Author's Note: Hi, everyone! Sorry it's been so long since I've updated – my last year of uni took longer than I thought and then my laptop died, then our internet connection was cut… But yeah, at last I can put this up! It's not one of my best, lots of exposition, but bear with it, the next chapter should be more interesting.
Kurtis woke alone in Lara's room, his brain protesting the need for more rest. A patch of empty warmth on the mattress told him Lara had only just gotten up, and the faint patter of her en-suite shower clued him in as to her location. Before he could roll over and doze off again, his traitorous brain reminded him of yesterday's showdown with Karel, and he realised with resignation that he couldn't afford the luxury of sleeping in.
Pulling on his pants, he picked up the rest of his discarded clothing and let himself out into the hallway, heading for his room and the shower that awaited him there. Before he had taken two steps, a gasp, followed by a smothered giggle, reached his ears. Glancing further up the corridor, he saw Alessa grinning knowledgeably at him from the doorway of her bedroom. Shit.
"What?" he asked defensively, his voice still gravelly from sleep.
"Well, it's about time," she teased, seeming delighted to be able to exploit his moment of weakness.
Despite himself, Kurtis was amused. She has a point.
"Bryce said you'd hold out another two weeks at least," Alessa continued airily, "but I told him no way."
Biting back a sarcastic retort, Kurtis changed the subject. "How are you feeling?"
She shrugged. "My head aches a bit, and I don't think much of my power's come back yet, but I'm okay." Once again, her face broke out into a broad grin. "How are you today?"
Shaking his head good-naturedly, Kurtis crossed to his room and shut the door firmly behind him, muffling her gleeful laughter.
Standing with her feet slightly apart, Lara reached up over her head, standing on tiptoe and stretching her abdominal muscles. Pain screamed through them, almost bad enough to bring tears to her eyes. Stubbornly, she held the pose for long moments before dropping her arms back to her sides. The agony abated, but she only gave herself a few seconds to recover before she dropped into a sitting position, leaning forward to grab her toes and holding the pose. If possible, the pain was worse, and she grunted with the strain. You should have rested up last night. What if Karel comes back?
She heard a footstep behind her, and immediately eased the pressure on her wounded stomach. Forcing herself to relax so that her face bore no trace discomfort, she stood up and turned to watch Kurtis approach. Her lips curved in a faint smile as she brushed hair out of her eyes. "Morning."
"You're damn right, it is," Kurtis replied, sounding as fatigued as he looked. Lara wasn't sure what mental tricks he'd pulled yesterday, but they were definitely catching up with him this morning.
She nodded, letting her façade slip a little. "Tell me about it. Last night was not a good idea."
Kurtis leaned against her climbing frame and stared across the room, his expression unreadable as his voice. "How's your stomach?"
She sat on a nearby vaulting block and shook her head as her abdomen wrenched even at that small movement. "It'll be days before I have my full mobility back. I did it more harm than good last night."
"Yeah, well, if you're going to insist on testing it every morning, you're gonna end up tearing something," Kurtis muttered, his resentment growing.
Lara rolled her eyes. What's his problem today? "Alright. Out with it."
"What?" he snapped back defensively.
"If you have something to say, I'd prefer to hear it now, if you don't mind," she said, with false patience.
For a split second he paused, as if debating with himself whether or not to speak. There was a tiny instant when vulnerability showed on his face, though she had no idea what was passing through his mind. "Forget it," he muttered when the moment passed.
By the time she'd replayed the conversation in her mind and realised what she'd said to piss him off, he was halfway to the door. She followed, reaching out to stop him, knowing she should apologise. Her fingers had barely brushed his arm when she was shoved with enough force to send her stumbling backwards.
It took her a few moments to register that he'd pushed her with his telekinesis. By then, he was gone, leaving her with a rising anger that drowned her contrition.
"Whoa…" Alessa leaned over Kurtis' shoulder as a webpage blinked up on the screen of Bryce's laptop. "This is a Lux Veritatis site! I didn't know we had one!"
Kurtis stared at the page welcoming him by name to ShadowHistories, the information archive Mathias Vasiley had been compiling up until his death. Surprise that his login had been valid temporarily assuaged his anger with Lara, and he hesitated, unsure where to start looking. "Did your dad ever mention Mathias Vasiley?"
She grinned, relieved that he seemed to be coming out of the bad mood he'd been in for the past hour. "He said he was really boring."
Kurtis fought back a smile of his own. That had always been his impression of the art dealer, too. "He was putting all the information in the books at the headquarters library online. Hopefully this will save us going there to find what we need."
Alessa made a disappointed noise. "I like it there. Bordeaux is pretty."
Kurtis shook his head, his black mood descending once again as he remembered having to dispose of the bodies of the last six Lux Veritatis members to be murdered – his father included. Sensing his discomfort, Alessa changed the subject. "So what are we looking for?"
Kurtis began to follow links at random, searching for helpful information. "I'll know when I see it, I guess."
For the first five minutes, she continued to look over his shoulder, but as time went on she grew bored and wandered off to find Bryce. Kurtis continued his search for anything relating to the Golden Lion – although the chance was slim, since the entire Order had believed it to represent of the Cabal – or the symbolism of his ring.
After a while of fruitless searching, thoughts of Lara began to distract him. Now that he'd begun to cool down a little, he was ashamed of the impulse that had driven him to strike her. He'd barely realised he'd done it, and at the time, he hadn't cared. Now he knew he'd overreacted, but was still too angry to apologise.
He knew they would never have a 'normal' relationship, would never live together, settle down, get married. None of those things had ever been particularly important to him, and falling for Lara hadn't changed his mind. He knew the perfect image of domesticity repelled her, as it did him. But even so, he wanted her to acknowledge that there was something deeper to their relationship than amazing sex.
How had things gotten so out of control?
Sighing, Kurtis shoved the thoughts away, beginning to search the archive again. Something lurked at the back of his mind, something he knew he should remember…
'Documented cases of spontaneous human combustion'. Suddenly it clicked into place, and he clicked the link, waiting impatiently for the page to load. Helene…
His mother had tried to keep the details of Helene Occitan's death from him. Even so, fourteen-year-old Kurtis had heard the whispers of how the girl had combusted, burning from the inside out as her powers overwhelmed her. He had dismissed certain details as fallacy – Lyle had been prone to exaggeration, and when he had told Kurtis of the arcane symbols that had surrounded Helene in the minutes leading to her death, he had paid no attention.
Six names blinked up on screen. The first, Raoul Limoux, Kurtis knew to be the son of the first head of the Order, the respected Edouard Limoux. He had met his painful end in the late thirteen hundreds, but Vasiley's research went further through history. It stated that Edouard had been so grief-stricken that when the Lux Veritatis rings were first created, he had ordered the symbols surrounding his dying son to be incorporated into their design, so that no member should forget Raoul, or the mistake he made.
The rest of the cases of spontaneous human combustion followed, sporadically dotted from Raoul Limoux's time up to Helene Occitan in 1986. Following each name was a short account of their death, presumably compiled from eyewitness statements. Linking all six incidents were the symbols that had shone around Alessa, and the fact that each member was dangerously behind on their training.
As Kurtis read, his initial triumph faded to unease. Their only hope to keep Karel at bay was to allow Alessa's control to slip, risking her life. The balance would be delicate, and Kurtis had no idea how best to manage it. Not for the first time since his father and brother had been murdered, he wished the burden did not rest on his shoulders alone.
He continued to search, but his brain did not process anything he read. He was just about to give up when he heard the angry roar of a speeding motorcycle engine draw closer. Lara was back, and clearly still pissed off.
He was going to have to swallow his pride, apologise, and hope that the act provoked a similar response from her. God-damnit.
Clearing his mind of resentment as best he could, he stepped into the corridor and made his way down to the main hall, arriving just in time to see Lara kick the newly-installed front door shut. As she took a few steps toward the main staircase, Kurtis forced himself to speak. "I'm sorry."
For a split-second, he thought she hadn't heard him, and frustration welled up within at the thought of having to say it again. One step more, however, and she halted, seeming almost startled as she turned toward him.
The silence stretched on for long seconds, the counter-apology he had been hoping for nowhere to be found. Kurtis clenched his fists against the urge to pick up their argument where he had left it. "I shouldn't have knocked you back."
There was a slight softening in the guardedness of her face, and she nodded acknowledgement of the gesture, though surely she had noticed the unwilling way it had been given. "I'm sorry, too," she said simply, her tone civil carrying only a hint of friendliness. For a moment, they stared at one another, each ensuring that the other understood that this was the way it was going to be. The apology had done little to heal the rift between them, but it was a start. Time, not words, would do the rest.
"We have way bigger things to worry about," he told her, dismissing the subject before he lost control of his tongue. "I found out what happened to Alessa."
They headed for the study, where Kurtis filled her in as succinctly as possible, pulling up ShadowHistories when Lara showed an interest. When he finished, she stared at the webpage for a few seconds before looking up, her eyes locking with his. "What do we tell Alessa?"
That was the question he'd been trying to answer in his own mind. "Nothing," he said, hoping he was making the right call. "It would just upset her, and the power gets more difficult to control under strong emotion."
"Nothing," Lara echoed, getting to her feet. "Until she asks why you've stopped training her, why all of a sudden what we thought was so important needs to be aborted."
Kurtis sighed, choosing to ignore her abrasive words. "Then we find something more important to focus on. Where are your books on alchemy?"
Without a glance in his direction, Lara indicated the books heaped on her desk. "Same place they were last night."
As she moved toward the door, he called after her, "And the coffee. Don't forget the coffee…"
"Winston's already left for Ireland. You can make your own bloody coffee," she muttered, looking back. Kurtis caught a glimpse of a suppressed smile as she left the room.
Alessa gulped down another glass of water, wishing her head would stop aching. Her power reserves were still uncomfortably low, and although she thought she was doing a good job of acting normal in front of the others, she felt all messed up inside.
She knew that since she'd told Kurtis she was going to find Bryce, she should actually do so, but truthfully, she didn't feel like company. The carnage she'd seen the evening before, and the knowledge that she was partly the cause of it, made her sick to her stomach. The discovery that Lara and Kurtis were finally acting like a normal couple had cheered her, but that had lasted for all of an hour. Now Lara was nowhere to be found, and Kurtis seemed as if he wanted to kill someone.
She wished her real parents were here. Everything had made sense back then.
Leaving the bathroom and glancing down the hall at the boarded-up window she had somehow thrown Karel through, Alessa wandered into the music room, her eyes skimming over the spines of the CD cases in Lara's collection. One caught her attention; she remembered that her mother had loved it. Edith Piaf.
Bryce poked his head around the door a few minutes later, drawn by the sounds of soft music. Alessa was sitting on the windowsill, watching Lara pull through the gates of the manor on one of her bikes. She sang along to the French CD, her notes warbling off-key, but her pronunciation perfect.
"I didn't know you could speak French."
Alessa jumped, and smiled sheepishly. "My father was French. We spent all my school holidays there." She looked down at Lara again, as she strode up to the front door. "Do you think they're going to yell at each other again?"
Bryce peered over her shoulder. "You can pretty much count on it. They spend most of their time arguing, some of it saving the world, and the rest of it shagging. Trust me." His bluntness startled a giggle from Alessa, and he winced. "Oops. Probably shouldn't have said that. You alright?"
She grinned. "I've heard worse in my foster homes."
"I meant, with all this weird stuff going on. Do you feel like coming down to help us look for stuff?"
Alessa jumped up as the CD finished. "Yep." Strangely enough, she did feel better. Whether it was Bryce's influence or the memory of her mother, she was going to stay strong, and do whatever it took.
Lara turned another page in her Cambodian field notebook, memories reawakening with every word she read.
"The pictograms were easy to understand. They were a warning about vengeance on whoever took the artefact, in the form of poisoned darts and 'triggered entombment'. But there was writing scratched underneath. I couldn't read it, and Werner didn't even seem to want to look at it. I suppose he saw the artefact, and wanted it. I thought he was being rash, but I didn't expect the whole place to start coming apart." Lara set the journal down, knowing the next paragraph detailed Werner's condition in hospital, and the one after contained her feelings of guilt at not being able to do more to help him.
Since that time, Lara had learned to place blame where it belonged. She knew now that Werner had brought his accident upon himself, as the more experienced of the two of them. He had acted irresponsibly. Just as she had when she'd pulled the Ankh of Semerkhet from Set's tomb… but that was another story.
Her eyes skimmed the slanted italic of her handwriting once again, hoping the words would help to pull the memory of the Iris' location to the forefront of her brain. Something about the expedition was not sitting right with her; a tiny misgiving niggled at the edge of her consciousness. She closed her eyes, ignoring the headache that was starting to build, and tried to remember if Werner had ever referred to the Iris by name…
Kurtis glanced up, startled, as Lara shoved back her chair and made a beeline for the door. "What…?" Beside him, Alessa blinked her confusion.
Without acknowledging that she'd even heard him, she strode out into the hallway, heading for the stairs. "Bryce? Where are you? Bryce!"
A few seconds later she reappeared, a bemused Bryce in tow. "How did we discover this thing was called the Iris?" she demanded. When he only blinked in the direction of the artefact, she answered her own question. "Werner's security files, at Von Croy Industries. I found him, you hacked in…"
"Yeah… I remember. You were only looking for him, and when you saw a picture of it, you went nuts!" Bryce flopped down in an armchair, grinning at the memory.
Lara folded her arms across her chest. "That artefact was rightfully mine. I beat Werner to it, fair and square, and he told me in the hospital that it had been lost in the wreckage. I can't stand it when people take my property." She felt Kurtis' eyes on her as her mind skipped back to the Obscura painting she had claimed from the Tomb of Ancients, but refused to return his stare.
"Yeah," Bryce continued, oblivious, "then you went in and nicked it from under their noses, and I was in a van down on the street, guiding you through…" He stopped and frowned. "So where were you going with this?"
"Werner didn't know what would be in the tomb we searched… as far as I could tell, no one did. The records indicated that there was a tomb, but not whose, or what treasures were buried there. When the temple collapsed, Werner took the Iris… but he didn't know what it was. When we found his security files, it had been named. According to the notes, he'd made a worldwide appeal for aid, and some kind of expert had responded. He hadn't volunteered much information, and Werner wasn't sure whether he knew more than he was saying." Lara hesitated, then turned to Bryce. "Do you remember his name? Was his picture in the staff records?"
"Do you have a theory for me to work from?" Bryce asked, exasperated. "Maybe if you tell me who you think he is, I might be able to help."
Lara glanced at Kurtis, keeping her conflicted feelings towards him buried under the idea that was gathering momentum at the forefront of her mind. "I think it was Mathias Vasiley."
Bryce got up. "I'll see if I can find the Iris notes and personnel files I pulled on VCI."
Kurtis slid the laptop over to him. "If his name doesn't come up, see if you can find a guy who looks like this. He might have used an alias." Vasiley's picture, pulled up from ShadowHistories, lit up the screen: a bespectacled man in his late forties, smiling nervously for the camera.
As Bryce left the room, Kurtis said, "What makes you think the Iris is a Lux Veritatis artefact?"
She shrugged. "Nothing based in fact… yet. Call it an archaeologist's hunch." Knowing her reply wasn't going to satisfy him, she began to tick off points on her fingers. "One: no one knows a thing about it, yet Werner has a name and some information. Two: there was writing I didn't recognise, beneath much older pictograms, in the tomb where we found the Iris. To me, that indicates someone hid the Iris in a place built for something else, something older that might have been grave-robbed by the time of the Lux Veritatis. Three: I found some correspondence between Werner and Vasiley. They were communicating through Margot Carvier, but in one fax Vasiley referred to Werner as 'old friend'."
Kurtis sucked in a breath, then let it out again. "I want to see the tomb you found the Iris in."
"I'll book the flight."