Chapter 48
Chapter Forty-Eight
Desmond
“Are you seeing who I’m seeing, Lols?” Desmond asked.
“High enough that you can’t see?” Lola teased as she twirled a roll between her fingers, smoke gently spiraling from the lit end.
They’d been in this cigar den, Smoker’s Star, for two hours already. The city was in disarray after Valyrie’s arrival, everyone either using it as an excuse to get heinously drunk and high or rushing to a temple to pray to the Angel.
Rocarri had disappeared to a back room with his friends, so Desmond and Lola had perched at a pair of high seats lining the wisteria-trimmed front windows.
Shimmering teal curtains dangling with silver beads cast colorful pools of mystlights over the chipped wooden tabletop extending from the brick wall.
With only one exit in and out, they would see Rocarri if he left. The Chancellor, though, wasn’t who had caught Desmond’s eye.
“Absolutely falling asleep,” Desmond joked. “No, look.”
He nudged her chin, turning her gaze to the street.
Aldryn Falliare was stepping out of the unmarked establishment across the way, and though the Temple Master looked right at home in this affluent area of the city, the quick flick up of his hood and sharp steps down the street was anything but natural.
Lola stiffened, blue eyes snapping to Desmond. “Follow him.”
“We have to watch—”
“I’ll stay here. You go after him.”
“No.”
“Desmond.” Lola’s mouth set in that stubborn way that both antagonized and frustrated him.
“I’m not leaving you alone,” he said, leaning closer, his arm draped across the back of her chair.
Lola swallowed at his proximity. “Eston is waiting outside.”
“Great. Doesn’t change my answer.”
“Desmond, please.” Her eyes softened—his weakness.
It made him want to lean closer, taste every secret off her lips like he’d never been able to.
As if hearing that thought, Lola cleared her throat, shifting back.
“We need to know what my uncle is doing. I promise I won’t go anywhere other than this seat, or back to the manor escorted by Eston.
But you need to hurry before he gets too far. ”
Desmond groaned, but she was right. Before he could second guess it, he was fastening his own cloak and tugging the hood up. “Fine, but if you see Myrella, tell her I’ll meet her there to walk her home.”
Not that he thought Lola would, given Myrella had been back at the apartment last he checked, but it gave him an excuse to stop by the manor.
With an affirmative nod and a shove, Lola sent him out the door. Desmond spared Eston one threatening glare, then he left, chasing Aldryn Falliare through the capital once again, and he had to question how Temple Master stalker had become his role.
Desmond spent the entire time he tracked Falliare to the outskirts of Valyn trying to map the stars. At the last ritual, the cloaked men had been talking about alignments and having the right positions and coordinates.
From what Desmond could make out, the twelve major Fate constellations were still a bright halo overhead, ever since Emmeline had spun them around.
That didn’t help him build any theories.
If he’d known this task was going to involve sneaking all the way to the edge of the Eighth District, the damp air threatening another bout of rain any second, he may have offered to help Emmeline break into Rocarri’s office instead.
But Lola’s pleading eyes flashed through his mind, and he was a goner. He hated how she’d pulled away from him at that last moment.
His teeth ground as he descended a steep, narrow set of stairs between two buildings, plants drenched from the day’s rain sticking to one side.
The stairwell led to a lower alley lit by foggy mystlights.
He tugged his hood tighter around his face and followed Falliare’s exquisitely-cloaked form as he took the winding street down.
Desmond passed the occasional group of tavern or incense den goers, but the further they went, the scarcer they became. Finally, the Temple Master left the narrow streets and exited the city walls, walking through patches of Cypher trees.
This certainly wasn’t the same area Desmond had followed him to a few nights ago. A wide dirt-paved road led to a large stone structure in a rocky field. The sign at the head of the path read Quarry Lock.
“Arenothos’s bloody heart,” Desmond swore from his spot tucked beneath a cypher.
There was no mining in this part of the continent that Desmond knew of. Most was done in the Mystique Mountains due to the magical nature of the stone, but there were other significant locations, both on the continent and the Constellation Isles.
Desmond waited until the Temple Master disappeared inside the building to continue up the path.
There was no shelter on the short dirt road, fields stretching wide on either side, and the moon lit him up like a beacon each time it blazed between the clouds.
Patches of tall grass stretched toward the dense grey skies, their feathery tops rippling in the wind.
A chill rode down Desmond’s spine as he approached the building. The cracked stone was cold beneath his palms when he pressed his ear beside the door, but other than his own shallow breathing, he couldn’t hear a thing.
He tried to decide how Roremar would go about this. Reckless ways aside, he wasn’t dumb, which meant he doubted his friend would use this entrance to try to follow Falliare.
Desmond carefully trod along the circular exterior, doing his best to step on rocks rather than leave boot prints in the damp ground. Clouds shifted over the moon, obscuring his sight even more.
He kept his hearing trained on his surroundings—the natural breezes versus man-made shifts, seeking the distant drone of voices. Mentally preparing for the scent of blood and incense, the sight of another ritual.
About halfway around the side, Desmond realized the top of the round structure was sloping down.
No, not sloping—
It had been cleaved apart. Large chunks were missing from what might’ve once been a complete building but was now in ruins. Light pooled over the jagged edges, eventually dropping low enough that Desmond could see right over the stone exterior.
“What in Aevollon’s realms?” Desmond whispered.
The floor descended into a large pit. The building he’d been approaching wasn’t even a building, but an exterior wall. Its three stories were walkways running between pulley systems, a few tents standing across from where he hid.
The earth below had been carved into steps, rubble and boulders strewn along the wide plateaus. If he had to guess based on the choppy nature, whatever had dug out that hole had acted first, then the steps had been built so men could climb down, though no one was here tonight.
Not a body in sight.
Pickaxes, wheelbarrows, and a host of other tools were abandoned around the pit, some hung on racks and others were tossed carelessly aside.
On the other side of the wall Desmond peered over, a flame cast shadows against stone.
It hissed and crackled, drowning out any noise from the tents across the way, but that had to be where Falliare was.
Which was a damn shame because he was sure Roremar would want to know whatever the Temple Master was talking about. Was there another ritual taking place in there?
Desmond waited, leaning as close to the wall as possible without slipping on the gravel beneath his boots, but he couldn’t see enough.
He eyed the tents, not seeing anyone moving within.
“Fates spare me.”
Pressing his palms against the ledge, he pushed himself up to get a better look.
“What in all the realms?” he whispered.
It wasn’t only a fire flickering in the corner. It was a forge unlike anything he’d ever seen. A large, elaborately carved archway that looked centuries old. Tall and wide enough for two or three men to stand beneath with inscriptions along the top, blurred by soot.
Desmond could only imagine the heat from the pathways of fire bubbling through it, actively spitting sparks and streaks of flame into the air. Sweat beaded along his neck at the thought. His head swam from an unexpected pressure, the world melting into watercolors.
As he watched, inky streaks wove through the rivulets of flame, but Desmond couldn’t see where they were deposited or what it was used for. All he could parse out was the familiar shining aurora rippling through the depths.
A color he’d only seen twice before.
Once coating a small stone carving.
The other on his best friend’s ring.
Sticking to his word, Desmond went to the manor before returning to the apartment, the guards letting him through with a letter from Emmeline. He’d gotten away from the Quarry Lock as quickly possible, and his head still spun slightly as he crossed through the gates.
It got a whole lot worse when he pulled up at the end of the path.
Lola stood on the front lawn, the moon creeping through the clouds and cascading over her raven hair, but she wasn’t alone.
That fucking guard was with her—what was his name again? Evon?
Fates, Desmond couldn’t stand him. He was always trailing Lola. Always standing a few inches too close. Now, they weren’t even a foot apart, whispering in hushed voices. Just the merry two of them.
Fire burned through Desmond’s chest, as hot as Arenothos’s forge. At that moment, he could dive right into the blessed flames and he was certain he’d survive. That they’d cower to him.
Yet whether it was because he wanted to feel the pain or be told straight to his face Desmond called out, “What do we have here?”
Lola and Errin straightened, still standing much too close for Desmond’s liking. “Desmond?” she asked.
“Happy to see me, sweetheart?” He couldn’t keep from taunting her, the bitterness in his gut finding its way into his words.
“Calm down, Alvanti,” Arson said.
Desmond ignored him, eyes only on Lola.
We’re not people who worry about each other.
One night.
“What are you two doing out here?” The words came out much more harshly than he intended.
Sparks ignited in Lola’s eyes, that determination from when she’d pulled away from him at Smoker’s Star back. “Nothing that concerns you.”
“Sure about that, Lols?”
Everything to do with you concerns me. Has for years.
Based on her sigh, Lola heard those words. The way she always did when he ventured too close to something she didn’t want to talk about. She changed the subject. “Did you need something, Desmond?”
He didn’t miss the way her cheeks flushed when she said his name. He latched on to it, that sign that she was affected by his presence, that she remembered every moment they’d sworn meant nothing even if she pretended not to.
“This time,” he drawled, making sure those two words carried the weight of every time they’d snuck around to meet up in the dead of night, “I’m here to talk to Emmeline before I go back to Myrella, sweetheart.”
Lola’s lips pinched and though Desmond knew she was aware he and Myrella were no more than friends, he was positive that was a flare of jealousy in her stunning blue eyes. A shade he’d never been able to capture, no matter how many nights he’d tried. It was all her—Lola Blue.
“Care to tell me where Emmeline is?” he added when Lola didn’t speak. She leaned closer to her guard, fucking Arris’s arm dropping around her shoulder.
Desmond bit back a growl at the sight.
Lola said, “Inside. You can ask an attendant to get her for you. They won’t let you wander in alone.”
And then she turned away, desperate to prove whatever it was she was insisting on to him.