33: Three Eyes Open

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Emily listened to Dante’s recollection, vague as it was. As he spoke of underground streets and crowds, he sounded like someone recounting a particularly odd dream or sharing a piece of unbelievable gossip.

“It sounds like she’s in Bolventor,” Emily offered with a smile. “It’s an old town buried beneath the island. Jasmine mentioned it a couple of times. The way there is supposed to be a secret, mind.” She glanced out of the gondola window at the streets below. Even from up here, there was no sign of the hidden alleyways she stumbled into on the day they arrived. “I guess that’s never stopped Phoenix, though,” she added. “Maybe we should go look for them?”

Even though his aura was difficult to read, Dante’s face betrayed a certain anxiety about Katrina’s whereabouts that wouldn’t settle until he knew for sure that she was safe. Veritas had a reputation for poking around in places they didn’t belong, after all, and chances were they had put their time in Avalon to good use. In fact, Emily was counting on it.

“Knowing them, they’re already on a first-name basis with whoever runs this place,” she said, unsure if she was overestimating their skills. The Veritas girls—Katrina, Phoenix, Andromeda and Amanda—all placed highly in the initiate rankings, as did Theseus and John, but they had never achieved the sort of journalistic success Phoenix longed for. She wanted them to expose political corruption and unravel supernatural mysteries, but they spent most of their time reporting on militia activates and missing persons. Avalon, however, with its enigmatic overlords and their interlocked layers of deception, was a manic conspiracy theorist’s dream come true. “Who better to ask about strange men with magical powers?” she added with a smile, fake as it was, but reassuring enough that Dante himself almost replied in kind.

His frown, however, proved difficult to dislodge. If anything, it had only deepened since he opened up about his past. For six years, he had forced himself to believe his mother safe in Malkuth, healed of the Brand that cursed her, but now he knew otherwise. Emily’s own past was all the evidence he required to realise what the Saptamatrikas—what Pleiades—had done to him. Now they just had to find out why, and what possible use the rulers of the Seven Cities might have for a cursed Maiden. Avalon had answers, of that Emily was certain.

As the gondola descended towards the docking platform, she reached over and took his hand in hers. “Don’t worry,” she said, “we’ll be fine. I mean, it can’t be any worse than this place, can it?”

He nodded, as much of an answer as she would get.