32. 31 #3
Nothing. No noise, no murmur, no shuffle of fabric.
I knocked again, this time louder.
After a full minute of the tea steaming in my grasp, and my hand resting against the door, I opened it. He wasn’t there.
Oh.
Perhaps he hadn’t come back at all?
The insecurity that dwelled in the shallow depths of me made itself known, but I quashed it well enough. If he was still out, it was only because the revelry had taken him too far. Maybe he had needed to crash at an taverna.
It was fine. The chiming doom sounding in my gut was wrong. He was just sleeping off their biggest night of the year.
I descended the stairs and knocked at one further door.
A minute later, I confirmed my suspicion.
Fella had also not returned that night.
Davian’s absence I could more easily understand.
He was the Prince of Darkness, and he had been known to be absent well into the next day before.
Fella’s absence seemed strange. I knew she was set on finding Camriel, which meant she either had not found him, or she had, and that conversation had gone poorly enough that she had not come home.
But still, she never missed breakfast.
I told myself again that everything was fine.
But it didn’t stop me from visiting a third and final door.
The tea in my hand had faded from hot to warm by the time I knocked. “Camriel?”
This time, I heard a shuffle. Phew. For a moment, with only Eliza and the cats to speak to, the place felt deserted. It lost its heart and charm without the three devotees at its helm. But they weren’t all gone, at least.
Camriel pulled open the door. He looked… terrible. I hadn’t seen him out last night, but judging by his rumpled clothing and the dark circles under his eyes, he must have partied far harder than I had.
He offered me a weak smile. “Ah. Annie.”
I offered him the tea. “You look like you need this.”
He almost flinched with the surprise. “Oh,” he said, taking it from me. “That is very kind of you.”
“It’s nothing.”
He glanced behind him into his office, and then back at me. “How can I help you?”
I winced, embarrassed at how obvious it was that I must have wanted something. “Do you know where Davian is?” I asked. “Or Fella?”
Still in the doorway, Camriel took a sip of the tea and then shook his head. “Afraid not. Haven’t seen either of them since they left for the festival. They must still be out.”
It sounded off, but then again, I hadn’t seen anyone looking quite this poorly in some time.
He swallowed the tea, and didn’t look even an ounce more alive.
He’d been quarrelling with the woman he loved for weeks, and Seera had died…
The events of all of it, the murders and the disappearances and the accusations hurled at Davian, it had to be awful.
He wasn’t hungover at all, I realised. He was just bone tired.
“Are you alright?” I asked, softly.
He met my gaze with eyes near crazed with exhaustion. “What?”
I tried to smile. “This must have all been a lot. You don’t look well.”
His hand shook around the tea cup. “Haven’t been feeling good the last few days. The stress of it all, I imagine.”
“It’ll all be over tomorrow,” I said, as reassuringly as I could manage. He looked at me once more with surprise. “After your Oath. They’ll leave you be.”
Camriel took another sip and forced a smile, for my benefit only, I was certain. “Yes, true. It’ll all be over, then.” He nodded to me. “Don’t worry about Davian and Fella. Everyone will be back soon enough.”
He was right, of course, and I was relieved to feel the ring of truth in his words. In an hour from now, or even half a day, I was certain I would see them stumbling back through the door.
I nodded back. “Thank you.”
That seemed to be the end of Camriel’s energy, and I didn’t push him, starting off down the corridor. I heard the door clink shut behind me.
Objectively, he was right.
But how was I not supposed to worry?
Two people had gone missing, again. Maybe only for a matter of hours this time.
But Fella was a woman, with a mark of Pain.
That alone meant something. She fit the pattern.
A female devotee, snatched. A House we didn’t know of any sacrifice for yet.
If these people were being used as sacrifices to bring back Ragnifort, and they needed one of each, then I could not rule out the possibility that Fella was the next on their list.
Camriel was dead on his feet from stress, and Davian was gone, too. I was alone in solving this today.
And what of Davian? It was stupid to put much stock in that last whispered promise: ‘First thing’.
And yet, I had a bad feeling. Worse, he had a mark of Wisdom.
It was old, sure, but what if the person who took them didn’t care about that.
What if that didn’t matter? What if it was both of them?
What if they weren’t just sleeping it off somewhere?
I panicked, leaning against the wall and letting my breath wash out of me in fast pants. I needed Ekris’ guidance more than anything, then. He would know what to do, he would tell me to stop being so hysterical. He would tell me my next move.
Then, I thought of Fella’s words from the other day.
‘You saved yourself, too.’
If they weren’t missing, fine. But I wasn’t just going to sit around waiting to find out. Someone had to know something.
Faded yellow door, waterfront, second fishing jetty to the right.