Chapter 45 #2
“What the fuck”—Tenny whispered the word, as if she wasn’t used to saying it aloud—“is he talking about?”
Nox didn’t answer. Their eyes flicked back to that gilded mirror, then to the closed office door, their posture suddenly stiffening.
“What—”
“Shh,” they said, their hands immediately going to the desktop, replacing the journals they’d been flipping through and spreading the loose sheets of paper over them.
Panic seized Kit’s chest as her ears pricked with the sound of bootsteps striding down the corridor. “Shit,” she rasped.
Tenny took in the panicked look on Kit’s face, the flurry of movement from the nocterrian, realization replacing the look of confusion she’d been wearing. “Someone’s coming.”
Nox nodded, ushering the two women over to the wall, misty shadows swirling at their feet. They placed a single blue finger over their lips before their hand went to Kit’s hip, drawing her against them, the other gripping Tenny’s shoulder.
Kit was pulled into the quiet fold of magic with nothing but the feel of Tenebris Nox’s hand and the sound of her own unsteady breath in her ears.
The three of them melted into the shadows just as the heavy office door creaked open and Lord Paramount Leviathan Church walked into his office, cane thudding on the floor.
Past the swirling blackness, as though she were looking through a veil, Kit could just make out the lord’s form as he crossed the room, his head turned toward the desk. Kit held her breath. Did he remember the exact state of dishevelment he’d left the room in? Would he know someone had touched it?
With a startle, Kit realized she was still gripping that final page in her hands, the wrinkled piece of parchment suddenly feeling more like a warrant for arrest.
The lord did not linger at his desk, though.
Kit had to keep herself from sighing audibly when he took another few steps toward the window, closing the heavy curtain and dousing the room further into darkness.
Nox’s grip tightened on Kit’s hip, and she thought perhaps they were thinking the same thing she was.
We can use all the shadows we can get right about now.
Even with her sharp fae sight, though, between the darkness of the room and the veil of nocterrian shadow magic, it was difficult to discern exactly what the lord did next.
She could tell he had moved over to the mirror, that same one that kept drawing Nox’s attention. Could vaguely make out his shape as he pulled something from his belt.
What was not vague, what was unmistakable, in fact, was the hiss of pain and sudden scent of copper as Lord Leviathan Church sliced his hand open and pressed it to the mirror’s surface.
In the shadows, Tenny made a soft noise, a strangled sort of gasp, and Kit reached over, grasping for her hand in the darkness.
Glowing red symbols appeared then quickly faded as, with a low rumble, the mirror moved. Lord Church reached into the wall, into some sort of hidden compartment that had just been revealed.
Kit couldn’t see what was held within, could only focus her gaze on the back of the lord paramount’s head as he fussed with something inside. Could only try to keep the frost she felt icing through her veins at bay, the rage that threatened to spill out in the face of such blatant blood magic.
She saw the faintest glint of whatever the lord held in his hands as he turned—something small enough to fit in his still-bleeding palm. The mirror slid back into position, as if it had never moved in the first place. As if the lord had never bled upon it. Perfectly ordinary once more.
Lord Church pulled a black handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around his hand, giving the room one more look before he strode back out the door.
The silence he left behind in the room was thunderous.
Kit only realized she was still holding her breath when Nox finally let their shadows recede and she fell back into the room with a gasp.
Tenny was a ghost. Pale, trembling.
“Tenny . . .” Kit started, but the girl just shook her head.
“What was that? Who is he?” The words were a brittle whisper.
“Did either of you see what he took? What was in there?” Nox asked.
Kit shook her head. Tenny didn’t move at all. She just stared at the mirror, disbelief carving through her face. And something deeper too, something sadder. Like she was suddenly all too aware that her own father was, in reality, a stranger.
Not just a stranger.
Sanguinagi.
Kit wanted to ask questions. Wanted answers, wanted to see if Tenny’s blood could open that compartment right back up, if they could see what else lay inside.
But Tenny looked like she was about thirty seconds away from fainting entirely, and this had all been too much. So Kit folded the piece of parchment she was still clutching into quarters and slid it into her pocket.
Later, she thought. Later, they would find more answers. They would figure out what all this meant. What Lord Church was really up to. What secrets his sanguinagi safe held.
Later, Kit would ask Tenny if she understood the last part of what was written on the page in her pocket. The final three lines, each one underscored in red:
The son must rise.
Let the son rise.
The son will rise.