Chapter Twenty-One
LOLA
It takes several minutes of convincing Arden I’m fine before he finally leaves me in my room.
Once the door clicks shut behind him, I dive for my bed, riffling under the mattress for a few spare pieces of voratium.
I had hoped Arden would spend the afternoon napping, as usual, but his concern for my well-being has me thinking he’ll return soon to make sure I’m all right, which means I have to leave an illusion here of me asleep in my bed before I can get to work on the game.
Sifting through the frigid threads of Nic’s magic, I spin together an image of me slumbering quietly.
The nose isn’t quite right, and I can’t seem to get the angle of my cheekbones to match, but hopefully Arden won’t look that closely.
Once I’m satisfied, I gather the handful of voratium and slip, noncorporeal, through the door, past where Arden is speaking in low tones to Isla, who seems to have deconstructed an entire motorcar on the floor in the hall.
Skirting around the corner, I dart down to the treasury.
The largest cavern in the volcano, the treasury is a dark, rounded space complete with craggy black rock formations chock-full of the Tentacles’ spoils.
Crowns, piles of plats, jewelry, keepsakes, portraits from wealthy politicians’ manors, glittering vases as tall as I am, and even whole statues lifted from Aetheran temples.
Shoving down the guilt gargling in my throat, I retrieve an infused voratium lantern from the wall and pick my way through the wealth and wonder, searching among the glinting shapes for the lumenoring equipment Estelle and I need.
Spotting the astral diffuser from the other night, I rush over, inspecting it and the other devices in turn and crafting an illusion to match each, binding their images to voratium pieces I’ll leave in their places.
As long as nobody needs the equipment over the next few days, these illusions should keep any of the Tentacles from realizing they’ve gone missing.
Over the course of the afternoon, I heft each piece of equipment into my arms, render it noncorporeal, and carry it out to where Estelle is setting up at the University of Aethera’s massive library.
She’s already retrieved all the notes I copied from Enzo’s research, but as I materialize with the final device, she glances at me.
“Do you have the rest of that journal you tore those pages out of ? The one you found at the laboratory with the diffuser? I want to make sure I’ve got everything right. ”
“I’ll look for it,” I tell her, vanishing once more and hurtling back to the treasury.
With leaden limbs and eyes sore with fatigue, I move the illusion of the astral spectral diffuser toward the back of the room, out of the way so no one will need to touch it, and search the area where the equipment was for any sign of the little red book.
My eyes catch on a small shadow in the floor poking out from beneath the table where the diffuser was. Is that some sort of crack in the rock?
Frowning, I push the table out of the way and crouch to inspect the floor. Propping the lantern against a nearby vase, I dig my fingers into the gap.
It lifts free like a lid. A small compartment opens beneath, empty except for a small pile of books. On the top of the stack rests the red journal we found in the laboratory. I grab it and tuck it into my jacket.
The next book’s title winks up at me in gold. Moonshards Through the Ages. Chewing on my lip, I lift it carefully and flip through, scanning chunks of text.
It seems to be a historical account of every moonshard ever documented all the way back to the days when Celestia was first settled by early zenithics. I fan to the final chapter.
“Aha,” I say when I catch sight of a section on the moonshard Enzo and Nic tried to steal. The brothers’ names are even mentioned, which means this book was likely published very recently.
I read through the entry, which focuses more on the brothers’ notoriety and how after they came into contact with the shard they became powerful enough to warrant the nickname they’d been stealing under for years: the Devious.
I turn to read an accounting of the shard’s hypothesized creation.
It’s purported that the creator of the moonshard may have— due to their interaction with copious amounts of unstable soullight—become what lumenors are beginning to refer to as a conduit, which is different than the widely understood starblessed.
A conduit? I haven’t heard that word used in this context before. I follow the footnote to the bottom of the page, which indicates an index entry by the same name.
Pinning my tongue between my teeth, I riffle through to find it.
Conduit: a person whose cellular structure has been altered to resemble that of empty voratium at the molecular level.
Different from those called starblessed, who seem to have copious amounts of soullight in their cells, as though they themselves are stars, conduits are able to channel power from stars directly. See Nell Lightsworn, page 672.
The difference between starblesseds and conduits appears to come from the stability of the soullight they came into contact with.
Conduits are created when a human interacts with pure, unfiltered starlight in excessive amounts, while starblesseds typically were made so by their contact with soullight already in stages of lumonic decay.
A sound echoes on the other side of a pile of treasure. Panicking, I drop the book back into its hole and shove the lid closed over it.
“Lola?” a voice asks behind me, and I whirl.
Isla holds up her hands. “Easy. It’s just me.”
I sigh, pressing my hand to my galloping heart. “You scared me.”
“Sorry.” She grins apologetically. “Why are you in here?”
“I thought I’d check the ledgers. You?”
She sighs. “I broke a wrench. Came for one of my spares.” She crosses to the wall, where she’s carved out a whole network of shelves full of her tools, extra engine parts, and buckets full of motorcar keys she’s stolen from valets across the city.
I cross my arms, hoping she won’t notice the shape of the journal stashed in my jacket.
She glances my way. “You all right?”
“Enzo’s got a lot of adrenaline pumping through our heart right now.” I shrug. “They must have reached the Opalton temple.”
“Bad adrenaline or good adrenaline?”
I check in with our heart. Contrary to my claims, it’s relatively calm, but Isla doesn’t need to know that. “Hard to say. Hopefully good?”
She grimaces, turning to scour her shelves, moving tools around. “Everything go all right with your father today? Arden said St. James doesn’t seem like he’s planning to compete in Nocturne’s game . . .”
“That’s right. He thinks she set it up to trap him.”
“Ha. Always the narcissist.” She laughs. “Well, that’s one less thing to worry about. And you’re going to check on Salazar in the morning, right?”
“Yes,” I say. “Would you like to come with me? Give Arden Brig-watching duty?”
“Oh yes. While we’re out, I can get a few parts I need . . . Aha! This should do it.” She holds up a wrench and salutes me with it. “I’ve half deconstructed a T025 engine, and Enzo’s not going to love it if I leave my mess all over the hall. Catch you in the morning?”
“Good luck.”
Once she’s gone, I drop my gaze back to the hidden compartment.
Why did Enzo hide that book? Could it have something to do with me?
Perhaps this is how things will always be between us. He lies, and I lie, and we pretend things are fine even though we both know they’re not. How long can our heart hold two lives pulling so hard against each other?
No, not our heart, I correct myself as I shuffle out of the treasury.
Mine.