed by illusions he couldn't pierce?

A thought struck him: could he trace them by shifting shadows? He had a vague sense of the surface he moved the shadows over. Could that reveal an illusion?

His hand hovered near the ultra-special white-violet potion. What if he smashed it and bolted straight up the wall and into one of the warriors' hiding tunnels? Provided he even found purchase on the vertical wax-coated walls. What if those tunnels only led to more guards waiting in ambush? Would the potion even work against insects? Could insects be blinded at all? Their crystalline eyes seemed like crystals cut into a thousand facets, with no lids to close. Did that mean they needed no protection?

His time ran out before any plan could take shape.

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