Chapter 22: Assassin from the North
The gardens of the Velvet Cathedral had been restored, not to their former holiness, but to something far more...provocative. The hedges were trimmed into decadent shapes, obscene and magnificent. The roses had been crossbred with bloodroot, making their wine-dark petals glisten wetly beneath the moonlight like fresh wounds. The fountains didn’t gurgle — they moaned. Suggestive figures stood a top each one, sculpted into poses that would’ve gotten any lesser artist excommunicated.
It was here that I found the Council. All seven of them.
On their knees.
Not by my command, not yet. But I’ll admit, it was delightful to walk into a scene that looked like a blasphemous chapel orgy. They knelt in a crescent arc beneath the trellis I’d made the cathedral’s botanists replant last week, as if repenting for a sin they had enjoyed far too much. It was perfect.
One of them stood.
Tall, sharp, and cold. Councilor Virelan. He held a square face with silver curls that looked like they’d been styled by a hurricane. Alongside that, he wore a robe so fine it seemed to whisper secrets.
"We intercepted word," he said, clipped and smooth, "of an assassin traveling from the north. Their mission is to dismantle the Council — us — one by one, divulge the city into a state of chaos, and strip our influence from the nation of Solaris."
I raised a brow, swirling the liquor in my glass. "Sounds like a normal Tuesday to me."
He ignored me. "We have confirmation. They’re planning to board a rail from Dulmor to Ventri before arriving in Graywatch. We want you to stop him during his first transit, before he can gather more accomplices in Ventri."
Ah. Dulmor, land of frost and secret libraries, where even the rumors themselves wear gloves. "And you’re sure it’s not just a really determined tourist?"
Another councilor, Daesyn, lifted her chin. "There was a sigil. Burned into the corpse of a Dulmorian courier. A hexed spiral."