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But neither was Orpheus there, and Fenrir didn’t know how the hell he was going to do this without him.

Chapter XVI

The City of Sanctuary

With the Prometheus left to lick its wounds, the caravan traveled without interruption through what Atticus and his soldiers called the Deadlands instead of the Rim. Broken leg left to ache and unable to bear his weight, he spent ten days laid out on the floor of his wagon, sleep the single escape offered him, and one he sought desperately, spending more time in a liminal fugue state of what-ifs than anything restful.

They camped at night, when the dust was so thick he couldn’t see the stars.

Maybe that’s why he didn’t notice it, at first. The city that rose with the dawn.

“There she is,” Atticus murmured over a steaming cup of tea from one of Vera’s food crates, cadence wistful. “Sanctuary.”

Like a seam split, Sanctuary divided the Earth from the sky in blackened silhouette. All needly spires amongst a serrated saw of towering rooftops, it soared upwards as if compelled towards the sky itself, little bridges weaving through the structures, reminding him of the gothic flying buttresses he’d read about in books. All of it held together by a high wall, black like the rest and bisected by a series of watchtowers, smoke rising in a column from a singular orange fire that glinted faintly amongst the dust.

It was both nothing like the Pit and so much grander than it, and at a scale that suggested a population that far outnumbered that of the Empire’s.

How had they built this? How had so much of the world crumbled while this had risen from the remains? This was an engineering feat undocumented by their forefathers—that should have taken centuries to build but had apparently been here all this time. But Orpheus didn’t miss the lack of farmers in the fields or the absence of light beyond that singular beacon of fire. However magnificent the city was, it also appeared dead.

This is what Atticus wanted him to fix?

Inside his chest, his heart raced. A city of magic, in desperate need of a mage. Oh, the challenge it presented. All those sigils to study, spells to unravel, magic to reverse engineer into something useful again. The academic inside him stirred, the person who had been happy, once, his days spent studying and tinkering and experimenting through the most impossible dreams. Could he have that, again? His magic may be gone, but his mind was ripe for a new purpose. And what better way to put him to use than this: fixing, once again, everything he had broken.

Even if it meant betraying the Empire he’d begun to rebuild.

But what did he owe them if Fenrir was dead?

Orpheus swallowed at the sickness in his throat and huddled at the back of his cage, ignoring the sharp spear of pain in his leg when the caravan came to a stop alongside a toppled over obsidian spire that pointed towards the city like some ill-fated finger.

With a nod from Atticus, Gwen climbed from her wagon and onto a horse one of the riders brought to her. Their eyes met once she was atop the saddle and Orpheus did not expect her fear.

What is this? Orpheus sat up straighter within his cage.

From his saddlebag, Atticus drew a fresh white cloak that appeared more delicate than the rest. Gwen took it with shaking hands, Atticus speaking softly to her, voice too low for Orpheus to follow though the cadence of his tone was comforting. But when Gwen drew the cloak over her shoulders, Orpheus saw how her hands continued to shake. How the fear hadn’t really gone away. Couldn’t, for all the reasons it existed in the first place.

She’s important. More important than Atticus had let on, because it wasn’t fear that caused a person’s hands to shake like that.

It was the inescapable weight of responsibility.

Orpheus knew. He’d seen Fenrir’s hands shake like that once, after all.

“Riders, it’s time to return home, victorious!” Atticus announced. The white cloaks answered with a cheer.

Shale turned to earth and then to grass, the wagon’s bouncing softened by a loam that had once born fruit but had recently died. But it wasn’t the desiccated orchards they passed that stole Orpheus’ attention. It was the city gates yawning open to receive them, and all the silver inlaid amongst the purest obsidian that caught fire in the early morning light.

Across the surface glimmered spells of the degree the Gilded Palace had only touched upon. An interwoven network of sigils so monumental in scope that it would take weeks for him to study a single panel, let alone a spell in its entirety, covered every surface of the wall. Orpheus caught pieces as they passed: the elemental sign for carbon intersected with what he thought might be a variation on fire but could have simply indicated heat of a specific source. There were sigils for iron, for oxygen, for neon and magnesium. Marks to direct movement, behavior, clauses, and what-ifs that together comprised the most complicated command tree he’d ever seen inscribed.

And there were symbols of elements he could not identify. Sigils that looked more like the ancient script from his grimoires than anything relative to Earth’s known elements. A working of magic derived from the very source itself, and it was these symbols he focused on, carving their images into his mind because he knew, once those gates closed, he wouldn’t be on the other side again until Fenrir came to set him free.

Maybe that’s why he didn’t notice it at first, the people who lined the streets.

All hells, that’s why Atticus hadn’t led an invasion.

Death veiled their faces, clogged their stares. Death of the like he had never seen before. Shadows clung to their skin, scooped under their eyes, the ridges of their bones pronounced, like the Prometheus they’d left in the Rim. While their clothes had once been well-tailored, they now hung loose, waist belts sagging off hips that could barely support their body’s weight. As many people sat as others stood, perched on balconies that hung over glass-windowed storefronts, the few children peeking behind their mother’s skirts full-cheeked in a way they revealed where what food they came by must go.

And as the caravan rolled into their midst, they all stared—but not at him.

At Gwen.