Whispers in the Forest
Copyright© 2025 by Jody Daniel
Chapter 16
A bunker near Rostov.
The bunker smelled of damp concrete, old oil, and something metallic that never quite left the walls. The lights hummed softly overhead, casting hard shadows that clung to the reinforced pillars like stains. Vladimir Zoryanovich stood over the table at the center of the room, his hands braced on its edge, eyes fixed on the layout spread before him.
The Royal Mausoleum.
He had visited it once as a boy, holding his father’s hand, learning which names mattered and which were footnotes. He remembered the silence then. The weight of it. Now, that silence would work in his favour.
The ground floor plan was simple—too simple. A ceremonial shell of stone and marble, meant for optics, for wreaths and photographers. One entrance. Two sentries. Predictable. Ritualised. He dismissed it with a flick of his fingers.
His attention moved downward.
The basement.
The crypts.
Elena’s parents lay beneath the earth, sealed in stone, unreachable to crowds and ceremony. A private grief chamber. A place of vulnerability disguised as reverence. He traced the stairwell with a gloved finger, then followed the red pencil line he had drawn earlier—away from the mausoleum, through the underground arteries of the city.
The sewers.
Old. Forgotten. Unmanned.
“They will never guard this,” Zoryanovich said quietly.
The two men standing across from him didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. They had been chosen because they understood silence, because they knew how to listen without asking questions.
“The Queen will come,” he continued. “She always does the right thing when it costs her the most.”
He straightened, pacing slowly now, boots echoing softly against the bunker floor.
“She will arrive with her Royal Guards. Professional. Loyal. Careful.” A faint smile touched his lips. “But not imaginative.”
He stopped at the edge of the table and tapped the basement blueprint.
“They will not enter the crypt level. Protocol. Respect. Privacy.” His eyes darkened. “She will go down alone.”
A pause.
“Almost alone. Her fiancé, the Duke of Velyngrad, would follow her. Of course he would. Love made men brave. Love made them stupid.”
Zoryanovich looked up at the two men in front of him.
“That leaves us with only two obstacles.”
He held up two fingers.
“The Queen.”
He paused.
“And the man who thinks he can protect her.”
One of the men finally spoke. “The guards upstairs?”
“They will hear nothing,” Zoryanovich replied calmly. “Stone absorbs sound. Grief keeps people quiet.”
He returned to the table and pointed to the sewer access beneath the mausoleum’s foundation.
“We enter here. We wait. She comes to kneel at her father’s grave.” His voice softened, almost reverent. “And then I step out of the dark.”
He imagined it vividly—the look on her face when recognition dawned, when the mausoleum stopped being sacred and became a prison.
“I offer her terms,” he said. “A royal pardon. Restoration of my Duke-ship. Second in line to the throne.”
His fingers curled slightly.
“She will agree.”
“And if she doesn’t?” one of the men asked.
Zoryanovich smiled then, thin and joyless.
“She will.”
He straightened and walked to the far wall, where a second map was pinned—this one of the cemetery grounds above. Trees. Snow. A narrow service road disappearing into brush.
“The car waits here,” he said, tapping the spot. “Engine warm. Two men. Five minutes, no more.”
He turned back to them, eyes hard now, the warmth gone.
“Once I have what I want, there will be no witnesses.”
He didn’t say their names. He didn’t need to.
“The Queen dies. The Duke dies.” His voice was flat, procedural. “The country mourns. Chaos follows. And I vanish back across the border before anyone understands what has happened.”
Silence settled heavily over the bunker.
Zoryanovich stepped back to the table and folded his hands over the mausoleum plans, as if in prayer.
“They will say it was fate,” he murmured. “That history repeats itself. A queen buried beside her parents.”
He looked up at his men.
“And they will be right.”
And in Velyngrad, unseen and unaware, the Royal Mausoleum waited—cold, ancient, and already complicit.
“I will grieve with the country and play my ace, the documents signed by the Queen. Then take up my place as King. Not as a Regent, but as the rightful King of the country!”
Zoryanovich folded up the maps and issued an instruction: “Come, let’s go wait in that apartment in Velyngrad. I suspect she will be going to the Mausoleum in the next two days. And when the little brat does – we must be already there!”
The Palace of the OLD Crown.
I stepped out of the shower still wrapped in steam, the mirror fogged and the stone floor warm beneath my feet. The long flight from South Africa had finally loosened its grip on my muscles, and for the first time since wheels-down in Velyngrad, my body felt like it belonged to me again.
Somewhere else in the palace, Lena would be doing the same—she always emerged from travel with composure that felt almost unfair. My rooms were sealed off from the normal pulse of the palace; no footsteps in the corridors, no distant voices, no echo of staff moving with purpose. Just quiet. Controlled. Luxurious.
Too quiet, if I was honest.
Supper was scheduled for 19:00 sharp—royal punctuality didn’t allow for interpretation—and I still had time to kill. I poured myself a glass of water, crossed the lounge, and sank into one of the deep plush armchairs, the kind that swallowed you whole and made it dangerously easy to forget the world outside.
I had just closed my eyes when I heard it.
A soft, precise click.
Not the kind made by settling wood or cooling pipes—but deliberate. Mechanical.
I opened my eyes.
The bookcase in the corner of the lounge shifted almost imperceptibly. Then, with the quiet elegance of something designed not to be noticed, it swung inward.
Lena stepped through, and for a heartbeat, my brain refused to process what I was seeing.
She was smiling—bright, mischievous, unmistakably pleased with herself—but that wasn’t what made me sit bolt upright. She was dressed head to toe in a body-hugging fencing suit, matte black and graphite markings over an off-white fabric, the material sleek and unfamiliar. Gloves fitted perfectly to her hands. Boots reinforced and purposeful. Under her left arm she carried a fencing helmet, visor dark and unreadable. In her right hand—
An épée.
Not ceremonial. Not decorative.
Real.
“Well,” she said lightly, as if she hadn’t just emerged from a secret passage armed like a duellist from the future, “that look tells me you weren’t expecting me.”
“I—” I stopped, recalibrated, then tried again. “I was expecting you. Just ... not like this.”
She laughed softly and stepped fully into the lounge, the hidden door closing behind her with a whisper that made the room feel suddenly very small.
“I need to blow off some steam,” she said, shifting the épée to her shoulder. “And I need an opponent.” She tilted her head, green eyes sparkling. “Have you ever fenced before?”
“N ... no,” I admitted. “Closest I’ve come is a bad bar fight in Cape Town.” I gestured vaguely at her outfit. “And I’m fairly sure that’s not standard fencing issue.”
“No,” she agreed cheerfully. “It’s not.” She glanced down at herself with clear approval. “I prefer my own personalised style.”
“Of course you do,” I muttered.
She stepped closer, close enough that I could see the fine weave of the fabric, the subtle armour beneath it, and smell her perfume. It wasn’t sport equipment—it was something else entirely.
“Well,” I said, standing now despite myself, “you look stunning. And slightly terrifying. Very futuristic.”
“Good,” she replied. “That’s exactly what I was going for.”
She turned toward the hidden passage again and beckoned with two fingers.
“Come on. I’ll get you fitted with proper attire and an épée. Then I’ll explain the rules and give you a workout.”
“My medical aid doesn’t work in Volynia,” I protested weakly.
She stopped, looked back at me, and smiled in that way that should have come with a warning label.
“I won’t hurt you,” she said sweetly. Then she winked. “Not much.”
I sighed, already knowing resistance was pointless.
“Oh, brother,” I muttered with a little inward chuckle. “We’ll see how your workout goes.”
“Why? Do you intend to let me work ... I doubt it.”
“I must warn you that I have never been hit in the face before...” I smiled. “I never look back when I run away...”
“And you won all your fights with a hundred metres?” Lena tittered. “I don’t see you as someone that would run from a fight...”
I got a smouldering passionate kiss as reward.
“If I win, what prize do I get?” I asked with a mock serious face.
“Me ... And WHEN I win ... I get you!” She teased back.
“Win or lose, we both win at the end...” I replied.
Giggle.
Then, I followed her into the secret heart of the palace—into whatever mischief, muscle memory, and royal madness awaited beyond the wall.
A Sewer Rat on the move.
The unmarked Mil Mi-17 skimmed the treetops like a predator afraid of the sky, its rotors beating the storm into a frenzy. Snow didn’t fall around it so much as explode—white sheets torn apart by spinning blades, reducing the world to a blind, churning void. The helicopter flew without lights, a dark shape moving through darker weather.
Inside the cramped cabin, Vladimir Zoryanovich gripped the frayed safety strap with a hand that did not tremble. His knuckles were white, the veins in his wrist raised like cords beneath the skin. His face was lit only by the intermittent green glow of the instrument panel—hard angles, sunken eyes, a mouth set in permanent disdain. Fury, contained and disciplined, radiated from him like cold.
“Crossing the line,” the pilot’s voice crackled through the headset, distorted by static and wind. “Entering Volynian airspace.”
Zoryanovich leaned forward and looked down through the narrow window.
Below them, the border fence cut across the land like a scar—thin, jagged, half-buried under fresh snow. Guard towers punctuated the line at regular intervals, their searchlights sweeping back and forth in slow, methodical arcs. Order. Authority. The illusion of control.
“Stay low,” Zoryanovich said, his voice calm and absolute. “If they paint us on radar, Karkarov will send a missile before he asks questions.”
The pilot didn’t argue. “We are in the shadow. Valley floor. Fifteen metres off the deck.” He banked the helicopter slightly, hugging the terrain. “The storm is masking our heat signature.”
The Mi-17 dipped lower, following the frozen spine of the Vantrel River as it carved its way through the canyon. The rock walls rose on either side like dark sentinels, swallowing sound and signal alike. This route wasn’t improvised. It was remembered.
Zoryanovich knew every contour beneath them.
Five years earlier, he had approved the funding. Signed the contracts. Personally reviewed the schematics for the very sensor grid they were now evading. He knew where the blind spots lived—where nature and bureaucracy conspired against precision.
“Radar Station Four,” he murmured, more to himself than anyone else. “Three-degree blind spot. Iron ore interference.”
The helicopter passed through it unseen.
“Approaching the drop zone,” the pilot said. “Old Brickworks. North Sector.”
The pilot flared the aircraft hard. Snow and powdered red brick dust spiralled upward in a violent halo as the main wheels and the nose wheel slammed onto frozen ground in the high icy wind. The impact rattled teeth. The side door slid open with a metallic shriek, and icy air tore into the cabin.
Zoryanovich didn’t hesitate.
He swung out of the cabin, his hand still on the door frame to steady him.
His boots hit the frozen mud of Volynia with a solid, grounding thud. Steam rose briefly where heat met cold. He straightened, drawing a slow breath through his nose—as if the land itself had weight, substance, memory.
Waiting for them was a battered grey van, its paint dulled by years of neglect. On the side, stencilled in peeling blue letters, was the logo:
Velyngrad Water & Sanitation Department
A mercenary climbed out and opened the rear doors. Inside was a mess of rusted pipes, coiled hoses, and battered toolboxes. The perfect disguise.
“Your chariot, Your Grace,” the man muttered, not quite managing to keep the irony out of his voice.
Zoryanovich’s lips curled into a sneer. “Appropriate,” he said as he climbed inside. “We are going into the sewers, after all.”
The doors slammed shut behind him. The interior smelled of metal, oil, and damp decay. The mercenaries piled in, efficient and silent, checking weapons with practised movements—magazines seated, safeties off, blades within reach.
“To the river,” Zoryanovich said, settling back against the cold steel wall. His eyes burned in the dim light. “And if we are stopped...”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
He didn’t need to.
The van pulled away from the abandoned factory, its tires crunching over snow and broken brick, and merged onto the main road as if it belonged there. A handful of delivery trucks crawled through the storm, brave or desperate enough to be moving at three in the morning.
They passed a police checkpoint.
An officer hunched in his coat glanced at the sanitation logo, grimaced at the weather, and waved them through without a second thought. No one wanted to inspect a sewage crew in a blizzard before dawn.
Inside the van, Zoryanovich watched the lights of Velyngrad slide past through a narrow crack in the rear door. Streetlamps. Apartment windows. The quiet, sleeping city that believed itself safe.
His reflection stared back at him in the glass—older, harder, unrepentant.
“I am back,” he whispered.
And the city did not hear him.
The Palace of the OLD Crown.
After emerging out of the secret passage and into a quieter, older wing of the palace, Lena led me down a short corridor where the air changed—cooler, cleaner, carrying the faint, unmistakable scent of polished wood and metal. Our footsteps softened as the stone floor gave way to sprung timber, and she pushed open a pair of tall double doors with a familiarity that told me this was a place she knew well.
We stepped into the fencing hall.
It was far larger than I expected—long and rectangular, occupying a quarter of the south side of the old palace, with high arched windows running the length of one wall. Late-afternoon weak winter sunlight poured in through the glass, catching dust motes in mid-air and painting pale gold bands across the floor. The windows overlooked the inner gardens, but the glass was thick and leaded, designed to keep both sound and prying eyes out.
The floor was a professional fencing piste surface laid over polished oak, marked with crisp white lines that hadn’t faded despite years of use. It had that faint spring to it that athletes love—firm but forgiving. Along the walls stood weapon racks arranged with military precision: épées, foils, and sabres gleaming softly under discreet recessed lighting. Each blade was tagged, balanced, and meticulously maintained. This wasn’t a hobby room. It was a training space.
On one side of the hall, a mirrored wall stretched from floor to ceiling, broken only by wooden beams and mounted timing boxes for scoring. I caught sight of my own reflection there—barefoot, still faintly smelling of soap from the shower, looking completely out of place in a room that whispered discipline and intent. Lena, on the other hand, looked like she belonged. The fencing suit hugged her frame as if it had been tailored for her alone, and the épée in her hand looked less like sporting equipment and more like an extension of her will.
Benches lined the far wall, padded in dark leather, with neatly folded towels and spare jackets stacked at one end. A rack of helmets stood nearby, their wire masks facing outward like a row of silent, patient sentinels. In the corner, a small weapons workbench held tools for tuning blades and adjusting grips—files, clamps, and coils of fine wire laid out with almost ritual care.
“This used to be my father’s hall,” Lena said softly, setting her helmet down. “He believed fencing taught restraint before aggression.”
I nodded, taking it all in. The room displayed quiet history—not loud or ostentatious, but contained, like a breath held just a second too long. This wasn’t just where royalty exercised. It was where they learned how to stand their ground.
Lena turned to me, green eyes bright with mischief now, the seriousness momentarily set aside. “Welcome to my playground,” she said. Her green eyes flashing with a flirty mischief and I knew I was in for a whooping.
“Let’s get you kitted out...” she said, already turning toward one of the equipment lockers. When she came back, she tossed a neatly folded fencing suit into my arms with an appraising look that made me feel like a recruit on inspection. “This one will fit you nicely. It’s new,” she added with a little flourish, “and now it’s yours.”
I glanced down at the pristine white fabric. “Right. Thanks. So ... where do I get changed?”
She nodded casually toward a pair of discreet doors set into the wall on the left. “Over there. Changing rooms and showers.” Then she paused, her lips curling into that familiar, dangerous smile. “But you could just as well change here. I’ve seen all of you already ... and you’ve seen all of me...” She giggled, entirely unapologetic.
I shook my head, laughing despite myself. “You are naughty,” I said, turning away as I started pulling the suit on. “Now, since I’m clearly at a disadvantage here, you can at least start explaining the rules while I change. Assume I know absolutely nothing about fencing.”
“Oh, that’s a safe assumption,” she teased.
She sat down on one of the padded benches, crossing her legs with deliberate ease, the épée resting lightly against her shoulder. Her eyes never left me—not in a predatory way, but with the calm focus of someone who enjoyed watching competence being built from scratch.