Chapter 37
The Gilded Mortar stood quiet and dark, its entrance guarded by two City Watch officers. The distant, muffled chatter of the night market felt a world away.
August stood beside Felix and Marlow, studying the building from the around the corner of a shop across the street.
How a criminal had convinced the Watch to work for him was beyond August’s understanding. They were supposed to uphold the law. To stop crime, not shield those who committed it.
When one of the officers swung his gaze toward them. August pressed his back against the cool stone wall and held his breath.
“Relax, Auggie,” Felix said, sounding far too amused. “It’s a public street. We’re allowed to be here.”
“You sure we can’t just sneak around the back?” August asked. “Go through a window?”
“There are no windows. We need your power.”
The last thing August wanted to do was go back to the Hollow Dark. What if he got them inside the shop and the others both passed out like Felix had in the pub? What was he supposed to do then? Peek his head out the front door and ask the Watch for help?
Hey there! Yeah, we just broke into the place you’re guarding, but any chance you could maybe not arrest us and give us a hand instead?
He didn’t want to be here. Didn’t want any part of this.
But Felix was counting on him. And Lottie was waiting.
“Ready when you are,” Felix pressed. If he was nervous, his eyes betrayed nothing.
August flexed his fingers, dragging his focus inward to call forward whatever it was inside him that made this work, waiting for the pinpricks, and—
Nothing.
The two other times he’d done this, it had been life or death.
The fear of plummeting to the ground from the castle window, the fear of losing Felix to a crazed woman with a hatchet.
His power had manifested on its own, an instinctive split-second response.
Now, he didn’t want to open the veil, and it felt as if his power understood that.
“Performance anxiety?” Felix asked.
August frowned. “Shut up. Just give me a minute.”
With a slow, measured breath through barely parted lips, he tried again, searching for the feeling beneath his skin, but finding only the silent hum of Felix’s magic beside him.
“Solach, Auggie,” Felix whispered suddenly, urgency tightening his voice. He grabbed August’s arm and wrenched him back. “They’re coming this way. They know. Hurry!”
Icy dread gripped August, and he squeezed his eyes shut. He was going to blow it. The Watch would recognize him and bring him home.
No, he couldn’t face his mother after everything that had happened, couldn’t handle the disgust and the disappointment. He couldn’t go home.
“Come on!” Felix urged.
Finally, the familiar sensation crept up August’s fingers, and when he opened his eyes, the air around him shimmered. Heart pounding, he reached out, scrabbling for a grip on the fabric of the veil. Once he had it, he tore it open with a rough swipe, then whirled to face the others.
Felix smirked, and the panic inside August turned wobbly. His gaze flicked to the Watch, still slouched against the shopfront.
“You liar!”
“Worked, didn’t it?”
August glared as anger burned in his chest, but then Felix’s mouth lifted into the lopsided smile that always made his face burn. “Can you at least pretend to feel bad?”
“Your eyes look good like that,” Felix said, his voice velvet-smooth.
Though August wasn’t sure what he meant, the compliment melted him from the inside out.
Felix grabbed his hand, their fingers lacing together (which only worsened the melting), then reached for Marlow’s.
“Brace yourself, Mar. This bit’s a mad one.”
They were really doing this, then.
August sighed, then led the others forward and through.
The numbing cold crashed over him all at once, stealing his breath like the time he fell into the castle’s fishpond in the dead of winter. He released their hands long enough to mend the tear, then took them again and pressed forward.
The officers were gone, and the decaying street lay bathed in pale silver light. Dried leaves littered the ground, crumbling silently beneath their steps. When they reached the entrance, August stopped. No door, only swirling black stretching across the frame.
He tested it, touching the surface with the toe of his shoe. There was no resistance. After a moment of hesitation, he stepped cautiously through, relieved when Felix and Marlow easily followed. He tore open an entrance back into their world, and they all spilled out into the dim shop.
A single mounted lantern hung near the door, offering just enough light to see by. The air carried an odd scent—sweet and musty, tinged with ammonia and a faint trace of metal.
August released their hands and turned to assess the damage. They both swayed on their feet, disoriented and off balance, and Marlow looked a bit green. But they were still upright.
Felix had been right. The less time spent inside the Hollow Dark, the less it seemed to affect them.
“Alright,” Felix said, dipping behind the counter. “Search everywhere. There must be paperwork or something. A ledger maybe? Any clue about what they’re doing, and where. And be quick. He wouldn’t have left a lantern on if he were gone for the night.”
August walked the length of the room. The shelves, mostly bare, held only a few scattered jars and bottles, their glass surfaces dusty and unlabeled. A front for crooked dealings, Marlow had said. The things they sold here weren’t legal. The rest must have been stocked away somewhere more discreet.
At the back of the shop, he found another door and eased it open just enough to peer inside.
Only darkness waited.
“I need light,” he whispered.
Another lantern flared to life behind him. Felix and Marlow joined him a moment later.
Felix held the lantern just inside the back room. Its glow barely pierced the thick shadows. He stepped in first, and August followed, eyes straining against the gloom.
After a moment, Felix lit a second flame—a wall-mounted lantern across the room. This one burned brighter, its light reaching the far corners, revealing not the expected plants and powders of an apothecary back room, but something closer to a surgery theatre.
All three of them swore at once.
A wooden medical cot with thick leather restraints stood in the centre of the grimy plank floor, its surface stained dark. Beside it sat a table holding steel tools with ivory handles and sharp-looking blades. The smell he had picked up from the front of the shop was pungent here.
A memory surged forward without warning: his father in the four-poster bed, blankets stained red, cobalt blue fabric cascading around him. That same awful smell. Blood, he realized.
August’s stomach lurched, and nausea climbed his throat.
No, that never happened. His father died of heart failure. Peaceful and asleep. There was no blood.
Then what was that, and why had he seen it?
It felt like a memory, sharp and real, but it couldn’t be.
“What in Naethara is this place?” Marlow asked.
The others moved cautiously through the room, their voices too quiet to hear, but August was caught in the web of his thoughts, trying to conjure the image back, to figure out what it meant.
“Would it kill you to help, Aesling?” Marlow’s voice again.
August looked up, but his attention caught on a flash of silver, a stark contrast to the bleakness that surrounded him. He moved to the table and picked it up, turning it over in his palm. It was a tarnished silver locket. Inside, behind a layer of glass, lay a woven lock of auburn hair.
He grimaced and dropped it on the floor.
Marlow and Felix had stopped to inspect a cylindrical chamber at the far edge of the room. A metal pipe protruded from the back, disappearing into the soot-stained hearth.
August joined them, peeking through the small window at the low glow of dying embers.
“What is it?” he asked, touching the warm metal.
“An incinerator,” Felix answered. After a pause, added grimly, “For the bodies.”
The blood drained from August’s face, and he yanked his hand back. He really needed to stop touching things.
“There’s another door,” Felix said.
The next room was a dark, closet-sized office with a sturdy wooden desk and a line of cabinets. A stack of three wooden crates, each marked with an A and a black rose, sat on the floor.
Felix and Marlow rummaged swiftly and silently through the room.
When Marlow shot August a sharp look, he sighed and moved to the nearest cabinet, pulling open the top drawer.
It was crammed with papers he had no interest in sorting through.
As he pushed it shut, he noticed a leather-bound book on top, its spine worn from use.
He grabbed it and flipped listlessly through its pages until an envelope with a broken wax seal slipped free.
August recognized the shape of the seal immediately.
He returned the book, then pulled the letter from the envelope and unfolded it cautiously, as if it might bite him.
Mr. Ashcroft,
It is the aesran’s command that your work in the production and refinement of the Thaumic Elixir remain your foremost priority. Recent field applications have proven promising, but refinement must continue until the elixir reaches full stability and side effects are eliminated.
You will find enclosed an additional stipend to ensure discretion and efficiency, and you and your work will be protected, so long as you remain compliant. Should any interference arise, refer directly to my office.
Remember, this project is essential to our country’s security.
Lord Virgil Fenholt
High Commander of the Ministry of Arcane Compliance
He stared at the creased paper for a long time before he realized Felix was watching him.
“Find something?”
August frowned. His initial instinct was to say no. To hide the letter.
The aesran’s command. His mother knew about the elixir. Not only that, but she was funding it. Why would she do that?
He gave Felix the paper, the silence agonizing as his eyes scanned the words.
What use would she have for something like this?
This project is essential to our country’s security.
How could she justify stealing magic? Killing people?
August jumped as Felix sent the stack of crates crashing down with an angry growl. Glass shattered, the deafening sound slicing through the stillness.
There was no way the Watch outside hadn’t heard it.