Her Three Cursed Soulmates

chapter 16

Lyra POV

Lyra leads him up the stairs to the seventh floor of the building.

It’s laid out just the same as the two floors below it. Unlike the fifth and sixth floors, though, it’s clear that someone has been here, and recently. The desks have been pushed up against the walls, for one thing. In the center of the room, the carpet has been scraped up to reveal cement, and there’s a dark circle there.

Cassian squats and touches it.

“Looks like someone was burning something,” he says.

I nod. That much is obvious, and not what I was concerned about.

“Over here,” I say, taking him by the wrist and pulling him to the far wall beside the windows.

I point.

“Oh,” he murmurs. “Damn.”

There are strange shapes—figures—painted on the wall in a muddy red. The first one, all the way to the left side of the wall, is an X-shape, with four crescent moons in the angles of the X. In the middle of the wall is a shape that reminds me of the fancy glasses with stems people used to drink from in the old days. You can still find them hanging in bars or in private homes sometimes, though more often than not, they’re broken. It’s a really weird thing to have drawn on a wall.

The one on the end kind of looks to me like three trees—one tall one in the center, and two short ones standing beneath it and to either side.

The images are done carefully, as though someone knew it was important to get them just right. And I can’t deny that I feel curious about them.

“What do you think these are?” I ask Cassian.

“I’ll tell you what they are,” he says. “Blood sigils.”

“Blood sigils? What is that?”

“They drew them in blood. Look.” He points to the wall.

“Are you sure?”

He looks at me.

“You can’t smell that?”

Now that he mentions it, I can. I was focusing more on the acrid, ashy smell of the recent fire because I thought it was more telling. It let me know that whoever had been here probably left only a few hours ago.

But now I sniff again and take in the aroma of rust and bitterness, and yes, I’m looking at blood. Someone has painted on these walls with blood.

“What the f**k?” I murmur. “Who would do this?”

“Moon Casters,” Cassian says. The disgust in his voice is clear. “There’s nothing they won’t do. Sap the magic from the moon, kill all the humans so they can have more power. Of course they would bleed their enemies to draw their little pictures. They probably feasted on their flesh afterward. I bet that was what the fire was about.”

I shudder. There was a time I would have engaged in morbid speculation about Moon Casters just like he’s doing, but can I really do that now?

Knowing that I’m one of them?

On the other hand…what if what he’s saying is true?

“Moon Casters aren’t cannibals,” I say. “That’s what Ravagers do.”

“Like there’s a rule only one of them can do it?” He shakes his head. “Let’s get out of here. This is f*****g creepy.”

“Hang on.” I look around the room. There were pens and paper on the floor below.

“What are you looking for?” he asks.

“I want to copy those down.”

“Are you serious? You can’t write that s**t down. For all you know, it’ll make the building catch fire if you do that.”

“I mean, we know that those signs don’t make the building catch fire,” I say. “Because they’re already written on the wall, and the building isn’t on fire.”

“You know what I mean. They’re some kind of weird magic. You can’t touch that shit.”

“They probably have to be written in blood to do whatever it is they do,” I say. “I really doubt it’s going to do anything if I write them down in pen on paper.”

He groans.

“You really do have to have your own way about everything, don’t you?”

“Why would I do things someone else’s way?”

“Not very pack-minded of you.”

“I’m not in a pack,” I remind him pointedly. “And neither are you, and it’s because you didn’t want to listen to people who told you what to do.”

He groans and pulls out a pen from his pocket.

“I don’t have paper.”

“That’s fine.” I uncap the pen and hold up my forearm against the wall.

“You’re not going to put those things on your skin?”

“Relax.” I copy the shape of the first one, but instead of drawing the X shape perfectly, I create it as hash marks with gaps in the middle. I show Cassian what I’ve done.

“See?”

“Okay,” he says. “Very clever.” But he looks more deeply uncomfortable than I’ve seen him since we got here—since I met him, really.

“You really don’t like this, do you?” I ask him.

“Do you?” he asks. “I think it’s creepy as hell. You know what they are. You know what they do.”

“If I meet one of them,” I say, “I can ask them what these sigils mean.” It’s the closest I dare come to telling Cassian the truth.

“Who gives a damn what they mean?” Cassian asks. “The Moon Casters are evil. Any signs they use are evil. And if I saw one, I wouldn’t stop to ask questions. I would kill them where they stood.”