Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
The Division’s tall black doors loom ahead, and my stomach sinks when I see the cluster of wardens outside, their faces drawn and tense.
The moment we step inside, the Chief’s voice cuts through the low murmur of the station.
“Finally.” He waits by the staircase, his expression ashen. “You’d better come with me.”
I frown. “What’s happened? Where’s Xavier?”
“Xavier,” the Chief says grimly, turning on his heel, “Is currently vacationing in the cells.”
“The cells?” Stryx—disguised under her mortal glamour—gasps, falling into step beside me as I follow the Chief. “Why?”
“We found him passed out in a back alley in Aethermere. Looked half-dead. When the wardens tried to bring him in, he woke up swinging.” His tone hardens. “He nearly killed two of them.”
I stop dead in my tracks. “What?”
Starling doesn’t look back. “He tried to force his way into the morgue to see his sister.”
My pulse spikes. “He hasn’t seen Vesper’s body–”
“No, and nor will he yet,” the Chief cuts in. “We couldn’t allow him inside in his current state, we’ve been preparing another body for examination.”
Stryx glances sharply at me. “Another body?”
We reach the lower corridor, the scent of damp stone and antiseptic thick in the air, and I realise he hasn’t been walking us to the cells.
Starling pauses by the door to the morgue. “That’s why I sent for you,” he says finally, voice dropping low. “You need to see for yourself. I think…I think it’s connected.”
My chest tightens as we follow him inside. “Connected to the murders?”
He meets my eyes grimly. “You tell me.”
I freeze as Starling pulls back the linen and Raph’s unseeing eyes stare vacantly up at me.
Even with what we found in the Archives, I was still sceptical about this being cult related, but as I stare at the body of the man who pulled us into the shadows not two nights ago, I can’t help but think his untimely death must confirm the truth of it.
It can’t be a coincidence that he ended up in the morgue after revealing vital information.
Other than that, though, there’s no resemblance to the other murders.
Unlike the others, his body is barely recognisable now, marred by brutal, deliberate stabs.
The gashes are deep and seemingly unrestrained.
Whoever did this didn’t just want him dead.
This looks personal.
“Gods…” Stryx mutters, covering her mouth as she staggers back a step.
My throat constricts. “This isn’t like the others,” I say quietly. “The others were…clean. Ritualistic. This—this is pure, unadulterated rage.”
The Chief gives a low grunt of agreement. “Yes. Different pattern, different weapon. But the note left on his body…” He reaches into his coat and hands me a folded scrap of parchment. “That’s what connects them.”
My breath catches as I take the parchment, unfolding it carefully. My heart skips as my eyes trace the sharp, elegant script.
The current destroys all those too weak to swim against it.
My hand trembles slightly as I read.
“This is like the others?” the Chief asks.
I nod, but something isn’t right. My gaze sharpens, drawn to the ink. Under the light of the lanterns, it glistens darkly, but not that telltale midnight blue hue. Now I think about it, the script isn’t quite the same either.
Riven didn’t leave this note.
“This isn’t the same,” I whisper, wondering how much to reveal to the Chief. “The others were written in a rare ink, one that shimmers blue in the light. This one’s black, and the handwriting doesn’t match. It’s a fake.”
Stryx leans over my shoulder, brow furrowing.
“Raph told me about the tattoo,” I tell Starling finally. “He thought it belonged to a cult, something tied to the Fracturing. No one else knew about it, though. No one, but me and Stryx.”
My mind races, pieces clicking in all the wrong ways. Riven didn’t write this note, but someone wants me to think he did. Someone who knows my movements, and my secrets; someone who knows Raph talked.
I look back at the body, the ink-black warning still burning in my hand. For the first time since the murders began, I’m not sure who is hunting whom.
“A cult? Voyd take me. Please tell me that you have some direction for us to follow?” the Chief asks, breaking the long silence, though his voice is strained with something I can’t quite place. “Did you find anything in all that evidence you took?”
I share a glance with Stryx, her anxiety mirroring mine.
We still don’t know the Chief’s allegiance, I could’ve told him too much already.
I want to believe he’s on the right side of this, but until I can be sure, I need to be smart.
So I shake my head, placing a regrettable look on my face.
“Nothing yet, but I’ll keep looking. There will be something we’ve missed. ”
He huffs impatiently but nods. “I’ll leave you to it, then. I’ll go check in with our fiery comrade in the cells.”
I wait until I can no longer hear his footsteps down the corridor before turning to Stryx. “We need to examine all the bodies inch by inch until we find a puncture wound. There has to be one.”
Without a word, she strides past me and starts pulling the bodies out from the numerous holes in the walls where they are stored, magically chilled and preserved under the wards that encompass the room.
Once we’ve uncovered the correct corpses, I bring them out to lay side by side, hoping that some sort of pattern makes itself obvious with them all together.
With the exception of poor Raph, there are four bodies in total that match.
We stand together, scanning them slowly, and I internally list all the characteristics they have in common—same tattoo, same siphoning marks on their temples, same unmarred skin, three of them seers according to their blue hair…surely something should be amiss here?
“Octavia, don’t seers wear diadems?” Stryx asks as she examines the heads, a faint, thin indent circling each of the seer’s hair, highlighting the absence of a trinket rarely removed.
I think back to the conversation I had with Xavier when I mentioned the same thing at the first murder.
“They are only worn during readings, so it’s not particularly suspicious to find a seer without one.
That’s what Xavier said, anyway,” I tell her, but as the words leave my mouth, I remain unconvinced.
I stupidly took Xavier’s word for it and didn’t think to question it. It’s not like he’s the authority on the subject, at least to my knowledge, anyway. Standing here now, the obvious absence of a diadem on not one, but all three of them seems too odd. In fact, now I think of it–
“Stryx, When did you last see a seer walking round without a diadem on?”
She tilts her head in thought. “I don’t think I ever have.”
“Exactly,” I confirm, nodding my head as my mind begins to spin all the possibilities. “Can you sense any magical resonance around their heads? Like you did with the blood?” I ask, hope starting to grow, though I refuse to let it spread too far.
She closes her eyes and holds her hands over the head of the first seer, her brow furrowing. A minute goes by, her features scrunching as she concentrates, and then she gasps.
“Yes! It’s small, but it’s there. Help me turn her over,” she says hurriedly, and I take the victim’s shoulders carefully as we move her onto her stomach, revealing the back of her head.
Her hair is still matted from the congealed blood that had been pooled beneath her, even after being cleaned, and it’s stiff to move.
Stryx hovers a hand an inch above, feeling for the resonance.
Her eyes widen and she pulls the hair back with difficulty, revealing the skin beneath, and we both stare agape.
There’s a tiny puncture wound.
It must have been invisible before whilst fresh, disguised by the hair, but after a week in the morgue, green and blue bruising peppers the surrounding skin, framing the now obvious wound like a target.
On closer examination, I trace the slight kink to her hair, the indent travelling round her head, indicating where a tight diadem would usually sit. And it lands directly over the wound.
My brain spins as I finally put the pieces of the puzzle together.
“The diadems are worn tight to the head. If something punctured the skull here through it, then the pressure from the diadem would keep the wound closed, whilst the blood started pooling beneath the skin. Removing the diadem would release the pressure, and cause the blood to spill at an alarming rate. Once two litres were spilled, the spell would activate.”
Stryx looks at me, stricken. “So is the killer the one that removed the diadems? Or was it someone else?”
“It can’t have been the victims removing them, or we would’ve found diadems at all of the crime scenes,” I muse, pulling my hood back and running a hand through my hair.
“So that means the killer likely removed them…or someone else interfered. Vesper wasn’t a seer, but she has the same indent in her hairline.
She must have been wearing something similar, a circlet maybe? ”
Stryx huffs in frustration. “Regardless, we still don’t know why. Why would someone do this?”
Before I can speculate, I’m interrupted by muffled shouting.
“Where is she?” The louder, more furious shout echoes down the corridor to a chorus of pounding footsteps. I’d know that voice anywhere—it seems the Chief felt it was time to release Xavier.
The door slams open so hard it rattles dangerously on its hinges. Xavier storms in, his knuckles bloodied and dark hair a tangled mess, eyes burning with something between grief and madness.
My stomach drops at the sight.
Whatever feelings he’s succumbed to in the last two days whilst he’s been missing…it hasn’t just broken him. It’s changed him.
“Where is she?” Xavier’s voice tears through the morgue like thunder, raw and jagged with fury. He shoves past the wardens before they can stop him, his boots echoing sharply across the tiles. I jump in front of Vesper’s body, trying to shield my friend from further pain.
“Xavier, wait–” I start, but it’s too late.
His eyes land on the table behind me. He goes utterly still, his breath catching.
“No,” he whispers. “No, no, no–”
His knees hit the floor with a dull crack that echoes off the stone walls. For a long moment, the world seems to hold its breath. Then he crawls the remaining distance, trembling hands reaching for his lifeless twin.
“Don’t,” I say softly, reaching for him, but Xavier ignores me. A sound escapes him—half sob, half strangled gasp—as he crumples forward, his head bowing over Vesper’s chest. His fingers grip her hand, trying to warm the skin that will never move again.
“Vesper…” His voice breaks. “Gods, no. I was supposed to protect you.”
The Chief looks away from where he stands in the doorway.
I didn’t even notice him arrive. I stand frozen in place, heart aching.
I want to say something, anything, but what words can reach someone drowning in that kind of loss?
I’ve seen him angry, reckless, arrogant, but never this hollow. Never broken.
I felt the same way when my parents died.
I was so young, just a teenager when they were cruelly taken from me, and time has not healed me the way everyone promised it would.
I’ve spent my life since, fending for myself, making my own way alone.
It’s a fraught existence, and I wouldn’t wish this pain on anyone.
He looks up suddenly, eyes wild with red-veined fury. “You know who did this, Octavia,” he snarls, his voice shaking. “You know it as well as I do!”
Starling snaps to attention, looking between Xavier and me, waiting for us to elaborate, but I daren’t say anything. I know what Xavier is implying, but saying it aloud in front of a man who could be compromised is a reckless move.
I step closer, my throat thick with emotion. “We don’t know that yet,” I implore him quietly. “But we’ll find out, Xavier. I swear it.”
He turns away, unable to meet my gaze, and my jaw clenches so hard it feels like it might crack. He knows my conflict about Riven, a thing he clearly doesn’t share, and I can feel cracks start to form in the foundations of our friendship.
The silence that follows is almost unbearable. Grief, guilt, and rage twist together until they are one and the same, poisoning the air between us. I’ve lost so much, I can’t lose my oldest friend too. Not like this.
Then a warden steps into the room tentatively. “Sir, Governor Ashfell is here to see you. He says it’s urgent.”
As one, our collective attention snaps to the warden, who looks back at us wide-eyed in confusion.
Stryx and I share a look as realisation dawns on us too late.
The words have barely left the warden’s mouth before Xavier stiffens, every muscle in his body tightening like a drawn bowstring.
His eyes, bloodshot and hollow with grief, go cold.
“Where is he? Where is that traitorous Voyder?” Xavier shouts, launching to his feet and grabbing the warden by his collar, shaking him viciously. We run forward, but he throws the warden across the room before we can stop him, Starling frozen in shock at the scene unfolding before him.
“What is the meaning of this, Blackwood?” he rages, marching forward to help us apprehend him, but Xavier is already out the door, his voice echoing back to us ominously down the corridor.
“I’m going to kill him!”