Chapter 37
The following morning, Tethys ascended the temple steps before the new dawn’s light. Lord Ophis and Araes trailed behind her, like wraiths in the dim morning air. The temple exterior had been adorned with daffodils and crocuses in celebration of the approaching spring equinox festival.
During Ostara, the entire city would gather upon these temple steps and offer secrets scribbled on small pieces of parchment to a blazing pyre central in the temple’s courtyard.
Of the many old Venian traditions written into history, Ostara was the most sacred.
The entire eastern realm, both high and low born, came together to celebrate the equinox with dancing, drinking, and worship.
In the beginning, these secrets were offered to the lost primordial lovers, Astraeus and Eos.
But like every history, with time, the true intent of these old traditions were erased.
As a child, Tethys would steal glimpses of each offering as they fell into flames. As she grew older, however, she learned of the casual cruelty concealed in those words, so she looked away. It was better to be ignorant of truths that crept in the shadows like vermin.
Now, she climbed the steps, wondering what secrets Araes would offer to the fire.
Would he recount the night they shared when all lights were long since blown out?
Maybe he’d write of their exchanged whispers, laying beneath the heavy down comforter, safely tucked away from the world.
Or perhaps he’d tell of the trail of kisses he left that still burned on her skin.
Tethys locked the thought down before it could blossom as she reached the final temple steps. The large double doors were now draped in chains of wildflowers with pink and violet petals.
The two city guards standing watch, bribed for their discretion, dipped their heads and pulled open the heavy doors by the gleaming, golden handles. Entering the smoky haze of burning herbs and candle wax, Tethys shut herself down and forced her features into cold, hardened indifference.
Sitting in the first row of mahogany pews was a greying man with unkempt, greased black hair. The plain cotton tunic on his back was littered with mismatched patches and the hemline of his worn trousers, muddied with grime, suggested he hadn’t the means to replace his old clothing.
“Wait here, please,” Tethys said over her shoulder to her companions.
The train of her golden gown dragged behind her as she started down the aisle, keeping her eyes focused on the ancient floorboards.
Tethys felt the iron grip she kept on memories of her wedding day, and the night proceeding, slip as she inhaled the familiar scent of burning sage lingering from last night’s prayers.
“Randall Maximus, I assume,” she said, joining the man on the pew. He croaked his neck toward her and dipped his chin slightly.
“Thank you for meeting with me, my queen. I must admit, I was skeptical you’d agree.” Randall laced his long skeletal fingers, adorned with tarnished silver rings, in his lap.
“I’ve read your histories. I don’t normally involve myself with the likes of criminals, but if you have information regarding the lowborn disappearances that may aid in the city guard’s investigation, then I had no choice but to oblige.
” The chill in the air sent a shiver through the shield she’d prepared around herself.
“You flatter me,” Randall said, his crackled lips spreading into a wide grin. Tethys fought the urge to slide further down the pew as she looked upon the yellowed, broken teeth making up his smile.
“What is it you think so significant that it requires a meeting such as this?” she asked, her throat tightening around the words.
“Well, like the good merchant I am, that’ll cost you. A royal pardon for the information I possess,” he said.
Tethys’s lip curled with a rising disgust. “You’d trade a boy’s life just for your own self-preservation?”
“Let’s be clear, Goddess. I’m not trading a life. Just information.” His lips thinned and the friendly facade faded.
“Information that ultimately impacts the life of a child, sir,” she growled.
A bubbling rage began its familiar ascent through her chest, and she clenched the folds of her skirts to keep it at bay.
This was a dangerous snake of a man. She couldn’t afford to lose her wits.
Not when the path forward was one that demanded to be tread so lightly.
“Semantics.” He shrugged, leaning back in his seat.
“I will submit a pardon request, with terms decided once your information is deemed relevant,” she stated.
“I guess that is the best to be expected, Goddess. Let me recount to you what I witnessed the day that boy went missing.”
Tethys straightened in her seat, anticipation beading at the nape of her neck despite the cold cavernous space.
“I’m listening,” she said.
“I saw the boy and his sister wandering through the street. I must admit, I fully intended on following them back to their estate in hopes of only a few staff being home.”
Tethys grimaced, envisioning the poor children riddled with guilt and terror, having unintentionally led a thief to their home. This man truly was a toxin.
“And because so, I kept my eyes locked on him at all times. His sister had slipped ahead, seemingly unaware that her brother had fallen behind. One moment, they pranced happily up the street, pausing every so often to pick up a loose pebble. The next he was gone. Had simply vanished as if he hadn’t existed in the first place. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“Thinking I’d lost him in the crowd, I made haste to the spot he’d disappeared and scanned the street for any sign of his blue cloak, but nothing.” Randall paused, allowing Tethys a moment to digest. She simply nodded, gesturing for him to continue.
“Judging by your reaction, this isn’t the first unworldly account you’ve received,” he said. Scrutinizing her with a blood shot, dull eye.
“No. It isn’t,” she stated plainly.
“Did the other accounts also mention the scorch marks left behind or were they overlooked?” Randall asked, arching a thick brow.
“Scorch marks?” Tethys braced against the seat, her dress wrinkling as she shifted.
“Yes. Like a fire was lit at the boy’s feet. I bent down to examine the singed ground, and the first thing of note was the smell. Sulfur and rotting grass. Odd for cobblestone.”
“No other investigation of the scenes of disappearances have had reports of odd smells, sir. How can I know you aren’t simply weaving lies into your account in hopes of receiving a favorable pardon?” Tethys asked, suddenly suspicious of the old man’s words.
“Because I brought something that will solidify my account as truth,” he said, rummaging through the leather satchel beside him.
Tethys heard the blink of a sword unsheathing from its scabbard and threw Araes a cautious glance.
His eyes dangerously flashed at her. She could only imagine it took all of the poor man’s self-control not to leap between her and Randall.
“I caution you, sir. If this is some sort of trick, it will not end well for you,” she threatened, returning her attention to the thief still searching his bag.
“Oh, call off your guard dog. If I intended on killing you, it’d be far more swift and far less conspicuous,” he grumbled, finally retrieving the object he sought. Candlelight flickered across the thickly bound leather text as he opened the ancient, dusty pages.
“Do I want to know how you got your talons on a royal-bound tome?” she asked, watching Randall shuffle through page after page of a book she was all too familiar with.
“Probably not, Goddess, but the means in which I acquired this text is irrelevant. I knew after what I witnessed that this was supernatural in nature. The vanishing, the scorches, it was all too inexplicable to be of mortal doing.”
“So you decided to do your own research by stealing a copy of the Theogony. Randall, I hate to inform you, but I’ve studied that text for longer than you’ve been alive.
Not to mention, I bore witness to Phosphora’s transcription, although only a child at the time,” she said.
If anything came to be from this waste of a conversation it was that she’d retrieved a sacred, stolen text.
“I can assure you, Goddess, you do not have this edition,” he said, smirking.
He placed the open text on her lap, and Tethys’s eye’s widened as she scanned its secrets. This wasn’t simply a copy of the Theogony, like the ones used in Seminar. It was Eos’s volume. The same text now missing from the most secure level of the archives.
“You need to tell me where you got this, Randall,” she said, flipping a delicate page.
“Although I’d love to indulge your curiosity, Goddess, with an epic tale of how a mere mortal thief snuck into the Venian archives right under your head copyist’s nose, it’s a family heirloom. Passed from my grandmother and hers before her and so on,” he said, shrugging.
“And who is your grandmother?” Tethys asked, eyeing the mortal.
“What you can’t see the resemblance, Goddess?”
Tethys arched a brow.
“My lineage stems from your mother’s copyist herself,” Randall said, dipping his chin.
“That’s impossible, sir. The copyists swear a vow of celibacy. You couldn’t possibly be a descendant from Euda’s line, because said line does not exist,” Tethys replied. As convincing as Randall may be, even Tethys knew the limitations of his con.
“Perhaps she had a child before taking the vow, Goddess. Or perhaps these oaths aren’t upheld as you believe them to be,” he shrugged and pointed to the tome in Tethys’s lap. “Regardless, you’ll want to hear me out.”
Tethys scrutinized Randall’s admission of his lineage, attempting to discern the lie from truth, but Eos’s edition forced her to shove those thoughts aside for the moment.
Where the other versions of the Theogony ended, this text only began.
Despite the sheer thickness of the binding, the inscription was nearly identical at the final chapter’s end.
She ran a finger across the heading of the following page.
“What is this…?” she asked, eyes narrowing.
“Not all history of the primordials was preserved with time, Goddess.”
In neat, perfectly legible handwriting was one name that sent an inexplicable tremble through her body.
Vorthal.
“I’ll save you the trouble of reading through it. There was a fifth primordial. This Vorthal character.” He tapped the title scribbled in ink.
“We know the four leading ladies: Obscuros and Phosphora, and Astraeus and Eos, the lovers. But Vorthal was erased from time and it’s obvious why.
He was jealous of his siblings and wanted the mortal realm for himself.
Almost got it, too. That chapter recounts how your precious primordials cast him out, coming together to create a realm void of all space and time.
The Rift, as it’s called. Your mother, in the process, got her brain blitzed and hasn’t been the same since.
“Vorthal attempted to cross over into this realm once more. The children of Venia, descended from Eos’s line, and of Canissa, descended from Astraeus’s line, are most susceptible because their primordials no longer exist. But with every mortal soul he manages to latch on to, his strength grows. Or so it is written.”
“What do you mean he attempted a return ‘once more?’” Tethys asked, eyeing the man’s skeletal index finger as he traced the simple, handwritten script across its page.
“Ever heard of the Dance of Dawn and Dusk, Goddess? Who do you think planted such hatred in the hearts of those ancient imbeciles? Us mortals can be pretty ugly toward one another, but that war was…Well, you were there.”
Tethys was silent for a breath. Thoughts, both believing and suspicious, blazed trails of fire through her mind.
She wasn’t certain she could trust this criminal, and it was difficult to believe he’d simply come into possession of this forbidden edition through his familial line, but there it was: Eos’s edition, heavy in her hands.
“You’re telling me that everything I, an immortal child, know about the creation of the realms is a lie?” she asked, her eyes narrowing on the man beside her.
“No, not a lie. Just an altered version of the truth,” he suggested.
Tethys’s nostrils flared. There was nothing stopping this mortal man from forging a copy of the Theogony or even rebinding it with sections of his own creation. But only a select few of copyists even knew what the edition looked like, and they were sworn to a life of silence.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I’m having trouble believing you. You’re suggesting an all-powerful being with malicious intent is kidnapping these children in order to cross the bridge between us and a separate realm entirely?”
“Yes, and before you send me to the labor camps and deem these the ramblings of insanity, might I direct you to the next page,” he said, tapping the book once more. Tethys fought the urge to flick his filthy hands away before he could soil her favorite dress and turned the page.
Her heart plummeted into her stomach.
“This is why I requested a meeting with you, and you alone,” he whispered.
Tethys’s scalp tingled and her throat dried. Written in the margin of the following page in perfectly uniform script, was an annotation:
If this note is found, tell Tethys of the prophecy. She must know of her demise before it is to begin.
The handwriting was unmistakably familiar. She’d recognized it the very moment Randall placed the text in her lap. The small o’s and the unique curve of the s’s were Phosphora’s.