A light moved along the stone wall of the stairwell, marking the man’s progress. He appeared sooner than expected, an older gentleman in robes whose pleasant face went slack with surprise.
“We are—” Sophia shifted smoothly into Latin. “We have come to pay our respects—”
Li Min’s arm lashed out, thumping the priest on the head with the flat of her sword. Nicholas barely managed to step forward to catch him in time as he wilted to the ground.
“Too slow,” she said to Nicholas’s incredulous look. “Time to move.”
“She was right about one thing,” Sophia said as she passed him. “You’re no pirate, Saint Nicholas. Where’s that ruthless edge that lets you hack sailors apart on ships?”
“Affronted by this lack of honor,” he told her.
She must have rolled her eye. “Hang honor before it hangs you.”
Li Min, at least, seemed to know where they were going. It took Nicholas some time, however, to even realize that they’d entered St. Peter’s Basilica and were walking its quiet halls. Sophia had referred to it as the “old” St. Peter’s, and he saw the truth of that immediately. This structure had none of the grandeur he’d witnessed when he and Julian had visited it in search of the astrolabe—but that had been, what, the twentieth century? He’d been struck mute by the masters of art who graced its ceilings and walls; it had collected treasures and grandeur over time, the way a traveler family would. This iteration was simple, with stark lines and angles that lacked both a sense of gravity and permanence. Still, it was by no means as humble as the Anglican churches in the colonies, which seemed to pride themselves on being as plain and grim as possible.
He glanced up as they passed by a large chapel, its door open just enough to catch the glimmer of rows of candlelight. Beside him, Sophia kept her gaze down, her pace as labored as his own. Nicholas was so deep in his own thoughts that he did not notice when she drifted a few steps behind him, stopping.
“Good lord, Carter,” Sophia whispered. “You’ve been mooning over this damned thing for a bloody month, and now you just drop it willy-nilly?”
Sophia held up a familiar gold earring, its small leaves and blue stone shivering with the breeze. Nicholas’s hand flew to the leather cord around his neck, his heart slamming up from his chest into his throat.
Hell and damnation—
But the talisman and the earring were still there, secure. He felt the slight weight in his hand. So how…?
A drumming began in his chest, spreading out and out and out through his blood until he couldn’t quite feel his fingers.
“Surely it’s not the same,” Li Min said, taking it from Sophia. “Look—”
But when placed side by side in his hand, they were almost identical, to the best of an artist’s skill and capability. They were a pair. They were…
Etta.
Nicholas tore away from the others, stumbling back toward the chapel, running down the length of it, finding nothing and no one. He returned to the hall, wild with disbelief and hope, searching for any other hint of her—anything that might tell him where she had gone. Dust stung his eyes, blurring his vision. It choked him, filling his lungs, wringing the last gasps of air out of him. The desperation was intolerable, but he couldn’t let it go, not yet—
“Etta?” he called, his voice as loud as he dared. “Etta, where are you?”
“Oh God,” he heard Sophia say. “This is painful to watch. Make him stop. Please.”
It was Li Min’s face that brought his frantic searching to a halt. The carefully constructed cipher cracked as she bit her lip, her eyes darting to the side. “Surely you are not referring to Henrietta Hemlock?”
“Hemlock?” Sophia said, holding up a hand. “Wait—”
“Henrietta, the daughter of Henry Hemlock—”
“Etta Spencer,” Nicholas said impatiently. “Her mother is Rose Linden, and, yes, Rose told me Hemlock is Etta’s father.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?” Sophia asked. “You didn’t think it was relevant that the leader of the Thorns procreated with the beast that is Rose Linden? My God, this explains so much. So much.”
Li Min could not look at him. Her jaw worked silently, her hands clenching at her sides. Nicholas felt his stomach roll in revolt, and he’d stepped into a trap, and there was no way to free himself from the painful, searing cage of hope. “Do you know where she is? That’s who we’ve been trying to find. She was orphaned, to the last common year—”
She closed her eyes, releasing the breath trapped inside of her. “I do. I am…truly sorry. Your search ends here, for she is dead.”
ETTA WAS NOT SURE HOW long she stood rooted to that same spot. Terror had such a firm grip on her that it could have pulled the skin off her bones. Julian ventured forward a few steps, waving the soot and ash out of the way as best he could. Revealing only more soot and ash.
“There’s…there’s nothing,” he said, turning back to her. “How is that possible? The buildings, the people…”
He wasn’t wrong; as far as the eye could see through the smoke—which turned out to be very far, without the hindrance of buildings crowding the park’s boundaries—there was nothing beyond the husks of what had once been. If the air cleared, Etta knew she’d at least be able to see the East River. She had thought the destruction of the San Francisco earthquake had been absolute, but this…this was…