“Move carefully!” I ordered Felaf. The roaring around us drowned out my voice. Hasty movements could crumble whatever stability remained of the structure.
“Help!” a woman called in Geminian. Upstairs, where the heartbeats emanated from.
My legs carried me swiftly as I held my breath to keep the smoke from entering into my lungs. I squinted against the burn. Her grandparents were trapped in one of the rooms.
“Iris! Elias!” I called as I kicked down the door that had gotten jammed shut. My stomach sank at the sight that followed. A beam meant to support the ceiling above had collapsed on an elderly woman—Iris, Rahzlyn’s grandmother. The floor of the second story groaned beneath our feet.
“Oh no,” Felaf whispered.
Blood oozed from Iris’s mouth. The wooden structure pierced right through her middle, pinning her in place. It was miraculous that she was still alive.
“My husband…” She pointed as I neared her. He lay crumpled at her side, a nasty gash in his head. His heart was still beating.
“We need to get you both out of here,” Felaf said in the Geminian tongue.
Iris coughed up a significant amount of blood. The walls around us trembled. Our window for escape narrowed drastically with each second that passed.
“Felaf, get the grandfather out of here now. We’ll be right behind you.”
If I moved the beam impaling Iris, she was sure to bleed out.
Her glazed eyes tracked Felaf before they disappeared. Then they slid to mine. “Who are you?”
“That doesn’t matter right now.”
“Where are my grandchildren? Are they safe?”
“Yes.” The lie was only partial, but it seemed wrong to break her with the truth in her final moments. She was not going to leave this place alive.
“Good,” she said weakly. Her heart slowed, failing to pump the little blood left in her body. Rahzlyn was never going to seeher grandmother again. “Make sure you tell them… that no one can know who we are.”
“Who? The apostai?” I gripped her wrinkled hands. “Is that who you are?”
Her eyes shuttered. “Leave me here. They shouldn’t see me like this.”
Cinders fell from the ceiling overhead, narrowly missing us. We didn’t have much time, and as much as I wanted answers from her, I knew there was only one thing left to be said. “Your granddaughter wanted me to tell you she’s sorry.”
She wheezed, a tear sliding down her cheek. She lifted a finger, pointing behind me. Regret flashed in her hazel eyes before dulling. “The watch… They must keep it safe.”
Heed the watch, my intuition reiterated.
And then she whispered, “Cosmo, my twin flame. I’ll see you… soon.”
With a shuddering breath, her eyelids gently shut.
Iris was gone.
“May the Astrals guide you in your next life,” I murmured, staring at her lifeless body a few seconds longer. It felt wrong to leave her, but that had been her wish.
I ventured across the hall before the whole building was gone too. In another room, a gaping, smoky hole where a wall once was now gave way to the night sky. On the remaining wall, a hand-drawn map of Gaianos was now aflame. I coughed into my arm, searching the room for a watch. A nightstand collapsed. Shattered perfume bottles, mismatched jewelry, and charred scarves scattered to the broken floor beams.
It wasn’t cinders and smoke that flooded my senses. Something saccharine lingered—warm and familiar.Almond. I envisioned Rahzlyn growing up here, once a girl and now a woman. This space was sacred to her, and like the rest of her life, was now blown apart.
There.
Mixed with the fragments of her broken artifacts rested a golden watch. I snatched it from the rubble and skimmed the rest of the room. This house’s exterior was stone, but almost everything inside was flammable.
I searched beneath what I guessed to be Basil’s bed. I broke the lock on a trunk filled with all sorts of books and oddities. He had at least five different stacks of tarot cards and small, lesser gemstones used for luck and good fortune.
