Chapter 32
Chapter
Thirty-Two
The heavy oak doors of the atrium sighed shut behind them, the sound swallowed by the sudden, vast quiet of the Greymarket corridors.
The air, which had been thick with sex and soil and blooming magic, was now cool and clean, carrying only the faint, familiar smell of old stone and lingering spells.
Goldie glanced down. Since her leggings were currently in several pieces in the moss of the atrium, she had tied her hoodie about her waist, but it did little more than suggest modesty.
Beside her, Splice had attempted a similar fix, knotting his coat around his hips like the world’s strangest loincloth.
It was, without question, one of the oddest walks of shame she’d ever taken.
Her mouth twitched. Gods and goddesses, if we run into a neighbor right now…
She risked a sideways glance. In the dim, flickering light of the hallway sconces, Splice looked.
.. undone. The lines around his eyes were deeper, his shoulders slumped with an exhaustion that was more than physical.
He looked like a man who had just witnessed the birth and death of a universe inside his own chest.
As they reached the main lobby, the city lights of Bellwether bled through the tall, arched windows, painting long, distorted stripes across the marble floor. The regular world felt surreal, like a dream they were reluctantly waking into.
Splice stopped, his gaze fixed on the street outside. "I’ve never..." he began, his voice rough, as if he had to dredge it up from some deep, unused place. He didn't finish, shaking his head slightly.
Goldie’s hand lifted, a half-formed gesture of comfort, before she let it fall back to her side.
What were the rules for this? What was the etiquette after you've had amazing ritual sex with a cryptid to save his dying god and accidentally uncovered the memory of a ritual murder?
Emily Post didn't exactly have a chapter on it.
A small, shaky smile touched her lips. "Come on," she said softly, her voice barely a whisper. "Let's go back to my place.”
Each step they took was loud in the humming silence of the hallway. Greymarket Towers was always a living building, but tonight its awareness felt focused, its ancient consciousness holding its breath as it watched them.
She pushed her apartment door open, relief washing through her as the familiar warmth of her wards greeted her. Turning back, she saw Splice hesitating on the threshold. He seemed uncertain, as if waiting for a permission deeper than a simple invitation.
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “You can come in.”
He stepped across the doorway, and the moment he did, the room shifted. The air grew thicker, charged with the same potent hum that had filled the atrium.
Goldie closed the door. She leaned back against the wood, then pushed off again, movements slow and deliberate, as if through water.
“Um… we should probably talk.” She glanced at him, words tumbling out. “Do you drink anything besides water? Whiskey? I feel like this is a whiskey kind of situation.”
A faint smile ghosted Splice’s lips. “Whiskey,” he said, gaze finally meeting hers. “Yes. I believe it is.”
Goldie moved through her kitchen with the slow, deliberate grace of someone running on fumes and sheer force of will. The simple, familiar clink of ice and glug of whiskey was a comforting ritual.
Glasses in hand, she padded back into the living room. Splice hadn’t moved, still standing in the middle of her bright, cluttered space. The coat tied at his hips did nothing to make him look less like an untouchable god-extension. If anything, it made him absurdly handsome.
She passed him a glass, her fingers brushing his as he took it. Heat zinged up her arm, unfairly distracting. “Do you want a blanket?” she blurted, then immediately winced. “Or pants? I’m going to put some on, and I think I have pajama pants that’ll fit you.”
Splice looked at her, lips quirking the barest fraction. “Yes?” he said softly, almost a question.
Goldie set her whisky down and scurried to the bedroom, heart thumping too fast. She dug through her dresser until her fingers closed around a pair of old pajama pants that Ezra had once left.
A quick, bitter pang flared, but she shoved it down and wriggled into her own pair before hurrying back out.
She practically tossed the pants at Splice. “Here. They’ll probably work.”
When she sank back onto the couch, clutching her glass again, she could hear the rustle of fabric as he pulled them on. Goldie swirled the whisky, ice chiming in sharp little bursts.
Splice stood by the window, not looking at the city lights, but at his own reflection in the glass.
The pajama pants hung short on him, riding above his ankles in a way that should have been comical.
On him, it only heightened the strangeness: cryptid and human, plant and man, tangled into something she couldn’t look away from.
He turned toward her, eyes shadowed, unreadable. “Do you know who the original trustees of the Land Trust were?”
Goldie stared at him, her pulse hammering. “You’re saying… the ritual was the founding of the Land Trust?”
“I’m saying it’s a possibility,” he said quietly.
“I mean…” She shook her head. “Just the official story. Civic heroes, preservationists, people who wanted to honor and protect the land. The names have shifted over the years, but…”
Her breath caught. “There must be some who’ve been on it since the beginning.” She looked up at him, horrified and fascinated all at once. “Do you think they know?”
Splice set his glass down on the coffee table, the sound sharp in the silence. “Have we ever seen the original paperwork for the Trust? The founding documents before any amendments were made or shares changed over.”
“No,” Goldie said slowly. “I actually tried to find it in the city archives for some Solstice planning stuff. But it wasn’t there. It had been checked out.”
Her throat tightened as realization struck. “It was checked out for the Ashenvale Ventures meeting.”
She looked up at him, eyes wide. “You don’t think—no. Sure, they’re a massive corporation, so, automatically three-quarters evil, but they wouldn’t… they wouldn’t knowingly be part of something like ritual sacrifice. Would they?”
Splice began to pace, dragging a hand through his hair. “I doubt they know anything about it,” he said quietly. “And I doubt the paperwork itself holds proof of murder. But if we could see the original Trust documents, we might learn who those seven were.”
A flicker of memory surfaced, sharp and insistent. ‘It should’ve defaulted to the rest of us. That’s how we set it up. He agreed. No heirs, no holdup.”
Goldie drew in a slow breath. “I heard something at my first planning meeting. Councilwoman Mishra talking to Councilman Swale about shares. Swale said something about a closed-door meeting coming up, and then Mishra said something like, ‘You’re sure the will didn’t change?’”
She gave a helpless little shrug. “At the time, I thought it was just politics.”
Splice’s head lifted, his attention razor-sharp.
“Mishra. Swale. I recognize those names. They were at the meeting with Truckenham’s lawyer—along with another one, Idris.
The only ones important enough to have nameplates.
” A humorless laugh escaped him. “And they were the loudest voices objecting to Mycor inheriting the shares.”
Goldie looked up sharply, her heartbeat quickening. “The Big Four,” she whispered.
He frowned. “What?”
“The Big Four,” she repeated. “Truckenham, Mishra, Swale, and Idris. My friend Carmen said they basically run the Land Trust. Real movers and shakers. Between politics, money, and influence, they own half of Bellwether.”
Splice absorbed that, silent for a moment.
“Great,” Goldie said, her voice going brittle. “Let’s say they’re all in this together. Why kill Truckenham? He had the bead, sure, but they were winning. They were getting everything they wanted.”
Her mind snagged on Mishra’s voice, rising sharp and accusatory from memory: “If you truly cared about the Trust, you’d have negotiated a higher percentage of the back-end profits for all of us, not just padding your own lump-sum payout!”
Goldie’s breath caught. “The sale,” she whispered. “Ashenvale Ventures. It has to be connected. But why kill him if it puts the whole deal at risk? He was making last-minute changes, sure, but… ”
The thought crumbled halfway out of her mouth. All the threads she’d been trying to tie together slipped loose again. She pressed her palms to her eyes, shoulders trembling.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered. “None of this makes sense.”
Her throat burned, hot and tight. She was tired of puzzles and gods and politics and death. The ritual’s strange afterglow had drained from her, leaving only exhaustion and the bitter, metallic taste of fear.
“What do we do now?” she asked, her voice a fractured whisper swallowed by the quiet.
Splice crossed the room, slow and deliberate. He eased the glass from her hand and set it aside, then crouched beside her, brushing her hair gently from her face. “Now, you rest.”
Goldie opened her mouth to argue, but Splice laid a finger gently against her lips. “No,” he said, firm but kind. “The mystery will still be here tomorrow. We’ll still be here tomorrow. But tonight has been enough. You’re exhausted.”
Her eyes fluttered shut, the world that had been spinning wildly finally slowing, settling. “Okay,” she whispered at last, the word a small white flag of surrender to the enormity of it all.
He drew her gently to her feet, and before she could sway, his arms were around her. She was too tired to protest, too wrung out to even tease him for the gallantry of it. He carried her into the bedroom, his movements careful.
He laid her down and pulled the sheets up to her shoulders, tucking them around her like he was anchoring her to the world.
“Don’t go,” she mumbled. “Stay here. Please.”
For a long moment, Splice was silent. Then she felt the mattress dip and the sheets rustle slightly. The air around her seemed to exhale.
A warm hand slid into her hair, fingers threading slowly through the tangled strands, stroking in an easy, unhurried rhythm. The hum of his presence filled the quiet, low and soothing, like the heartbeat of the earth itself.
Goldie drifted instantly, sleep taking her before she could think of anything more.