"It’s already fading," he said, a note of frustration in his voice. "We jostled the memory loose, but now… now it's like trying to see through murky water."
Goldie wiped at her tears with the back of her free hand, her mind latching onto the facts, the structure of the mystery, as an anchor against the emotional storm. "Well, you were right," she said, her voice shaky, but hardening with a cold anger. "About Truckenham being part of the original ritual.”
They looked from each other to the sleeping god, to the terrible truth settling between them. The murder of Marlow Truckenham wasn't the start of the story. It was just the latest chapter in a conspiracy that was rooted in blood, and now, somehow, theirs to unravel.
Chapter
Thirty-Two
The heavy oak doors of the atrium sighed shut behind them, the sound swallowed by the sudden, vast quiet of the Greymarket corridors. The air, which had been thick with sex and soil and blooming magic, was now cool and clean, carrying only the faint, familiar smell of old stone and lingering spells.
Goldie glanced down. Since her leggings were currently in several pieces in the moss of the atrium, she had tied her hoodie about her waist, but it did little more than suggest modesty. Beside her, Splice had attempted a similar fix, knotting his coat around his hips like the world’s strangest loincloth. It was, without question, one of the oddest walks of shame she’d ever taken.
Her mouth twitched.Gods and goddesses, if we run into a neighbor right now…
She risked a sideways glance. In the dim, flickering light of the hallway sconces, Splice looked... undone. The lines around his eyes were deeper, his shoulders slumped with an exhaustion that was more than physical. He looked like a man who had just witnessed the birth and death of a universe inside his own chest.
As they reached the main lobby, the city lights of Bellwether bled through the tall, arched windows, painting long, distorted stripes across the marble floor. The regular world felt surreal, like a dream they were reluctantly waking into.
Splice stopped, his gaze fixed on the street outside. "I’ve never..." he began, his voice rough, as if he had to dredge it up from some deep, unused place. He didn't finish, shaking his head slightly.
Goldie’s hand lifted, a half-formed gesture of comfort, before she let it fall back to her side. What were the rules for this? What was the etiquette after you've had amazing ritual sex with a cryptid to save his dying god and accidentally uncovered the memory of a ritual murder? Emily Post didn't exactly have a chapter on it.
A small, shaky smile touched her lips. "Come on," she said softly, her voice barely a whisper. "Let's go back to my place.”
Each step they took was loud in the humming silence of the hallway. Greymarket Towers was always a living building, but tonight its awareness felt focused, its ancient consciousness holding its breath as it watched them.
She pushed her apartment door open, relief washing through her as the familiar warmth of her wards greeted her. Turning back, she saw Splice hesitating on the threshold. He seemed uncertain, as if waiting for a permission deeper than a simple invitation.
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “You can come in.”
He stepped across the doorway, and the moment he did, the room shifted. The air grew thicker, charged with the same potent hum that had filled the atrium.
Goldie closed the door. She leaned back against the wood, then pushed off again, movements slow and deliberate, as if through water.
“Um… we should probably talk.” She glanced at him, words tumbling out. “Do you drink anything besides water? Whiskey? I feel like this is a whiskey kind of situation.”
A faint smile ghosted Splice’s lips. “Whiskey,” he said, gaze finally meeting hers. “Yes. I believe it is.”
Goldie moved through her kitchen with the slow, deliberate grace of someone running on fumes and sheer force of will. The simple, familiar clink of ice and glug of whiskey was a comforting ritual.
Glasses in hand, she padded back into the living room. Splice hadn’t moved, still standing in the middle of her bright, cluttered space. The coat tied at his hips did nothing to make him look less like an untouchable god-extension. If anything, it made him absurdly handsome.
She passed him a glass, her fingers brushing his as he took it. Heat zinged up her arm, unfairly distracting. “Do you want a blanket?” she blurted, then immediately winced. “Or pants? I’m going to put some on, and I think I have pajama pants that’ll fit you.”
Splice looked at her, lips quirking the barest fraction. “Yes?” he said softly, almost a question.
Goldie set her whisky down and scurried to the bedroom, heart thumping too fast. She dug through her dresser until her fingers closed around a pair of old pajama pants that Ezra had once left. A quick, bitter pang flared, but she shoved it down and wriggled into her own pair before hurrying back out.
She practically tossed the pants at Splice. “Here. They’ll probably work.”
When she sank back onto the couch, clutching her glass again, she could hear the rustle of fabric as he pulled them on. Goldie swirled the whisky, ice chiming in sharp little bursts.
Splice stood by the window, not looking at the city lights, but at his own reflection in the glass. The pajama pants hung shorton him, riding above his ankles in a way that should have been comical. On him, it only heightened the strangeness: cryptid and human, plant and man, tangled into something she couldn’t look away from.
He turned toward her, eyes shadowed, unreadable. “Do you know who the original trustees of the Land Trust were?”
Goldie stared at him, her pulse hammering. “You’re saying… the ritualwasthe founding of the Land Trust?”
