… and so I wandered the Oubliettes, haunted like the halls of my memory. As though it would matter where I hid it when F inevitably noticed what I’d stolen.
I sighed and snapped the journal shut. If she had written it to be read, she might have tried to be a little less circumspect. Half the entries were written in a kind of code, the other half wrapped up in metaphor and allusion. Each sentence was a knotted chain of kembric: beautiful to behold but impossible to untangle.
The bell for third Nocturne chimed low, and a moment later, boot steps rang crisp in the hall. They paused at my door. I sat up in bed. But after a moment they moved on. The door beside mine snapped shut.
Sunder. But he hadn’t come in. Which meant he’d discovered nothing from Pierre.
Guilt cramped my stomach.
It also meant I’d commanded him to torture that boy for nothing. To use the legacy he loathed for no purpose and to no end. But surely he understood. Somewhere in the Paper City a group of fanatics pursued my bloody death. If that wasn’t a reason to deploy the anguish staining his blood, I wasn’t sure what was.
I closed my eyes against a memory swirling snowflake-soft against the back of my eyelids.
So you don’t mind, I’d said,if I’m a monster?
No, Sunder had breathed. Because I’m a monster too.
But why did either of us have to be monsters? Was it this tainted blood burning through our veins, this legacy of a long-dead god-king who’d fathered us all? Or was it a burden we’d taken upon ourselves because we didn’t know any other way? I’d dreamed of a better world, but I had to wonder if that had been an impossible ideal—anillusion.
I opened my palms and waited for colors to spill out, a balm against the shame shrouding me in dusk. But I did not conjure beauty. I conjured the Paper City, crowding close in this freezing room—slums shattered with violence and stained with red. Blood dripped down shopfronts and splattered doors, and each stained windowpane showed my own reflection—a face like wrath.
I chewed away the wash of colors, swallowing them into the vault where my nightmares lived.
The Paper City.
Pierre LaRoche had mentioned the Paper City in his final curse. What had he said?
You’ll never find him. None of you preening aristos know the Paper City well enough.
And he was right. I didn’t know the Paper City at all.
I jumped to my feet and pulled open the drawer of my vanity. The letter inside was inked on cheap paper and reeked of liquor. I scanned it for the first time in weeks, then shoved myself into clothing and opened the door.
I didn’t know the Paper City at all.
But I knew someone who did.
The lower city rang quiet with all the sounds curfew had quenched.
I ducked from shadowed doorway to darkened storefront, dodging the circles cast by ambric glow-globes. I had honestly forgotten that I’d signed off on a strict curfew for the Amber City, enforced by roving bands of Loup-Garou—they were silent as a secret and shadowy as a curse. I’d nearly run into three different packs as I stumbled my way down the Échelles behind the palais, through Rue de la Soie, toward the edge of the Paper City. I probably shouldn’t have snuck out without my dedicated garde, but I didn’t want anyone to know where I was going.
Not even Sunder.Especiallynot Sunder.
The person I was going to see disliked Sunder almost as much as Sunder disliked him.
I retreated deeper into the shadow of my cloak, then stepped across a river of mud into the dristic, wood, and stone mountain they called the Paper City. The stench of still water and human refuse seeped into my nostrils, and I fought the urge to cover my nose. I looked at the paper clutched between my stiff hands, but I’d already memorized the address (if you could call it that): Rue Sèche, Porte du Lait.Dry Street, Milk Gate.
I strode forward, splashing moisture onto my expensive boots. Dilapidated towers cobbled together from mismatched materials cast a strange gloaming. Garbage covered what might once have been a sidewalk. A set of glowing eyes peered from behind a pile of rubbish before flicking away. Moisture seeped between sheets of corrugated metal, leaving stains like blood.
I caught sight of a bent sign, tagged with graffiti.Rue Sèche.A sewer grate gushed dirty water down a narrow alleyway lined with taverns and bordellos.
“The Dry Road,” I grumbled. “Hilarious.”
I squinted. A sign rocked from the lintel of a three-story house, marked with two pale orbs.Moons… except they looked like—
Porte du Lait.Milk Gate.
What unholy iconography—?
