Page 60 of The City Of Fractured Memory

This looks personal.

“Gods…” Stryx mutters, covering her mouth as she staggers back a step.

My throat constricts. “This isn’t like the others,” I say quietly. “The others were…clean. Ritualistic. This—this is pure, unadulterated rage.”

The Chief gives a low grunt of agreement. “Yes. Different pattern, different weapon. But the note left on his body…” He reaches into his coat and hands me a folded scrap of parchment. “That’s what connects them.”

My breath catches as I take the parchment, unfolding it carefully. My heart skips as my eyes trace the sharp, elegant script.

The current destroys all those too weak to swim against it.

My hand trembles slightly as I read.

“This is like the others?” the Chief asks.

I nod, but something isn’t right. My gaze sharpens, drawn to the ink. Under the light of the lanterns, it glistens darkly, but not that telltale midnight blue hue. Now I think about it, the script isn’t quite the same either.

Riven didn’t leave this note.

“This isn’t the same,” I whisper, wondering how much to reveal to the Chief. “The others were written in a rare ink, one that shimmers blue in the light. This one’s black, and the handwriting doesn’t match. It’s a fake.”

Stryx leans over my shoulder, brow furrowing.

“Raph told me about the tattoo,” I tell Starling finally. “He thought it belonged to a cult, something tied to the Fracturing. No one else knew about it, though. No one, but me and Stryx.”

My mind races, pieces clicking in all the wrong ways. Riven didn’t write this note, but someone wants me to think he did. Someone who knows my movements, and my secrets; someone who knows Raph talked.

I look back at the body, the ink-black warning still burning in my hand. For the first time since the murders began, I’m not sure who is hunting whom.

“A cult? Voyd take me. Please tell me that you have some direction for us to follow?” the Chief asks, breaking the long silence, though his voice is strained with something I can’t quite place. “Did you find anything in all that evidence you took?”

I share a glance with Stryx, her anxiety mirroring mine. We still don’t know the Chief’s allegiance, I could’ve told him too much already. I want to believe he’s on the right side of this, but until I can be sure, I need to be smart. So I shake my head, placing a regrettable look on my face. “Nothing yet, but I’ll keep looking. There will be something we’ve missed.”

He huffs impatiently but nods. “I’ll leave you to it, then. I’ll go check in with our fiery comrade in the cells.”

I wait until I can no longer hear his footsteps down the corridor before turning to Stryx. “We need to examine all the bodies inch by inch until we find a puncture wound. There has to be one.”

Without a word, she strides past me and starts pulling the bodies out from the numerous holes in the walls where they are stored, magically chilled and preserved under the wards that encompass the room. Once we’ve uncovered the correct corpses, I bring them out to lay side by side, hoping that some sort of pattern makes itself obvious with them all together. With the exception of poor Raph, there are four bodies in total that match.

We stand together, scanning them slowly, and I internally list all the characteristics they have in common—same tattoo, same siphoning marks on their temples, same unmarred skin, three of them seers according to their blue hair…surely something should be amiss here?

“Octavia, don’t seers wear diadems?” Stryx asks as she examines the heads, a faint, thin indent circling each of the seer’s hair, highlighting the absence of a trinket rarely removed.

I think back to the conversation I had with Xavier when I mentioned the same thing at the first murder. “They are only worn during readings, so it’s not particularly suspicious to find a seer without one. That’s what Xavier said, anyway,” I tell her, but as the words leave my mouth, I remain unconvinced.

I stupidly took Xavier’s word for it and didn’t think to question it. It’s not like he’s the authority on the subject, at least to my knowledge, anyway. Standing here now, the obvious absence of a diadem on not one, but all three of them seems too odd. In fact, now I think of it–

“Stryx, When did you last see a seer walking round without a diadem on?”

She tilts her head in thought. “I don’t think I ever have.”

“Exactly,” I confirm, nodding my head as my mind begins to spin all the possibilities. “Can you sense any magical resonance around their heads? Like you did with the blood?” I ask, hope starting to grow, though I refuse to let it spread too far.

She closes her eyes and holds her hands over the head of the first seer, her brow furrowing. A minute goes by, her features scrunching as she concentrates, and then she gasps.

“Yes! It’s small, but it’s there. Help me turn her over,” she says hurriedly, and I take the victim’s shoulders carefully as we move her onto her stomach, revealing the back of her head. Her hair is still matted from the congealed blood that had been pooled beneath her, even after being cleaned, and it’s stiff to move. Stryx hovers a hand an inch above, feeling for the resonance. Her eyes widen and she pulls the hair back with difficulty, revealing the skin beneath, and we both stare agape.

There’s a tiny puncture wound.