Chapter 73
Chapter Seventy-Three
Desmond
“Let me get this straight, Alvanti,” Eston whined as he traipsed around the base of the temple in the Second District, following much closer than Desmond wished.
They’d headed here when Emmeline and Myrella went to the arena, hoping to find a hint at the first murder scene in Valyn that helped them guess where Dryvius would take Lola. With Valyn City Guard occupied with the tournament, they could finally get closer to the scene.
“Go ahead,” Desmond drawled, growing more annoyed with the man by the second.
Desmond stood at the top of the stairs, hands on his hips and fingers drumming a repetitive rhythm as he looked up at the faint outline of the bloody message they hadn’t entirely been able to scrub away.
With the candle backlighting Anphrosia’s stained glass window, the words’ silhouettes were stark.
“Lola—”
“She’s not Lola to you,” Desmond grumbled, but Eston either didn’t hear him or didn’t care to acknowledge the complaint.
“—was kidnapped by a Fate. The Fate we all thought was dead, who also killed her brother?”
“Yes, and he used her older brother to do it. The previous killing, not her kidnapping. I don’t think.” He supposed they couldn’t be positive about that until they found the fucker and got the truth, but he was fairly certain Roremar wasn’t being used again.
Desmond strode forward, ripping open one of the doors into the temple.
He dropped his voice as he strode up the aisle, acolytes and searchers who didn’t care about the tournament reading in small, curtained alcoves framing the interior.
“But something happened when Nico was killed—some prophecy fulfilled—and Dryvius got back the body he lost when everyone thought he died centuries ago, so now, he’s somewhere in this Fatesdamned city, masquerading as anyone, because no one on this Fatesdamned realm knows what the Fatesdamned Fates look like nowadays or what form he took. ”
“Un-fucking-believable,” Eston muttered.
Desmond hackles raised as suspicions slammed into him. He halted in the middle of the aisle, Eston nearly bumping into him, and whirled on the guard with narrowed eyes.
“How do I know you aren’t him?” Desmond asked.
Eston gave him a flat look, moonlight streaking his face through the windows high above. “Because Lola—”
“Alana.”
“—has known me for way longer than the Fate has been back.” He scoffed. “What’s wrong? Don’t trust her judgment even though you’re so territorial over her?”
Desmond’s teeth ground, and he stepped closer. “I’m not territorial, and I trust Lola with my life.”
He turned to keep walking toward the altar, aiming to find an entrance to the towers above.
Maybe he was being fucking territorial over Lola right now, but he wouldn’t admit it to this nosy, meddling guard who kept trying to steal her from him.
“You are so,” Eston argued, “and Lola knows it. She hates it.”
Desmond froze. “What?”
“It clearly makes her uncomfortable. She’s not someone you can control, haven’t you noticed?”
Yes, Lola always bickered when Desmond showed even a hint of his true feelings, but he knew her way better than Eston ever could. There was unspoken history between them.
Lola acted like she hated that he cared, but it was because it scared her. After her father died, she became the person that was always okay. Never showing the real emotions by day, giving him so many pieces on their one nights.
Well, caring fucking scared him, too.
But there wasn’t a realm in which he would try to control her. And when he found her, he’d ensure she never thought he’d do that.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Desmond muttered as he jiggled the lock on one door.
Eston’s brows rose, mouth popping into a disbelieving smile. “Wow. I thought you were being a jealous ass, but this is way more than that.”
Desmond clenched and unclenched his fists, assessing the door. He threw his shoulder against it. “I care about her.”
Another ram into the door.
“I do, too.” Eston crossed to the door opposite the one Desmond was trying to open and broke the lock with one easy slam of his sword. “May the best man win.”
Frustration burning, Desmond was about to pull Roremar’s sword from his back when the door in front of him opened, too, and a huge, shadowed form stepped out.
Except, it wasn’t the being that was tall, it was the wings at her back.
Desmond’s magic lifted its head in acknowledgment of the Angel.
“Come along,” she said.
Lilac ether tumbled over white feathers as Valyrie stepped aside and welcomed Desmond and Eston into the back corridors of the temple. She led them all the way up to the towers that backed the stained-glass windows overlooking the street.
Through their rippled, colored glass, the city was a puddle of mystlight rainbows. The reverse of Dryvius’s message cast shadows on the floor, and crushed flower petals littered the space, one of those damn winged sigils on the wall.
But this site was no longer their biggest advantage.
“Do you know where she is?” Desmond demanded of Valyrie. If the Angel didn’t know, they were well and truly fucked.
“I cannot see what a Fate decides, Angelblessed. We have been over this. If I could, I would be able to tell you of Dryvius’s motivation.”
“Angelblessed?” Eston echoed, attention slicing to Desmond. “You have two Fate ties?”
“Yes,” he snapped, agitation heating in his chest.
Unlike Emmeline, Desmond didn’t go out of his way to hide the fact that he was tied to both Arenothos and Aevollon. He didn’t go around shouting it—it was no one’s fucking business—but it didn’t pose a danger to him the way her eleven did.
Eston, though, seemed impressed.
And based on the fond way Valyrie was looking at him, Desmond thought she might be, too. Odd, given she was the fucking Angel. She’d probably known a number of Starsearchers with multiple Fate ties.
“It is not a surprise your line ended up on Alvan,” Valyrie observed, almost thinking aloud more than speaking to him. “The isles were always my favorite escape.”
“Yeah, Alvan is great. Real beautiful in the summer,” Desmond rushed, eager to return to the topic of Lola, “and it’s helpful being tied to both Arenothos and Aevollon—”
“And Aevollon?” Valyrie interrupted. “I could tell there were two, but he—I would not have expected that pairing.”
She didn’t seem surprised about Arenothos, but Desmond was boiling right now. Perhaps she could sense his wrath, and that tie was more prevalent.
Arenothos’s fucking forge, how was this the priority?
“Now that we’ve covered that, can we get back to the more important topic? You know something about Lola.”
Eston’s attention shifted to the Angel, and the two men stared hungrily at her. Thank the Fates the fucker finally got his head on straight.
“There is a place I believe he may have taken her, but it is based on nothing more than speculation and historical context, no evidence of fortune.”
“Tell me,” Desmond rushed out at the same time Eston asked, “Where?”
Desperation made his throat scratchy. He’d take any hint at this point. Something to get him closer to her.
Valyrie’s wings fluttered softly at her back, almost as if she was reluctant to share. “There is a place beneath the earth.”
“Like the catacombs Roremar and Emmeline found?”
“Catacombs?” Eston blurted. Fates, never mind what Desmond thought a moment ago, this man was a fucking hinderance.
“Yes,” Valyrie said.
Eston whistled, but Desmond continued to ignore him. “They said those things cross all over the city. Do you have any specific area?”
“Yes, but where is the Realmspinner? That is why I am really here.”
“What’s a Realmspinner?” Eston asked.
The term was vaguely familiar. Desmond had heard Emmeline say it before. He thought back, trying to force himself not to be so jittery.
“That’s one of the cults Emmeline found in her research, right?” She’d mentioned it a few times, both when they were trying to prove Roremar’s innocence back on Lyra and since arriving in Valyn. “It used to exist on Lyra?”
“A cult?” Valyrie asked, genuine surprise in her navy eyes. “No. No, a Realmspinner is not a cult.”
“That’s what Emmeline said. She said it’s one of the cults they thought Dryvius’s victims were connected to. Or that he was connected to.” Desmond shook his head. “I don’t know, she has a lot of theories and books, I can never keep them straight. What does this have to do with Lola?”
Valyrie’s eyes fogged over for long, agonizing seconds that had Desmond twisting the leather band around his wrist until he thought he’d cut off his blood circulation.
“Oh, no,” Valyrie finally said. She shook her head, the reading slipping away as quickly as it came.
“No, you do not have that right at all. We will find Lola—your fortunes are about to become rapidly and messily entwined with one another—but we need to find the Realmspinner. As quickly as possible.”