Chapter 7
Seven
“Come to me, Octavia, take my hand…”
I jolt awake from yet another dream of the white-haired woman, but the memory quickly fades as it’s replaced with snippets of the second crime scene, of what I did.
Voyd take me, this pain is too much.
My head throbs incessantly, the act of opening my eyelids feeling like a herculean challenge.
I rub at my temples, wincing at the pressure as I try to focus my eyes.
I’m usually so good at masking my pain, but when it’s in my head it’s impossible to ignore, and right now, I have no energy to fight it.
When my eyes finally feel less glazed, I take in my surroundings and find I’m lying awkwardly on the sofa in my apartment, my legs raised up on the arm rest. My head protests as I turn to look around and I find Stryx curled up in the window, looking down at the lamplit street below.
She loves to watch people walking by, constantly fascinated by the comings and goings of the mortals here.
I instantly relax at the sight of her, though I pray to any God that’ll hear me that she cast an illusion over herself when faced with whoever carried me back here. Xavier, most likely.
I gaze at the absurd impossibility that is the Irithys sitting in my window. After all this time, I’m still not used to the sight of her in my apartment, and I still can’t get a straight answer out of her about how she came to be here either.
All the citizens of Velmora are taught the legend of The Fracturing as children, that a thousand years ago, the city stood as one united continent.
But the differing magic between the mortals and the Echofae caused such hostility, war inevitably reigned, and when it came to a head, there was so much death and destruction that the Gods’ wrath was incited beyond measure.
United together, they brought down a fist into the land, so powerful it broke Velmora into four separate pieces, allowing for the divide the two sides thought they craved.
The heavy mists of the Veil descended, locking us all into an eternal prison.
The Echofae retreated to the Lunoreth quarter and banned any mortal from entering.
In retaliation, the high Memonic council issued a decree that no Echofae was to leave their quarter upon fear of death.
Over time, the mortals slowly began to realise the limits of their magic, and a new decree was issued; that the Echofae could leave Lunoreth, but only if enslaved to a mortal.
Tired of their incarceration, some begrudgingly accepted their alternate prison, and have stayed tied through generations of mortal families.
But those that didn’t remained in Lunoreth and the doors have remained closed, no one entering or leaving in over a hundred years.
That is, until the day I stumbled upon Stryx, hunting for rats in an Eidravellian alley.
Noticing her lack of collar or shackles, I had moved to apprehend her, but one look at her too thin face and shaking hands had led me to breaking the law, finding myself inviting her to dinner instead.
I’d only intended for her to stay for an hour or two.
That was eighteen months ago.
I’ve always felt sympathy for the Echofae, their enslavement undeserved and cruel. But I’d never thought to turn my feelings into action, until her.
I groan as I try to shift onto my elbows and her head snaps round to face me, her ears twitching back and forth as she looks me up and down for injury.
“How long have I been out?” I grumble, finally managing to prop myself up, but making my head swim in the process.
“A while,” she says innocently, sweeping from the window seat to accompany me on the sofa. I narrow my eyes at her until she eventually huffs. “Fine, you’ve been sleeping for, like, eight hours?”
I fall back heavily into the cushions, another groan escaping me at that unwelcome information.
“Argh, remind me why Echofae can use magic without consequence while us mortals have to suffer,” I moan, rubbing my eyes.
“Because,” Stryx starts, not registering my sarcasm. “Your ancestor, Augustus, begged the Gods for the gift of magic to be bestowed upon the mortals so they could outmatch the Echofae in power. His plea went ignored by all, but the Faceless God, who granted his wish, but with dire consequ–”
“Yes Stryx, I know, I was being sarcastic. I learnt about Augustus as a child,” I cut in, trying and failing to hide my amusement.
“Oh, sorry.” Her ears flick back as her face reddens slightly. “You mortals have a weird way of stating things without actually expecting an answer.”
“It’s called rhetoric,” I smile. “But it’s good to know our histories aren’t taught differently. I always assumed it was a myth, though.”
“A myth? No. Unfortunately, very real,” she says seriously.
I raise my eyebrows. “Even the bit about the God inhabiting Augustus’s body and using him as a vessel?
Or the fact that the Gods created the Veil to banish the Faceless God from us and that if the Veil is ever destroyed he will come back and mortal magic will once again be untamed?
” I laugh. “There were a few kids in my class that salivated over that idea. Supremacist Voyders, the lot of them.”
She tilts her head at me in thought. “You think it would be bad if that happened? Even if it meant you could use magic without harming yourself?”
I don’t even have to think about it.
“Of course,” I insist. “No one should have too much power, especially when that power was granted out of jealousy and spite. I’ll admit there are times I wish it wasn’t so suppressive, it would make life a lot easier for me.
I know that’s how Xavier feels. But there are awful people in this city, and I shudder to think what would happen if criminals and those in power had no limits on their magic.
So yeah, if there does happen to be some ruthless God waiting on the other side of the Veil, they can stay right there as far as I’m concerned. ”
She chuckles, staring down at her long fingers which she’s knitted together––an action often sprung of anxiety. I suddenly get an overwhelming feeling that she’s hiding something.
“You’re stressed,” I note, nodding my chin towards her hands and instantly regretting it when my head throbs with a greater fervour.
Her head snaps up and her pointed ears press back tight to her head. “Obviously I’m stressed. You promised me you wouldn’t Mindweave without your circlet, Octavia.”
I wince at her stern tone. I did promise her that. The last time this happened, I suffered the lasting effects for days, and both her and Xavier nearly lost their damn minds over it. I swore to them both I would never endanger myself like that again.
Oops.
“I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”
She looks at me like she doesn’t believe me, but thankfully she doesn’t press the matter. Instead, she stands and grabs my cloak, pulling the phial out of the pocket and shaking it in her hand. “So, are you going to show me what was so important it was worth hurting yourself for?”
I smirk. “I think we might have a serial killer on our hands. Pass me the other phial and we can watch both the memories back at the same time.”
The table between us is cluttered, scraps of parchment, smudged quills, three empty mugs of Stryx’s favourite bitterleaf tea.
But my eyes fix on the two glass bottles nestled in their iron stand in the middle of it all.
They glow faintly, threads of light writhing inside like caught glow worms. My head still aches deeply from pulling the last of them free, but I can’t stop staring.
Answers lie in there somewhere. Or at least pieces of them, anyway.
Stryx shifts beside me, her ears flicking back and forth in eager anticipation as she reaches for the nearest phial, the scattered braids in her silver hair falling into her eyes.
Her touch on the glass is delicate, reverent almost, like she’s afraid the thing might shatter and spill its contents into the floorboards.
“You ready?” she asks softly.
“As I’ll ever be,” I murmur, though my stomach knots. Whilst I’m eager to crack this case, I’m not fond of replaying memories. They’re too real, too easy to lose yourself in.
Stryx tilts the phial and unseals it with a careful twist of the stopper.
At once, the light unfurls, spilling upward in a slow cascade.
Wisps of memory pour into the room, curling and folding like smoke until we’re no longer sitting in our threadbare apartment, but standing in the middle of the crime scene again.
The memories fade in and out around us in a glittering haze of fog, like stepping into a cloud full of light and colour.
The walls shimmer, edges fraying into sparks.
The floor beneath us is both solid and translucent, flickering with veins of light.
The dead seer’s body reappears in between us, ghostly pale, frozen in that same awful sprawl.
I swallow hard. Even knowing it’s an echo, my chest tightens.
Stryx lifts her hand, fingers tracing sigils in the air, and the memory bends to her will.
The scene shudders, pauses, rewinds, allowing us to see everything through my past eyes with perfect detail.
Once we’ve examined the first memory, Stryx opens the second, the two converging around us, ghosts within ghosts, overlapping until there are two bodies on the floor between our feet.
“There,” I mutter. “The brands on their temples, both their memories were siphoned before death. There must be a reason.”
She nods, and my pulse thrums as I watch her shape the air. She gestures again and the memory halts. Sparks scatter where her fingers slice through the projection and the air grows thick with shimmering motes, like dust catching moonlight.
Stryx moves between the overlapping projections, eyes narrowing as she rewinds them both in tandem.
She points at the faint silvery glow around each victim’s temple.
“I imagine a seer’s memories would be quite useful to some people, or damning.
That could be a motive?” She flicks her fingers, freezing the memories.
I wrap my arms around myself, staring as the two images blur and twist together.
If I solve this, it could be my ticket back into the Division.
I could get my life back. The motes of magic drift around us, brushing across my skin like sparks of static, making every hair stand on end.
I almost forget the horror of it because it’s so beautiful, too. Like standing inside a constellation.
But then my eyes find the victims again, their hollow faces overlaid in flickering light, and the beauty collapses back into something jagged. Something cruel.
“This doesn’t just feel like murder, does it?” I whisper. “It’s like…harvesting?”
Stryx glances at me, her expression grim. “We need to figure out why their memories were taken. It’s the only lead. We need to see if they’re salvageable.”
I nod in agreement. “I need to examine the bodies again. No doubt the second victim has been moved to the Division morgue by now, though, which means dealing with Maevick.”
“We can go tonight,” she pushes, a fire sparking in her eyes at the thrill of the mystery.
I bite my lip, tapping my fingers together three times as my heart starts to race at the idea of her coming with me.
Her eyes narrow as she seems to sense the direction of my thoughts, and the memory projections suddenly drop from around us, jarring my vision for a moment.
“You’re not leaving me behind Octavia. I’m going mad cooped up in here. ”
“I’m just trying to keep you safe, Stryx,” I remind her gently, but she shakes her head, stubborn as ever. Guilt floods me as I consider what it must be like for her to be locked in here day and night, and I find myself quickly relenting, despite my reservations.
“Fine, you can come,” I sigh. “But only if you assure me you can maintain a full illusion on yourself the entire time. And you need to wear shoes.”
She laughs before using her magic to coax any lingering memories back into the phials, then directing her hands in front of her face, tracing patterns in the air as her blue aura starts to escape her.
Her hair starts to float on an invisible breeze, before gently dropping back down as the illusion falls over her like a waterfall, her hair slowly turning from silver to yellow, her ears and eyes shrinking and reshaping to copy that of a mortal’s.
I step forward to help her into her overcoat to hide the silvery tattoos that spiral up her arms, and when I step back, she’s almost entirely unrecognisable.
“Good,” I nod. “Let’s go.”
“To the morgue?” she asks, hurrying out the door behind me as she pulls up her hood and drums her fingers together excitedly.
“Not yet, there’s somewhere I need to go first.”