“I guess that is the best to be expected, Goddess. Let me recount to you what I witnessed the day that boy went missing.”
Tethys straightened in her seat, anticipation beading atthe nape of her neck despite the cold cavernous space.
“I’m listening,” she said.
“I saw the boy and his sister wandering through the street. I must admit, I fully intended on following them back to their estate in hopes of only a few staff being home.”
Tethys grimaced, envisioning the poor children riddled with guilt and terror, having unintentionally led a thief to their home. This man truly was a toxin.
“And because so, I kept my eyes locked on him at all times. His sister had slipped ahead, seemingly unaware that her brother had fallen behind. One moment, they pranced happily up the street, pausing every so often to pick up a loose pebble. The next he was gone. Had simply vanished as if he hadn’t existed in the first place. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“Thinking I’d lost him in the crowd, I made haste to the spot he’d disappeared and scanned the street for any sign of his blue cloak, but nothing.” Randall paused, allowing Tethys a moment to digest. She simply nodded, gesturing for him to continue.
“Judging by your reaction, this isn’t the first unworldly account you’ve received,” he said. Scrutinizing her with a blood shot, dull eye.
“No. It isn’t,” she stated plainly.
“Did the other accounts also mention the scorch marks left behind or were they overlooked?” Randall asked, arching a thick brow.
“Scorch marks?” Tethys braced against the seat, her dress wrinkling as she shifted.
“Yes. Like a fire was lit at the boy’s feet. I bent down to examine the singed ground, and the first thing of note was the smell. Sulfur and rotting grass. Odd for cobblestone.”
“No other investigation of the scenes of disappearances have had reports of odd smells, sir. How can I know you aren’t simply weaving lies into your account in hopesof receiving a favorable pardon?” Tethys asked, suddenly suspicious of the old man’s words.
“Because I brought something that will solidify my account as truth,” he said, rummaging through the leather satchel beside him. Tethys heard the blink of a sword unsheathing from its scabbard and threw Araes a cautious glance. His eyes dangerously flashed at her. She could only imagine it took all of the poor man’s self-control not to leap between her and Randall.
“I caution you, sir. If this is some sort of trick, it will not end well for you,” she threatened, returning her attention to the thief still searching his bag.
“Oh, call off your guard dog. If I intended on killing you, it’d be far more swift and far less conspicuous,” he grumbled, finally retrieving the object he sought. Candlelight flickered across the thickly bound leather text as he opened the ancient, dusty pages.
“Do I want to know how you got your talons on a royal-bound tome?” she asked, watching Randall shuffle through page after page of a book she was all too familiar with.
“Probably not, Goddess, but the means in which I acquired this text is irrelevant. I knew after what I witnessed that this was supernatural in nature. The vanishing, the scorches, it was all too inexplicable to be of mortal doing.”
“So you decided to do your own research by stealing a copy of the Theogony. Randall, I hate to inform you, but I’ve studied that text for longer than you’ve been alive. Not to mention, I bore witness to Phosphora’s transcription, although only a child at the time,” she said. If anything came to be from this waste of a conversation it was that she’d retrieved a sacred, stolen text.
“I can assure you, Goddess, you do not have this edition,” he said, smirking.
He placed the open text on her lap, and Tethys’s eye’s widened as she scanned its secrets. This wasn’t simply acopy of the Theogony, like the ones used in Seminar. It was Eos’s volume. The same text now missing from the most secure level of the archives.
“You need to tell me where you got this, Randall,” she said, flipping a delicate page.
“Although I’d love to indulge your curiosity, Goddess, with an epic tale of how a mere mortal thief snuck into the Venian archives right under your head copyist’s nose, it’s a family heirloom. Passed from my grandmother and hers before her and so on,” he said, shrugging.
“And who is your grandmother?” Tethys asked, eyeing the mortal.
“What you can’t see the resemblance, Goddess?”
Tethys arched a brow.
“My lineage stems from your mother’s copyist herself,” Randall said, dipping his chin.
“That’s impossible, sir. The copyists swear a vow of celibacy. You couldn’t possibly be a descendant from Euda’s line, because said line does notexist,” Tethys replied. As convincing as Randall may be, even Tethys knew the limitations of his con.
“Perhaps she had a child before taking the vow, Goddess. Or perhaps these oaths aren’t upheld as you believe them to be,” he shrugged and pointed to the tome in Tethys’s lap. “Regardless, you’ll want to hear me out.”
Tethys scrutinized Randall’s admission of his lineage, attempting to discern the lie from truth, but Eos’s edition forced her to shove those thoughts aside for the moment. Where the other versions of the Theogony ended, this text only began. Despite the sheer thickness of the binding, the inscription was nearly identical at the final chapter’s end. She ran a finger across the heading of the following page.
