Chapter 21
Twenty-One
For a heartbeat, everything stills. Even the hum of Aethermere seems to fade beneath the sudden weight of dread that falls over me.
“What’s happened, Xavier?” I press, my Shadow looming in close to me as the sense of doom becomes overwhelming.
“My neighbour,” he says, his voice panicked, almost strangled. “I received a message, he says my door’s open. Blood on the threshold.”
Then, without waiting for me to reply, Xavier starts running.
For a heartbeat I don’t think, I just follow, Stryx hot on my heels.
We sprint across the sky bridge, the sound of our boots echoing like drumbeats against the wooden slats.
My knees protest at the onslaught, but I power through it, my frantic heartbeat pulsing in my throat as my anxiety builds to an unbearable weight.
“Xavier, what if she–” I begin, but I can’t finish the sentence.
“She’s fine,” he snaps over his shoulder, though his voice cracks. “She has to be.”
We burst through the gates to Eidravelle, the Memosyne’s towering buttresses gleaming ghostly pale against the fog in the distance. When we finally reach Xavier’s street, I see the door immediately, half open, a smear of dark, drying blood dragged across the threshold.
Xavier doesn’t hesitate. He shoves the door the rest of the way open and storms inside, knife raised.
The air within is cold and still. Too still.
My eyes sweep the hall and I see a toppled vase, a shattered teacup, and a faint trail of footprints, half-dried, leading toward the stairwell. Small. Barefoot. Vesper’s.
“Vesper?” Xavier’s voice cracks through the silence, raw with panic as he sprints up the stairs to her bedroom. “Vesper, it’s me!”
No one answers.
I crouch, tracing the edge of a bloody footprint with my finger.
The blood is dark, but not congealed, so it must be recent.
Within the last hour possibly, maybe two.
I rise and follow the prints until they stop abruptly in the middle of the hall.
Other than the dropped tea cup, there’s no sign of a struggle, though. No drag marks…nothing.
“She’s gone,” Xavier whispers as he slowly trudges back to the bottom of the stairs. “She’s–”
“Not dead,” I interrupt, forcing the word out with confidence I don’t feel. “If she was, there’d be more blood. Maybe…maybe someone took her?”
Stryx tilts her head, nostrils flaring. “There’s magic resonance in the air. Old magic.”
My stomach turns. “Someone used magic to get her out?”
Stryx shrugs, her mouth a grim line. “I don’t know, but either way, I don’t think she left by choice.”
Xavier grips the doorframe until his knuckles whiten, his breath shaking. “Riven,” he says darkly. “He said he’d make it worse. If he’s hurt her, I swear–”
I place a hand on his arm, though my own fury burns beneath the surface. “We don’t know that yet. He’s been with us at the crime scene and this blood is too recent. I don’t think it was him this time, Xavier. But we will find out.”
He narrows his eyes at me as he steps away from my touch. “You seem quick to defend him,” he accuses, his eyes flashing.
“I am not defending him,” I growl. “I get that you’re upset, I am too, but we need to relay the facts here, or we’ll get nowhere.”
A knock on the open door stops us from saying anything further we might regret, and the three of us spin round to find a disheveled looking man standing on the doorstep, an unconscious young woman with long black hair limp in his arms.
“Vesper!” Xavier cries, lurching forward to take her into his arms from the man I assume to be his neighbour. I immediately check her pulse, sighing with relief when I can feel it. It’s weak, but present.
“I went out lookin’ soon as I sent the moth to ya, Detective,” the man says to Xavier, still panting slightly from carrying her here. “I found her not three streets away, was worried she was a goner, eh.”
“Did you see anything else?” Xavier presses him frantically, clutching his sister close. “Was anyone else here?”
“I’m ‘fraid not, Detective. All I saw was the door open, was sleepin’ before that, you see.”
Xavier grits his teeth, giving him a curt nod. “Thank you, Heston, I owe you one.”
The man trudges back across the street to his house, leaving us to figure out this mess. It doesn’t make sense. If someone took her, why would they have left her in the street mere minutes away?
“Has anything happened like this before?” I ask Xavier, following him up the stairs as he carries Vesper back to her bed. “Could the curse have done this?”
He nudges the bedroom door open with his hip and takes her to the bed, sliding her gently under the covers. “No, she’s barely left this bed in months.”
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence this happened now, when these murders are going on,” Stryx murmurs from behind me, fixing her stare on Vesper’s limp body.
“You think it’s connected?” I ask, the same thought having just crossed my mind too.
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I know you don’t trust gut feelings, Octavia, but that’s what mine is telling me.”
Xavier looks up at us both, his expression dark. “If it is connected, then you can be sure Riven’s involved somehow.”
Given his sister is currently clinging to life in front of us right now, I figure it’s probably not the best time to remind him we can’t jump to conclusions about the Governor, so I change tack.
“Stryx and I have a new lead that could give us a direction to follow. We’ll go back to the Archives, see if there’s anything else we might have missed. You stay here and look after Vesper.”
He tenses. “New lead?”
I nod, but don’t elaborate.
“The Chief said–”
“Do you really think you’re going to leave your sister alone just so you can chaperone me? If we find anything of importance, especially if it ties to Riven, I’ll let you know immediately,” I insist, desperate to do my job without him constantly breathing down my neck.
Thankfully, he seems placated by that idea as he nods his agreement, turning his attention back to Vesper.
“Send word if–” I stumble, not wanting to say the words out loud. “Just let me know if she needs anything.”
“Thank you,” he smiles sadly, grabbing my hand as I start to turn to the door. “Be careful. I don’t think there’s anyone we can trust right now.”
I stare out at the city through the window behind him, the sunlight forcing its way through the thick mists above. The same thought circles my mind.
Riven warned me to be careful who I trust too.
Now I’m not sure if that warning had been a threat…or a plea.
The streets of Eidravelle feel like they’re cloaked in the kind of hush that follows catastrophe, though given my Shadow’s ever-looming presence, it’s hard to tell if I’m simply imagining things.
Lanterns in doorways gutter against the wind as we walk away from Xavier’s home, stepping over the threshold’s dark stain, the half-dried blood glinting under the pale morning light.
Neither of us speak for a while, the only sound the echo of our boots on the cobbles and the distant cries of children playing in the streets.
“You didn’t tell him what Raph said,” Stryx says, breaking the silence as she looks at me curiously.
“He’ll need time,” I murmur, my eyes fixed ahead. “Whatever’s happened to Vesper… he won’t think clearly until he knows she’s okay. I think his bias towards Riven might be starting to cloud his judgement, and I don’t want it to start feeding mine too.”
Stryx tilts her head, her eyes tracking to my set jaw. “And you? Do you still feel the same?”
“I don’t have time to constantly question Riven’s motives,” I say flatly. “If Raph was right about it being connected to a cult, we can’t afford to speculate. We need facts. But if it is all true and these people are connected to the murders, to the Fracturing…”
“Then the danger’s bigger than we thought,” Stryx finishes, her voice low.
We turn into the main thoroughfare leading toward the Memosyne, its towering walls looming like the edge of a dream, the ornate gates glimmering in the filtered sunlight.
Even from this distance, the air around it shimmers faintly with ward-magic, the faint tang of old incense and sanctity seeping into the air around us.
“You really think we can find the answers here?” Stryx asks as we approach the guards at the gates.
“What’s that saying? Three people can only keep a secret if two of them are dead?
” I reply, pulling the hood of my cloak further over my face.
“Someone somewhere must have written something they shouldn’t have, and if there’s anywhere in this city that would have a record of a secret society, it’s the Archives. ”
“And if it’s real? What if they find out we’re onto them?”
I grimace. “Then we’ll find out how much of a sin curiosity really is.”