Kess’s stomach did another nauseating churn as she and Rowan emerged from an alleyway near the Archives. Rowan conferred with the Forgebrand men there and sent them out as a distraction to ease their own passage into the building, but Kess blinked in surprise as she caught Eamon at the tail end of the group.

  “Eamon,” she hissed, pressed against the alleyway wall. The large man turned and gave her a sheepish shrug as the other men disappeared, and Kess finally noticed the pin on his clothing. “You’re with Forgebrand?”

  “Well, it’s more of a hobby, really,” he said. “They need bakers just as much as they need craftsmen—keeps the spirits high you see, and—“ He lowered his voice, bending down to whisper in Kess’s ear. “And between you and me, I don’t like the look of some of these lads. Most of us, we’re just around for the companionship and the good ale, but the men you hired for this seem to like the taste of blood.”

  “That’s because she deliberately hired men like that by chasing the reasonable ones away,” Rowan muttered, peeking around the side of the building.

  Kess gave Rowan a little shove, glaring at him. “All the same, lad,” Eamon said, “someone has to keep an eye on them. I’d rather it be me.”

  “Thank you, Eamon,” Kess said, though inwardly she felt a stab of guilt at risking him at all. He smiled at her broadly, then clapped her on the back so hard she almost fell over.

  “Any time, lass. You and the lad stay safe.”

  He trotted off much too lithely for a man of his size, and Kess shook her head. She looked past Rowan’s shoulder to silently survey the divided center of the city, where several giant squares opened to bridge the divide between Downhill and Uphill.

  They were armed as much as they dared—Rowan, with his usual sword at his belt, an extra one strapped across his back, and several knives Kess had lost track of stuffed in the folds of his clothing. Kess, to her chagrin, still hadn’t taken to Rowan’s training quite yet, and only carried a hardwood staff.

  Though swords were frowned upon in Hillcrest, it had still taken some major convincing and a few bouts with Rowan himself before he was satisfied that a staff was worth bringing at all, but Kess’s proficiency with the weapon had made him decide otherwise. It had always been a more natural extension of her abilities as a boxer, and while the sword had a bladed edge she always had to worry about, the staff bore no such risk. It also didn’t hurt that she had figured out how to channel her Fulminancy through it. She had a few small knives tucked into various places in her clothing as well, just in case. Those, Rowan respected now, at least.

  All that weaponry did nothing to make Kess feel better. How was she to explain that there was an odd, pulsing sensation in her head? How was she to explain that she had a strange, nebulous sense of being here before—of another time, another era? And over it all, a sense of dread that had nothing to do with the Archives themselves. Soldiers, they could handle. Witchblades, they could handle. But something was alive here, and whatever it was, she wasn’t sure they could handle it.

  But there was no turning back now. The Downhill burned, and thick smoke clogged the air around them as they cut out of the alleyway into a circular clearing, surrounded by the ramshackle, burnt buildings of the Downhill. Not all of Forgebrand had heeded Kess’s advice, and skirmishes between the Uphill and Downhill were, if anything, worse. Some men even blamed Kess directly for the violence.

  Ash covered the ground as they made their way across the plaza to the grand staircase that cut its way through the rock and up into the upper city, where gilded, whitewashed buildings perched—the Archives. As they climbed the stairs, the air lightened, and the ash disappeared from beneath their feet, but the pounding in Kess’s head increased. Her Fulminancy snapped wildly, and Rowan spared her a glance as they huddled in a copse of trees, listening to the newly minted Drystorm overhead.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. Kess nodded, distracted. She tried to snuff out her Fulminancy, but it was slow to crackle away. It had never been easy to control, but today it barely heeded her touch at all. Rowan looked skeptical, but he turned towards the Archives, waving her forward.

  The staircase brought them out of the ruins of the lower city and into an immaculate plaza glistening with Uphill wealth, the lamps bright and the stones recently swept. The Archives themselves towered over the plaza, a series of golden spires atop the white stone.

  Kess was surprised to find no one in sight as they made their way to the side entrance, but it meant that her men from Forgebrand had done their jobs, at least. Drystorm season usually brought with it a flurry of activity, but with war brewing and the time they’d chosen, she hoped that even the most devoted of scholars would stay home. The Uphill posted few guards outside the Archives—it contained no actual wealth, and desperate Downhill citizens stayed far away from it since it was usually crawling with Fulminancers. Still, neither of them wanted any surprises tonight.

  They kept their steps quiet and measured as they passed under archways and made their way into the awnings of the building as thunder rumbled overhead. Kess reached the door first. It was an intimidating entrance even during the day, but at night, even the wind from the Drystorm seemed to pull her towards it as she fished out the key. Taking a deep breath, she slotted it into the lock and turned it.

  There was a click, and the door gave way, its large frame moving forward just enough to let her in. She looked back at Rowan with a smile.

  “Guess it worked,” she said. He smiled back, but he watched over their shoulders all the same.

  “It’s a start,” he replied, reaching over her head to creak the door open further. They shut the door once they were inside, though something uncomfortable settled in Kess’s gut at the thought of being trapped.

  Since the Archives were officially closed, no light greeted them on the interior. Kess brought a twisting spiral of Fulminancy to life in her palm, gritting her teeth with the effort. It was harder to perform smaller actions with Fulminancy, and it was something she had only recently begun to master. She forced herself to do so, though even small actions with her Fulminancy invited screams back into her mind. I promised Draven, she reminded herself. But was she really keeping her promise, by learning it halfway? Few besides Kess herself would notice how little of her power she dredged up each time she used it. Even those times she’d been left with burnout paled in comparison to what she knew she was capable of, deep down.

  Kess pushed that thought out of her head entirely. She wouldn’t tread down that path.

  “You’ve gotten better at that,” Rowan said, voice overly loud in the large space.

  “Practice makes perfect,” Kess said, searching the signs for direction. They were in a welcoming public hallway which branched off into several rooms, but many of these were for leisurely pursuits or basic research for university students. None would hold the Security Division or the information Rowan sought.

  “Which way?” Kess whispered as they walked. Rowan’s face glowed blue and sickly against the light of her Fulminancy.

  “This way,” he said, taking her other hand to lead the way. Kess frowned, watching him. Lately, his touch had a knack for snuffing out her Fulminancy, or at least dampening it.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “You can control that now?” she asked.

  “I’ve always been able to control it, just not as well with some people,” he said. “With you, it’s like lighting or dousing a torch. With others, it gets…” He trailed off, grimacing. “Complicated.”

  Well, that explains why he snuffed me first, Kess thought, irritated. Maybe it hadn’t been wise to attack Rowan’s father, but the man certainly deserved some kind of repercussion.

  Rowan led her past a domed room filled with books, and down a spiral staircase that Kess was fairly certain had no end. It wound in a wide fashion deeper and deeper into the Archives, far into the rock of the mountain the city was built on. Her light flickered, just for a second, and she had to refocus her attention on it to make sure it didn’t go out.

  “Sorry,” Rowan said as they continued to descend. “It got stronger for a minute.” He squeezed her hand, and some of the tension from before lessened.

  “And you think my abilities are weird,” Kess said, rolling her eyes.

  “Well, if we get what we came here for, we won’t have to wonder how it works anymore.”

  “What makes you think they’re just going to keep something like that lying around?” she asked. “If what Niall says is true, they’d be better off dumping the information off the side of the mountain.” Beside her, Rowan frowned.

  “I don’t think they’d bother doing that,” he said. “Whoever locked it away knew it was valuable enough to keep around—even if they didn’t want other people accessing it. But I imagine we’re going to have to break a few things open, which is why I’ll try not to drain you before we get there.” He winked, and Kess tried to smile, but found herself looking over her shoulder instead.

  The staircase ascended behind them, dark and quiet, but Kess couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched. There was a pulsing sensation behind her, though nothing stirred, and they continued their descent in peace.

  The staircase leveled out into a downright pedestrian hallway, with a small circular room and offices branching off from that. It all seemed mundane to Kess until she spotted the words Fulminant Security Division Offices plastered on a sign outside of one of the doors. She left Rowan standing in the middle of the room and rushed over to the door, trying the key.

  It didn’t work. “No matter,” she said, more to herself than anything. She twisted her body, loosening up. “Easiest entrance of my life,” she said.

  “Kess, what’re you—“

  She gathered-white-hot blue Fulminancy into her leg and side kicked the door straight off its hinges. It flew into the dark hallway beyond with a crash, and Kess’s heart thudded erratically against her ribcage as she hoped no one worked this late.

  “So much for Security Division,” she said, stepping through the door. She hadn’t expected much resistance, but maybe a little would have been nice. Rowan appeared beside her, sighing.

  “Why are you both so good at that?” he asked.

  “Who?”

  “Never mind.” Rowan paused at the doorway, then crouched by the remainder of the lock, studying it. “Kess, do me a favor.”

  Kess paused, halfway down the hallway. “What?”

  “Put some of your Fulminancy into that key.”

  Kess frowned, but did as asked, then handed the key over to Rowan. He placed it in the lock and it clicked into place this time, a tendril of Fulminancy crackling away into the mechanism. Rowan gave her a wry smile from where he crouched and handed the key back.

  “Maybe we try the key before we break into any other government offices,” Rowan said, giving her a little nudge down the hallway as he straightened. Kess sighed, but was glad she’d kicked the door over anyway. Some things were best solved with a good kick.

  The inside of the Security Division offices were as abandoned as the rest of the place, though it was just a records keeping facility. Rowan and Kess would never have been allowed in the place during the day, but few jaded Downhill citizens would have the resources or nerve to break into the Archives proper, let alone the Fulminancy required to power a key or destroy the door.

  It was a simple task from there to find the records, though parsing through their organizational system was less so. Finally, Kess found a series of files dated from the night of the oldest Westhill’s disappearance. Fingers shaking, she thumbed through the cabinet.

  “What are you looking for?” Rowan asked behind her, voice curious. Kess barely heard his voice as nausea roiled in her gut and her Fulminantic light threatened to engulf her hand. She took a deep breath, and the light guttered a bit.

  “Lord Westhill’s kidnapper,” she said, still thumbing through the files. “I want to help Morris, and besides that, whoever attacked his grandfather wanted any connection to that Stormclap pin gone.”

  “And you think there might be a connection to Draven’s attacker,” Rowan said, watching over her shoulder. Kess nodded, still thumbing through the files. The amount of evidence against some of the Fulminancers there was enough to put many of them behind bars.

  “Whoever it was had that pin with them for a reason, Rowan,” she said, talking to keep her nerves in check more than anything. “I just can’t figure out what they would…”

  Kess trailed off as she spotted a folder with not only Westhill stamped over the top, but her own family name as well—Silverhill. She frowned at it, making sure two files weren’t stuck together, but no—it was one file, dated for the night of Westhill’s disappearance.

  Kess flipped through it, fingers trembling. There was a pedestrian account of the attack, separate from the rest of the file—likely the Blueblades’ account of it from the Westhill family’s perspective.

  It was there that everything stopped making sense.

  Another page had her brother’s name stamped over the top, along with a confidential stamp, and next to it—

  “Is that…a Council seal?” Rowan asked. Kess’s stomach dropped. The only way they would have that name was if they knew who he really was, and by extension, who Kess really was. Her light snapped against the nearby filing cabinets, unruly and wild until Rowan put a steadying hand on her shoulder, and some of the power dimmed.

  “It’s…worse than that,” Kess croaked, reading further. “He was there that night on Council business, of all things. He attacked Westhill.”

  “I didn’t even know he was Fulminant,” Rowan said quietly.

  Kess just shook her head, stunned. “He’s not—or he wasn’t.”

  The rest of the file was devoid of information. Kess stuffed it back in the cabinet and began searching frantically for files dated the night of Draven’s death. After taking a moment to steady her flickering Fulminancy, Kess found what she was looking for. Her Fulminancy snapped wildly as she stared at the name at the top of the page: Silverhill.

  Just to be sure, she opened the folder, but Oliver’s name was there on a separate page. Kess skipped the main portion of the folder carefully, not wanting to relive that night.

  “He was…assigned to you and Draven,” Rowan murmured behind her. Kess stared sightlessly at the page, trying to keep her Fulminancy from flying away.

  “He pretended not to know me,” she whispered. “He attacked me. Would have killed me. He…” Kess trailed off, then tried again as a sort of numbness crept its way into her limbs. “He killed Draven.”

  She shook her head and stuffed the folder away, then went to a neighboring cabinet which was labeled with Council seals. She glanced at Rowan as she passed, but he watched her warily, clearly unsure what to say or how to comfort her.

  Kess felt a yawning sort of emptiness inside as she dug through the files of Council agents. What she didn’t find empty, however, was her brother’s file.

  Years of information on her living habits, her home life, her career as a Bloodcrawler—all of it painted the page before her, damning for what it implied. And further in the file, a section of security clearances for her brother. One for a project that seemed to look for a way to snuff out Fulminancy, as Rowan was able to. Another for a way to concentrate it in higher and higher amounts in a subject. Another seemed to be linked with the disappearances of Fulminancers around the city, though the details were sparse, redacted, and mostly classified.

  He was involved with all of it, she thought, stunned. Draven, Westhill, the rest of the disappearing Fulminancers. She wiped a tear on the side of her shirt before it could fall onto the page. Kess shook her head as the file fell out of her hands into the cabinet.

  “That can’t be right,” she whispered into the darkness. She looked at Rowan, pale by the light of her Fulminancy, which guttered as if in a strong breeze. “He’s not their prisoner, Rowan. He’s working for them.”

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