Page 133 of Death of the Glass Angel
Footsteps echoed down the hall. A white-haired old man, eyes black as night, approached, a lantern clutched in one hand. Alfaris looked her up and down. “Are you alright?”
“Fine,” Janus lied, voice cracked and dry.
“I should have known.” Gemellus wrapped a protective arm around her. “You were always a troublemaker.”
“I was only giving the young lady a tour.”
“I’m sure you were.”
“Hm.” Alfaris stepped closer, holding the lantern up to illuminate Janus. “When people stand in graveyards—even if they are not visiting someone familiar—they think of the people they’ve lost. You saw someone you loved in the mist, didn’t you?”
“But. . .” Janus hesitantly said, “Was it really him?”
“Who can say? The Altanese certainly think so.” Alfaris eyed the tomb closest to them. “As for me, I think people see what they want to see. But when there is no proof to shed light on the truth, anything and nothing could be the answer.”
Janus understood his meaning. Her heart throbbed, and her head ached. Nothing could prove that ghost had been Eros.
Nor could anything prove otherwise.
People saw what they wanted to see. . . Delving into the depths of her perfect memory, Janus summoned an image of her little brother. A happy image. On his ninth birthday, when they had taken a boat onto the lake.
Eros stood by the railing, brown curls fluttering wildly in the breeze. Those brilliant pink eyes of his, the surrounding skin smudged by freckles, surveyed the passing water eagerly, pointing out every fish. And, there. Janus paused the memory in her mind as Eros spun around and toothily grinned at her.
How was she supposed to move on and forgive when she lived and he did not?
Every time she believed the pain had passed, the wound reopened and bled anew.
Janus retreated as she always did, fleeing from her fears, from guilt and grief, allowing Des to take the lead so Janus could hide from the world.
Gemellus’ fingers dug into her arm. “Someone’s approaching from the north.”
Des’ eyes flew open to see Alfaris backing toward them, drawing a sword from beneath his robes. Something moved in the distance, a silhouette in the dim crypt. Footsteps echoed in the dark.
“Get behind me.” Gemellus shoved Des urgently.
Everything happened so quickly. A shadow flew from between two sarcophagi. Steel clashed against steel as Alfaris intercepted its blade. Des lost sight of them as she stumbled, drawing her dagger from her belt.
Gods, she couldn’t see a thing down here, save the faint curve of the corridor. More footsteps sounded nearby. A man flew from the shadows, his blade mere fog in this pall.
Des managed to skid left, ducking under the sword. She slashed at the shadow, but her blade cleaved through the air. Scrambling back, she watched the assassin advance upon her.
The assassin jerked forward as something black protruded from his chest—a spear of roiling shadows.
Gemellus pulled his shadow spear out and shoved the man forward. He pushed Des down the hall, standing guard before her as several more silhouettes darted through the darkness toward them.
“I sense none to our south.” He shouted. “Run. Get back to the crowd.”
Trusting him, Des turned and fled, trying to remember the map Janus had scanned. Veering around a winding corner, she plunged deeper into the tombs, passing countless dead housed in stone.
The hall deposited her into a circular chamber, the first she’d seen since leaving the trial. Something knelt ahead, rising into a standing position as she arrived.
She could tell it wasn’t human by its jerking motions, as though it were in pain. Silver gleamed under the faint torchlight, flecked with spots of blue.
From a distance, it might seem a man in a suit of gorgeous armor: finely engraved steel painted in lustrous color and carved with intricate runes. But it wasn’t. Nothing clanked as it moved—the metal was its skin.
Des’ limbs locked in fear. This was the living embodiment of the diagram—the creation those in the ruins had sought to make.
A ball of glowing lightning churned in a hole at the clockwork soldier’s core, and bloodshot eyes stared out from the single slit in its helm as it raised a heavy spear.
