Page 55 of Revels on an Angel’s Grave

Myrella stared at him wide-eyed, slamming a hand over his mouth. She shook her head but gave him a look that asked if he was all right.

His mind clouded, but Desmond nodded. Myrella seemed unaffected by the incense. It tugged at one of his Fate ties, and stringed music trickled through Desmond’s mind. Aevollon.

Why was Falliare trying to read the Fate of Artistry and Trickery? Desmond was fairly certain that wasn’t who the Temple Master was aligned to.

And this batch was potent.

Desmond jerked his head to the right, indicating that he was going to hang back by the staircase where the smell wasn’t as strong. Myrella nodded, carefully making her way around the other side of the narrow wooden ledge forming a precarious balcony.

Desmond gripped the railing, solidifying his defenses against the incense and peering around the wooden beams forming the framework of the walkway.

What he saw below had his heart fucking dropping.

Blood.

A whole fucking lot of it. Splattering stone floors. Coating the male’s body sprawled across the altar.

Beneath the boots of the two cloaked viewers and⁠—

Falliare himself.

Based on the Temple Master’s pristine appearance, he hadn’t been the one to take that life, but he stood beside the body as if it was entirely ordinary. The mystlights in the chandelier above reflected off his silver hair and navy cloak as Falliare circled the altar.

Desmond pressed forward, squinting down at the scene even as his head spun, trying to gather all the details possible. The man was shirtless, but from what he could make out, it didn’t look like there were fatal wounds on his torso or throat.

Nothing but a mark carved across his chest—two intersecting symbols—but it was hard to make out what they were from here, especially beneath all the blood. It looked like a fucked-up ritual, sending him right back to the hours he spent helping Roremar with the murder cases on Lyra.

Desmond thought he heard the Temple Master asking how this happened and fought through the haze in his mind to listen.

“Went mad” were the only two words he was able to make out from one of the cloaked figures.

Falliare tilted his head. “We need to figure out how to stop that effect, then.”

A muffled cry bounced off the stone, and everyone’s attention swiveled to the first row of benches facing the altar. A restrained form squirmed on the floor, tears tracking down her cheeks as she inched her way into the aisle.

Her hands were bound, a strip of linen tied around her mouth, but her eyes—even in the dim light, with the incense turning his head foggy—Desmond couldn’t avoid her eyes. Or the sheer terror within them as she stared at the dead man atop the altar.

Sobs slipped around her gag as her entire body shook. And that wrecked look in her gaze—it was heartbreaking. Whoever she was, she’d loved that man.

And she’d likely watched him be ripped from her in a very brutal, inhumane way.

Went mad.

Desmond gripped the railing tighter, heart pounding. Incense gathered in a cloud at the top of the sanctuary’s sloped ceiling, pressing toward him. He fought down the readings begging to steal him. The music mounted in his mind.

If this was Aevollon incense, was the dead man tied to the Fate of Artistry and Trickery?

“She’s still useful,” Falliare said. “You can try again.”

“We will in a few days. We have to wait for the proper constellations to align.”

Constellations? The major Fate constellations had been disorderly since Emmeline turned the damn seeing chamber to rubble, but what others were out tonight? He couldn’t remember right now.

Falliare sighed, a mocking, exasperated exhale, and he brushed a hand across his jaw. “I’d advise you not to waste too much time.”

That was a voice Desmond had heard before. A slightly menacing undertone the Temple Master often directed at Roremar when there was no outright threat and he was simply offering advice.

Based on the cloaked pair’s answering silence, they understood.