“Why didn’t she destroy them herself?” Penelope asked, then shook her head. “Nope. Never mind. Magicians are academics; book burning isn’t in their nature.”
They sat in silence, watching the light begin to fade. In Alexis’s arms, Penelope let out a contented sigh. “Maybe we should’ve disappeared for a hundred years while we had the chance. I could get used to lazy sunsets and wine with you.”
Heady magic coursed through Alexis like quicksilver, calling out to him to do just that. “You would miss Venice too much,” he said, swallowing the impulse.
“Very true. I don’t know what it is, but I feel so at ease here. I don’t feel like a tourist. Instead, Venice feels like the home I was looking for but could never find.”
“Venice has a way of doing that to people. In a time that was full of mistrust, Venezia threw her arms out to the world, and anyone could live and make money here. Time has changed her in many ways, but not in the ones that count. It doesn’t matter where you were born, if you arrive and she invokes fierce love in you, she will never let you go.” Alexis’s own deep history with the city could never alter his love for it.
“You’re going to have to teach me all of Venice’s feast days. I don’t think I’m ever going to remember them all. We missed Saint Mark’s Day when we were in Israel, which sucks, because I love roses.”
Alexis frowned at the wistful note in Penelope’s voice. “I’m going to have to find a way to make it up to you. Our courtship needs more afternoons like this one.”
“I’m really glad I remembered who you are,” whispered Penelope.
Alexis’s heart expanded as she leaned farther into him to watch the stars come out.
As they wended their way back through the dark streets of Dorsoduro, Alexis asked, “Did you have any luck getting information out of Aelia or Zo about where Constantine might be hiding?”
“Aelia said she will ask around, whatever that means. It surprises me that Constantine didn’t keep in touch with any of you. Being long-lived and alone would make me want to reach out to others like me—or at least send a Christmas card.”
Alexis stopped walking. “The letters,” he murmured. He pulled Penelope to him, and they disappeared in a shower of black-and-silver sand.
THEY LANDED AMONGST Alexis’s stacks of books. His tower was still warm, the heat of the day trapped in the marble columns and rich wood. The cinnamon scent of his magic was strong, permanently seeped into every piece of parchment and surface. His rooms were secretly Penelope’s favorite place in the palazzo; they were the physical embodiment of his personality.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. Alexis rarely portaled anywhere unless he was in a hurry, and especially not from a public street.
“Nothing, apart from me being a complete idiot at times. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. It’s been so long…” He crossed his rooms and rummaged in a sandalwood box so big that Penelope could have climbed inside with plenty of room to spare. Alexis pulled out a smaller box and placed it down on his workbench.
“I forgot all about these. Time does strange things to memory. I was so focused on placing Solomon’s ring at different periods, not wanting to think of Constantine at all, that I missed probably the best clue we have,” he said. His ringed fingers danced over the carvings in the box’s surface. “It wasn’t until you mentioned letters that it clicked.”
“Constantine has been writing to you?”
“He was after the third fallout. I placed magic on the mailbox and redirected all letters from him to this box instead. I doubt they will be helpful; they’re so old. He would’ve stopped writing once he realized I was ignoring him.” Alexis’s expression grew foggy, lost in the river of memories. After a few moments of waiting, Penelope moved to join him at the bench.
“Would you like me to open it?”
“No, it’s fine. I’m fine,” Alexis said quickly, his eyes refocusing on the box.
Penelope had learned to be patient with all of the magicians, so she kept her questions about the “third fallout” and magical mailboxes to herself. Alexis’s fingertips glowed gold and indigo, and the magic sealing the box melted away like mercury. The lid flew back, and hundreds of letters poured from the box, spewing out over his workbench and fluttering to the floor. Alexis looked astonished as his hands moved over them.
“I don’t think Constantine realized you were ignoring him.” Penelope stepped back, careful not to tread on what looked to be hundreds of years’ worth of correspondence.
There was a sharp tang of firecrackers, and the letters sorted themselves into piles. How the letters were folded and sealed seemed to change with time until envelopes became commonplace. There were four letters to every year, and the academic side of Penelope burned to read every one of them for historical references, but she knew it was inappropriate to even ask. The letters had the feel of intimacy about them, and she didn’t want to develop any preconceived notions about Constantine’s personality before she had a chance to meet him herself.
“I don’t know what to say.” Alexis stared at the piles.
“Aelia said she stayed with him in Niš ten years ago, and then they went to Dubrovnik. Maybe he gave you an address?” Penelope suggested. She kissed his cheek and left him to his thoughts.
Hours later, Alexis crawled into bed with her, and she drew him close. She didn’t need Phaidros’s gifts for reading energy and auras to feel his distress. She wrapped her arms around him and moved in, so her chest was flush against his. The inferno of his magic burned inside of him. In her dreamy state, the raw, mysterious, new part of her flared to life in response to it, and then, like it had in Ein Karem, her magic drew on his with a rush that made her skin crackle as she balanced his power.
“Penelope?” Alexis whispered, breathing ragged.
“I’m okay, and now you are too. You should’ve said something, Alexis.”
He took her face in the darkness and covered it with soft kisses. “Thank you, cara. Thank you.”
“No need to thank me. You said I should be exploring my magic, and balancing the flow of the new magic running into you is just that.” She hated the way he seemed to believe he had to suffer in silence and carry everything on his own.
Says the woman unable to process her own grief or allow people to see how much she’s hurting.
Alexis’s arms tightened around her, his long legs tangling with hers, until there was no space between them. He rested his cheek atop her head. “You are one of the most intuitive people I’ve ever met, Penelope. Whatever you end up using your magic for, it will be uniquely yours. Your first instinct is to help people. You flew halfway around the world to help the police solve a murder. I’m not worried about what you will do with whatever abilities you possess, because your heart is good. Thank you for balancing me. It’s become a problem lately. I feel like I can finally think clearly again.”
“You should’ve said something.”
“You’ve had enough to worry about. I wanted to be the steady part of your life while you accepted what happened in Israel.”
“You can be the steady part and still be honest with me about how you’re feeling. You can’t hide the oncoming tide from me. Don’t forget, I have an astrolabe that tells me everything.”
“Be patient with me, cara. I haven’t had anyone in my confidence for a long, long time, and those kinds of habits are hard to break. You know, you haven’t mentioned Tim or Carolyn for weeks. We both are very independent, as well as uncomfortable talking about what’s on our minds.”
“I’m not talking about it because there’s no point. It’s not going to change anything, and I still don’t know how I feel about it. I will ramble in circles if I try to talk about it now. I need to stay focused, not fall apart and have panic attacks because I can’t control my anxiety.” Penelope’s voice hitched.
Alexis stroked her hair. “We all grieve in different ways, so if you need to work, then work. You don’t have to speak about it until you want
to; just know that you can come to me when you’re ready.”
“Deal,” she whispered, before burying her face into his chest and finally going back to sleep.
THE NEXT morning, Penelope found Marco, Galenos, and Lyca in the kitchen eating breakfast and brewing coffee. The three had become unlikely and inseparable companions in the past few weeks, the terrifying warrior magician taking Marco under her wing as if he were a baby bird who needed to learn how to kill a possessed priest of Thevetat with one shot.
“I’m starting to think you live here, Marco,” said Penelope. She yawned and helped herself to the pot of coffee.
“Lyca is a very strict taskmaster. Aren’t you, maestro?” Marco said affectionately.
“I have to be. I intend to make you useful, even if you are polizia.” Lyca was peeling an apple with her dagger, carving the green rind into intricate patterns.
“She won’t let me have a cigarette with my breakfast. A man needs his morning tobacco to function!”
“A man needs to be seen and not heard. I won’t have you wheezing so hard that you give your position away to the enemy. Or worse, my position.”
“I don’t know why you think you can succeed where two doctors and three hypnotists have failed.”
Lyca’s silver gaze narrowed, and her knife flicked elegantly between her fingers. “They wouldn’t cut off a finger for every cigarette they catch you sneaking.”
“Oh, dear,” said Penelope. She smiled at Marco, who was grumbling in Venetian under his breath. He gave Penelope a secret wink before going to sit next to his would-be mutilator.
“How are your plans going for the Bahamas mission, Galenos?” Penelope asked. The magician had been watching the banter between Lyca and Marco with an amused smile on his face.
“Very well. Once Marco and Lyca start their sabotage of the construction site, I’ll crash the accounts of Duilio’s company, as well as those of all their shadowy investors and shell companies.”
“What’s going to happen to all of their employees? They hired a lot of locals to do the work, didn’t they?” Shutting down the priests of Thevetat was one thing, destroying innocent people’s financial lives in the process was another.
“Don’t worry, Penelope. They will all receive their promised wage for the life of the job plus a bonus, all thanks to the money that will be taken from the priest’s accounts,” Galenos assured her.
“You really are a master magician.” Penelope made a mental note to have Galenos do her taxes in the future.
“Where is the Defender this morning?” asked Lyca.
“Archives, probably.” Penelope helped herself to the pastries Zo had baked the night before. She had woken up alone. Both Alexis and Constantine’s letters were gone from his rooms. He was somewhere in the palazzo—of that she was sure. She could feel him through their moíra desmós, the metaphysical and ineffable connection that bound their fates together.
“I wanted to ask him why you’re glowing today,” said Lyca.
Marco sniggered and waggled his eyebrows. “Why do you think she’s glowing, maestro?”
Lyca flicked him in the back of the head. “Idiota, not that kind of glowing. Glowing with magic.”
“Have you been practicing with your power?” asked Galenos.
“I’m trying to figure out how to balance Alexis’s magic like Nereus used to do with other magicians. I want to be able to help as the tide grows higher.” She took the astrolabe out of her pocket and popped open the latch so she could study the ticking dials.
“That’s what it is. You’re still carrying the aftereffects of Alexis’s magic on your skin.” Lyca clicked her tongue and shook her head. “Be careful you don’t bite off more than you’re capable of chewing, Archivist. Nereus had many, many years exploring her own power before she attempted experiments with the magic of others.”
“Do you think she wrote any of those experiments down?” Penelope hoped they hadn’t disappeared like Nereus’s other journals.
“Not every answer in life can be found in your beloved books,” said Lyca.
“The important things usually can. I want to find Nereus’s books, and the Archives won’t produce them, no matter how many times I ask.”
“Maybe because they aren’t in there,” mused Galenos, his eyes thoughtful.
Penelope’s coffee paused halfway to her lips. She hadn’t considered that Nereus wouldn’t have kept them below the lagoon.
“You should do a search of her rooms, see what she’s got locked up,” Marco suggested.
“You are assuming the palazzo wouldn’t keep her secrets as its master. She helped create not only the building but the magic; she would’ve found ways to protect her treasures,” Lyca said.
“It’s not surprising that you wouldn’t want other people to touch her things, but I don’t see a way around it. I can’t find the books anywhere and they could be in there.”
“You’re her heir, Penelope. What was hers is now yours to do with as you wish. I only meant to manage your expectations because if Nereus didn’t want the books found after her death, you won’t find them. I know you’ll be respectful with whatever you may find.”
The astrolabe hummed ominously in Penelope’s hand, making her wonder what other magical items she’d inherited…and how to find them.
PENELOPE FOUGHT THE urge to head straight to the Archives. If Alexis was still reading his way through the letters from Constantine, she didn’t want to intrude. She couldn’t imagine what he was feeling, knowing that Constantine hadn’t given up on him. Penelope thought of Carolyn, and a sharp pain low in her ribs reminded her that she could no longer pick up the phone and call her friend.
Blinking back unexpected tears, Penelope shut her eyes and focused on Nereus. Letting the palazzo guide her, she placed one foot in front of the other, maintaining a steady stride and doing her best to ignore the walls moving around her.
She walked down hallways and up staircases she’d never seen before. They were decorated with less artwork and felt far older and stranger. The walls changed from elegant wallpaper to plaster, to polished wood, marble, and rough stone.
When she came to a long tunnel of slick, dripping stone walls, the hair on the back of her neck rose. She stepped forward and all but ran through the subterranean crypt, the air heavy with the smell of stagnant brine and decay.
“I hope these are safety measures, Nereus, and that you didn’t have a full Phantom of the Opera fetish going on.” Penelope laughed nervously in the darkness. She pushed through a rotting wooden door and stepped into a foyer of speckled marble. It was bare except for an elaborate set of wooden doors painted in shades of indigo, purple, and green, the engravings flecked with gold leaf. The doors looked like they belonged in a temple or palace, not a bedroom.
Penelope rested her hand on the brass handle, which curled around her wrist like a hot, greedy tongue.
She shrieked as the grip on her hand tightened. Light flared under her skin as the metal tongue sucked, tasting her magic. When it released her, the door swung open. Penelope checked her hand over. Her arm ached, and she was grossed out, but other than that, she seemed unharmed.
Holding her hand to her chest, Penelope crept through the doors, fearing what piece of furniture would attack her next.
“Oh, wow.” Her jaw dropped. She had expected Nereus’s rooms to be beautiful—everything in the palazzo was—but she hadn’t expected this suite of rooms, which opened out to views of a vivid blue sea. A sea that was definitely not the Venetian lagoon.
Murals in ochre, blue, green, and purple covered the walls. They reminded Penelope of the palace at Knossos. She was certain they were scenes of life in Atlantis: racing horses, fantastical sea creatures, fishermen hauling nets, arguing scholars, and wildly chaotic markets. On one wall was a tall, elegant spike of a building; she recognized it from Alexis’s books.
“The Citadel of Magicians.” Penelope stroked its shimmering beauty with her fingertips, then approached the open windo
w and stuck her hand outside. It was warm, the crashing of waves on the beach below whispering to her. She wasn’t foolish enough to think that she could climb down and swim in the waves. She had seen Alexis play with the weather often enough inside the palazzo to know not to trust the view from any window.
Penelope opened another door. Inside was a wooden dresser covered with small boxes. Rings, bracelets, cuffs, and necklaces were arranged carefully, all items of strange beauty that Penelope couldn’t resist running her fingers over. A cuff made of fiery golden metal drew her eye almost immediately. A symbol combining a trident and open book was engraved into it and inlaid with a dark blue stone.
“Poseidon’s insignia?” Penelope guessed and picked it up. The metal wasn’t gold or bronze. Orichalcum. It’s made of orichalcum. The knowledge rose to the surface of her brain, and she had to sit down on a nearby chair before her legs gave way. Both Pliny and Plato had spoken of the legendary metal. Overwhelmed, Penelope closed her eyes as she clutched the cuff to her chest and tried her best to keep her breath steady. She was holding a relic of Atlantis in the palm of her hand.
Despite living with the survivors of the legendary country, Penelope still hadn’t lost her ache to know more about Atlantis. Stopping Thevetat had taken over as her first priority, but her yearning for the place that no longer existed would always be there. One day, she would write the truth of it all, even if it only ended up on a bookshelf in the Archives. She understood Alexis’s and Nereus’s need to write, to process all that they were living through, even if they could never share it with anyone.
When Penelope opened her eyes, there was an envelope on the table in front of her. On the envelope, her name was scrawled in handwriting she was now familiar with.
“Nereus?” She half-expected the older woman to appear, cackling at Penelope for being stupid enough to believe she was truly dead. It wasn’t like this was the first time a letter had appeared inexplicably. Penelope picked it up and opened it.
The King's Seal Page 3