Page 42 of The City Of Fractured Memory

As we finally exit onto the steps leading down to the street, the misty dawn light greets us, confirming that we have been locked up all night. I turn back to Xavier and rest my hand on his shoulder, but before I can speak, he cuts in.

“He’s connected to these murders, Octavia, I feel it in my bones. How else would he keep showing up everywhere we go? He’s trying to play mind games with you. Don’t think I didn’t notice that he saved your life in that fight, or how your shoulder is suddenly healed.”

“Don’t think that I’ve forgotten what he’s done,” I counter, narrowing my eyes at him. “I told you he would pay for it, and I meant it.”

Xavier pauses before giving me a nod, mirroring me and clapping his own hand to my shoulder. Relief floods me and I break a smile which he returns. “Let’s get out of–”

My words fade to nothing as a swath of guards funnel past us on the steps, weaving round us like a current flowing round a rock. Riven arrives behind them, his jaw clenched tight, fury tightly woven through his features.

“You three with me, now,” he barks, storming past us down the steps into the street. When we don’t follow he spins on his heel, his hands curling into fists. “There’s been another murder.”

We exchange horrified glances, and before I even register it my feet are moving, racing down the steps to run after him where he’s already marched half way down the street, his long black coat billowing behind him.

The others follow closely, not a word passing between us as we follow Riven through the winding labyrinthine streets of Aethermere. A few minutes later, he starts to slow as a crowd of people block our path ahead, in front of what I assume is the crime scene. My mind races as I watch Riven bark out orders for people to make way as he forces his way through the crowd, even though he’s easily a head taller than most people here.

If this murder happened within the last hour, then surely he can’t have been responsible. He was with me the entire time. Plus there’s the fact he swore a blood oath to me and here he is, still alive. Yet, like Xavier said, I can’t will away this sensation needling at me that he is still involved somehow. There must be something I’m missing, something right in front of me. None of this makes sense, but I do know for sure that his presence is making it a lot harder for me to think rationally.

"I want him out of here,” I hiss under my breath.

“You know we can’t do that,” Xavier whispers back sharply. “Aethermere runs by its own laws, the Chief has no real jurisdiction here and neither do we. As much as I hate him, if we want access to this body then we need to–” he swallows thickly “–play nice.”

I huff a sigh. He’s right. While the Division was created to enforce law across the whole of Velmora, each quarter has their own laws and codes they go by, and since Riven has appointed himself judge, jury and executioner of Aethermere, he unfortunately has the final word on any crime committed in his territory.

“Looks like we’re buddying up with the Governor then,” I sigh, and Xavier looks at me furiously.

“Voyd take him, he’s connected to this, I know it. We need to figure out a way of getting access to the body without him breathing down our necks.”

“This could be an opportunity,” Stryx murmurs from my other side. “If you truly think he is behind this, then spending more time with him could help us gather evidence against him. No one is infallible. If he knows something, he will slip up eventually.”

“Well…I think we can safely say you were wrong about the tattoos being connected to the brothel girls,” I tease, trying to hold back my smirk as we look upon the body of a very large, very hairy man lying in a pool of blood in the gutter.

Xavier gives me a glaring dose of side eye before kneeling down close, examining the man’s wrist that bears the same magpie tattoo as the women. Like them, his hair is also blue, marking him as a seer too. A pattern that can’t be ignored, though I fear that the fact this victim is a man may put us back to square one with our investigation.

I glance behind me to where Riven is talking with a warden, too quiet for me to hear. Our eyes meet for the briefest of seconds before I whip my head back to the task at hand, trying to ignore his burning gaze which I sense is now fixed on the back of my head.

My Shadow appears, just to make things worse, and the noise in my head quickly becomes overwhelming, my emotions rising unfiltered and unchecked. I scramble for my talisman with shaking fingers and rub my thumb over it three times, the roaring in my head immediately ceasing at the action. I exhale slowly, trying to recover myself before anyone notices, though Riven’s eyes aren’t the only ones I can feel on me. Stryx doesn’t say anything, though, she just silently reaches for my hand and gives it a reassuring squeeze. I give her a tight smile before returning my attention to the body, breathing in deep so I can carefully examine our surroundings.

The street is unusually silent. The early morning fog hangs low around us, thick and luminous, muffling the murmurs of the gathered onlookers at the far end of the street. Even the usual clamour of the quarter seems to have recoiled from what lies before us.

The man’s body lies in the gutter, sprawled awkwardly against the cobblestones, as though he simply collapsed mid-stride. I crouch down next to Xavier, my gaze sweeping over every inch of the scene, methodical and detached, or at least I try to be with my Shadow watching impatiently.

This murder is different.

The first two were confined, rooms locked from the inside, windows sealed, doors barred—seemingly impossible. But this man has fallen out here, under the open sky. Yet the same calling cards mark him; his blue hair, the faint mark of a siphoning brand on his temple, that same tattoo inked into his wrist.

Xavier shifts beside me, his jaw tensing. “Same pattern,” he says quietly. “But why out here? It doesn’t match.”

“That’s what I’m wondering.” I lean in closer, tracing the air above the woundless corpse, refraining from touching anything without any gloves. “The others were found in enclosed, sealed off spaces. The impossible part was how the killer got in or out, but if this is the same murderer…”

Stryx kneels opposite us, the points of her ears faintly shimmering beneath her glamour’s edge. “You think it’s delayed,” she murmurs, correctly catching onto my train of thought as she often does.

I nod slowly. “Maybe he wasn’t killed here. Maybe whatever was done to him...took time. The siphoning might begin elsewhere, but the death doesn’t happen until later somehow. It would explain how those women died within locked rooms.”

I swallow hard, staring at the blood pooled beneath the man’s body—surely too much for a mortal to lose without a huge wound. It gleams, dark and oily in the hazy light. “But if that’s true,” I whisper, “then where is it coming from? There’s no puncture, no tear, nothing obvious at least.”

We fall into silence, trying to figure out this insane puzzle and coming up short. But despite the horror of it all, I can't shake the nagging thought that there is something ritualistic about the pattern here, something deliberate. Three victims now, each a seer. Could each one be a witness to visions not meant for mortal eyes? Could that be motive enough for this?

Riven’s voice breaks the silence from behind me, and I try not to flinch at his sudden proximity. “If the pattern holds,” he says with deathly quiet, “then there will be more.”