Chapter Nineteen
ENZO
I’m walking up the streets headed north toward Aethera’s Zenithic Temple by the time the downtown clock tower chimes ten.
Soren, Jade, and I take the train to Opalton this evening, which means I only have a few hours to get as much information about Nocturne as possible before her game begins tomorrow night.
The priest at my father’s parish said Lenora worked at the temple, so that’s where I’ll start.
Surely, if Lenora is Nocturne, I’ll find something there.
The temple towers over me, a breathtaking structure fashioned entirely of polished voratium, sleek walls sloping up from the ground to a series of points sharp as teeth.
Pressing my hand to the door, I push into a spacious room lit by strategically placed skylights set in the shape of the sky’s most prominent constellations.
Most zenithic observances happen at night when the stars are visible, so the temple is quite empty at this hour but for a handful of worshippers in the corner kneeling before a statue of Odelia, the sun goddess.
Priests mill about, speaking to one another in hushed tones, their dark robes swishing across the marble floor.
Keeping myself noncorporeal, I cross to the opposite side of the main hall and descend the staircase to the places barred from the public, like the vault deep in the earth that once housed the moonshard and the holy sanctums that surround it.
I pass through the locked steel door at the bottom and into their Hall of Records.
It is full to bursting with bookshelves as far as the eye can see and lit only by wall lanterns that give off an eerie, otherworldly light. A room full of the church’s secrets—the sort my brother once held over many a priest’s head.
I’ve been here a thousand times. In my early days after the moon-shard’s curse took hold, I’d steal books about the zenithic gods to look for patterns that matched my powers.
Later on, as my focus turned to tracking where Nic had used the moonshard, I scoured records of the prominent priests he had the power to blackmail or manipulate, looking for leads.
Today, I walk to the cabinets that contain all the information on the priests in Aethera, where they were trained in theology, where they work, what sorts of sermons they give, and the services they render to their congregants.
I search the Warthington Parish folders first for any sign of the priestess called Lenora—a surname, at the very least. When that does not yield any results, I turn to the temple’s vast section regarding its own dealings.
I gather an armful of files and hoist them to a nearby desk, where I settle in for a long search.
After three hours, I still have not found any mention of Lenora, and my eyes are aching from the strain. Sighing, I stuff the files back into their places and turn to the temple schedule, which shows the shifts priests have worked all the way back fifty years.
I flip through. Several dozen entries have been scribbled out. I ean closer, trying to decipher what might have been written there.
There’s something that looks like an L at the beginning of one of the names, but the rest are all so thoroughly blackened I cannot make out anything else.
Could all the removed entries be Lenora? It makes sense that once she became Nocturne she would want to scrub her information from identifying records. I let the registrar’s notes fall back into the drawer and slide it shut, leaning my forehead against it.
It seems I’ve reached a dead end. All I’ve learned is that if Nocturne is Lenora, she was thorough.
Sighing, I turn to the section of books about voratium and moon-shards that the priests have confiscated over the years to keep their deception alive, the very place I first learned that a living conduit—a person altered by soullight to be able to channel a constant stream of power from the skies—could be the answer to my desperate predicament four years ago.
The information I found here led me down a rabbit hole of research across Celestia to midwife records of a baby delivered in secret nearly two decades back.
A baby purported to be born of a missing conduit mother and a gang lord father.
“Look what washed up from the Deep.” A voice behind me makes me jump.
Nic leans on a bookshelf at the end of the aisle, arms crossed. His fedora is tipped over his brow, and in the meager light, shadows carve points out of his cheekbones sharp enough to draw blood.
“Oh, perfect,” I say, “a pompous ass. I was looking for one.”
He straightens, flashing a predator’s grin I’m already itching to punch. “What are you doing?”
“Baking a cake.”
“Oooh, snippy today, aren’t we?” Nic chuckles, turning to the nearby books and pulling one out, as though browsing at a shop.
I stare at him. There’s something . . . off.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“Why are you?” he returns the question without a glance, tugging out another tome.
“Research.”
“Maybe that’s my reason, too.”
I narrow my gaze. “Why did you close down the casino?”
“Seemed like a fun idea.”
His nonchalance has alarms blaring in my head. “Stop it.”
One corner of his mouth curls. “Stop what?”
“Acting like this.”
“Like a person looking at books?”
“No, like . . . not Nic.”
He shoves the book back into place and turns to face me, the grin pulling wide enough to show all his teeth. “You haven’t spent more than ten minutes at a time in my presence for five years, and you think you still know what I’m like?”
I stare at his eyes. Eyes I know better than my own because they were the ones I’d see when I’d awaken from nightmares as a child. The ones that would go soft when he would tell me bedtime stories. The ones that burned with irritation when I stole his things or ate the last biscuit on the plate.
These eyes now are guarded and cold and . . . perhaps faintly glowing blue around the edges?
My stomach twists.
“What’s wrong, little brother?” he asks.
“Don’t call me that,” I snap, though that’s what he’s called me as far back as I can remember. My outburst echoes along the cavernous walls, an eerie response to the deadly stillness of the library.
“Don’t shout,” he says sweetly. “You’ll get us kicked out of the temple.”
“I’ll do as I damn well please.”
His smile fades, but his stare is steady. “You always do.”
The words carry with them the weight of our entire childhood. Me disappointing everyone and him picking up the pieces.
“Don’t try to punish me with your accusations,” I growl. “I already paid my price a thousand times over.”
“Ah, of course, you, the little victim of the freedom bought for you with someone else’s obedience.”
“Freedom?” I nearly shout. “I was not free.”
“You snuck out to frolic at the beach, steal diamonds, and pilfer pastries every other day for a decade.” His tone is frosty. “Some would call that freedom.”
“Oh yes. Being detested by everyone in my home was a real treat.” My fists clench. “What, was father’s adoration too much for you? It was so difficult to be cherished?”
“You think my childhood was charmed?” His brow rises.
“You were asked what you wanted to be when you grew up.” The words I’ve dreamed of screaming at him for so long spill out of my mouth before I can stop them. “You were sent to Father’s fancy theology school. You were given silver buttons and gilded editions of the Odelion.”
“Have you ever paused to wonder if I wanted any of that?” he asks. “Have you thought about the fact that you were free to spout your non-sense and be who you pleased because father had what he wanted from someone else?”
“Be who I pleased? He hit me!”
“He did. And he shouldn’t have. But you weren’t the only one he hit.”
My throat is suddenly thick. “He loved you.”
Nic grimaces. “He loved a performance.”
“That was no performance.” I shake my head.
“Do you know that?”
I open my mouth to retort, but the words die in my throat. Do I know that the obedient altar boy who followed our father like a shadow wanted to be that way? Have I ever asked him how he felt about it?
“Sometimes people crave love so wholly they convince themselves they are whoever they need to be to earn it.” He pauses, chewing his lip, then lowers his voice. “When you left zenithicism, our father did not mourn.”
“Exactly!” I grit my teeth. “He believed I was damning myself to the Deep, and he didn’t bat an eye!”
“There’s freedom in that. Because after that moonshard broke . . .” Nic trails off as though the rest of the sentence refuses to come out.
But my mind fills the silence.
After that moonshard broke, Nic abandoned the faith. When our father learned of that, he stopped leaving the house. Stopped eating. Stopped living.
Autopsy reports said he died of dehydration.
I feel suddenly ill.
Was Nic’s departure from the life our father wanted for him what killed him? Did Nic somehow know even when we were small that it was up to him to keep our father happy? Give him purpose?
The realization sours my stomach. Because Nic wasn’t the only one bearing the weight of someone else’s happiness.
“I don’t do whatever I want, though, Nic.” I pause, swallowing. “You’re always there with me. Every choice I make, every treasure I steal, every lie I tell, you’re there. A specter in my mind, a millstone around my neck.”
“What are you talking about?”
I step close. “Do you know how exhausting it was to carry the way you’d take responsibility for my choices? Knowing that my mistakes would cost both of us? That you would find a way to blame yourself for every decision I made?”
The cold light in his eyes holds steady even as shadows crawl in around the edges.
“Father may have relied on you to be happy, but I never asked that of you.” I can’t look at him anymore. “I am a whole human all on my own, Nic. Let me make my mistakes. Let me own them. They’re not yours to carry.”
He ponders that for a moment, his fingers listing along the books with the care and tenderness I know he’s tried to hide from the rest of the world ever since he became the Liar.
But he can’t hide it from me. I know him too well.
“Is that your way of telling me to leave you alone?” His tone is quiet, pensive, careful. And suddenly, the anger pulsing through me with every beat of Lola’s heart gutters out.
“After the tournament,” I say softly, “she went back for you—I know she did—and you sent her away. I want to know why.” I don’t have to tell him who I’m talking about.
He shrugs, dropping his hand to his side. “Considering who she was? Keeping her was too much of a risk.”
“But you shut down your casino, so what good did avoiding risk serve you?”
“Risks exist even when there aren’t casinos to mask them.”
“You cared for her,” I say. “Something about that tournament broke you as much as it broke her.”
“Cared for her?” He laughs. “She certainly is pretty, but she served a purpose, Enzo, and once that purpose was over, she was no longer useful.”
“No.” I scowl. I saw the way Nic looked at Lola in that vault when she dropped her secret. The way her betrayal cleaved him in two. That was what scared me most. In that instant, when their eyes met, both of them desperate for each other, both of them afraid, I knew.
Just like Father, Lola would choose Nic.
Something in me snapped. I dragged her out of there in spite of her pleas, lied over and over and over because it felt like I was clinging to my value by the scraps of my torn-apart fingernails, desperate to avoid what I knew would destroy me once and for all.
“I am not a fool,” I say, leveling Nic with a glare. “You cared for her.”
He shrugs. “No, you aren’t. Which is why it’s so perplexing when you act like one.”
“What happened to you?” I ask.
He settles a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Have you heard about Nocturne’s game?”
“Of course I have. What does that have to do with—”
“Do you plan to compete?”
I narrow my eyes, searching his face. “Maybe. Do you?”
“Take my advice, Enz.” His gaze is so sharp it almost hurts. “Stay out of it.”
I pull out of his grasp, the unsettling weight in my stomach twisting deeper. “Not sure if you’ve noticed, but I don’t take orders from you.”
“Enzo.” He steps forward, that iciness in his eyes bright as he levels me with a serious stare. He grasps my hand in a firm handshake, and something cold and sharp pierces my palm. “Reconsider.”
“What is—”
He melts into nothingness, and I grind my teeth, opening my fist to glimpse a chunk of voratium. A die glowing a multicolor ebony storm.
Growling, I shove it into my pocket. He wants me to think he’s giving me secrets, but I spent four years trying to get them out of him.
He only gives me grief, and the last thing I’m going to do is fall for another one of his manipulations.