He had taken one look at the bag of supplies Callum had left us with and known exactly what would best aid the situation.
Today was the day before Solis fell.
The day before the Aurum Army infiltrated Solis.
Otherwise known as the day we broke into the temple and freed my sister.
I hadn’t asked how she’d managed to do so, but Orela had called us last night, letting us know that all the seers had been called to the High Temple by orders of the king. She couldn’t tellus much more than that, for fear she would alter what she’d seen, but she told us our only choice would involve breaking her free from theHigh Temple. . . The warning not to enter Cato’s Temple still rang through our minds as we moved through the streets of Solis, avoiding the streetlights on every block.
Cars zoomed past us as citizens raced to get home before curfew.
I tried not to think about the absolute insanity of our current plan—the fact that we werenotspies, and that we had no background whatsoever in the art of breaking and entering. I also tried not to think about the battle that was bound to occur tomorrow. The fact that an entire army of angels was coming to lay claim to our Quarter, and nobody in Solis was aware that tomorrow would be the downfall of the lies and deceit this Quarter had been founded on.
“Keep moving.” Iver’s voice was a sharp command as Finn and I hurried after him, our dark clothing blending in with the shadows on the street as we moved through the Quarter, drawing closer and closer to the Temple District.
The roar of a motorbike sped past us as we wove through the shadows, careful to stay hidden. We only slowed as we began to approach the outskirts of the ring of temples.
The moment the circle of temples came into view, I knew something was wrong.
There shouldn’t have been this much activity surrounding the temples at this time—so close to curfew.
My eyes narrowed as I took in uniform after uniform, the gray garb every RSG was assigned flooded the temple grounds as they moved about, hands on rifles, eyes scanning the vicinity. Surveillance drones flew overhead, circling the temples, monitoring the entire area as the guards milled about.
“What are they doing here?” The question dropped from my lips before I could stop it.
“I take it your sister didn’t make any mention of this in her visions, did she?” Iver asked in a disgruntled noise.
“No.” The word was a defeated note as I stared at the guards monitoring each of the temple structures.
“Can we even get close to the temples with this many RSG?” Finn asked, his eyes taking in the same scene as we took a few steps backward, cloaking ourselves in the shadowed alcove of a back alley. “Not to mention the drones. If they are body heat monitoring ones . . .”
“We’re going to have to change our plans if we want this to work,” Iver bit out, his voice low as he scanned the RSG standing before every entrance to the High Temple.
“We can’t,” I snapped, my voice rising an octave, which had Finn slapping a hand over my mouth to silence me. My eyes narrowed at the male before he dropped his hand, and I continued speaking in a lowered tone. “Orela was very specific that there was too much that could go wrong—so many paths that didn’t end well.”
“None of that is going to matter if we don’t even get into the stars-damned temple,” Iver said, his voice a sharp demand as he began moving through the alleyway we stood in.
“Rae . . .” Finn’s voice was hesitant beside me. “Let’s just take his word for it. We don’t have many other options right now anyway.”
I sighed as my gaze drifted toward the visible guards—fifteen of them, surrounding the entrances.
“Fine,” I resigned as I gestured for Iver to go ahead. “We’ll follow your lead on this.” I agreed, knowing that, of the three of us, Iver, being a Remnant for so long, had the most experience sneaking into these temples undetected.
“We’ll move on my count,” the male stated as he pulled a device from his pocket, scanning whatever was displaying on the screens as he monitored the guards’ positioning.
By some miraclefrom Aeternus himself, we’d managed to make it inside the High Temple without detection, the pulse omitter Cal had given me the other night coming in handy as we snuck through a window cracked open on the bottom floor.
Only, now, we found ourselves trapped in a small storage closet.
“It’s going to take me a minute to break the lock,” Iver stated as he set the tool bag down and began rifling through it.
We could hear voices moving to and fro in the hallway, the clamor of guards on patrol rising with each pass they made.
“One of you . . .” Iver grunted as he grabbed the item he was searching for, and the electronic tool hummed to life. “Start counting the seconds between the patrol rounds.”
I nodded, waiting until I heard the next set of footsteps pass, and then began counting.
One . . .
