Kat Evernight's Arc

Chapter 4 of 10

Kat slid the photo into her jacket pocket and turned away from the kiosk. The basement bar entrance waited across the square, but something held her back. She'd spent five years chasing shadows and whispers. Now she had proof the city knew about Vex all along. They'd posted his face and done nothing while children burned. She looked up at the clock tower that rose above the square. The stone facade carried decades of soot and grime. The clock face sat frozen, its hands stuck at half past three. Rust had eaten through the metal framework. The city once used it to mark time, but now it just stood there—silent and forgotten like everything else they'd let die. Dusty gray-green vines climbed the stonework, their black flowers spreading across the tower's base. The plants added a strange beauty to the decay. Kat walked through a narrow alley that cut between two abandoned buildings. Moisture dripped from a rusted pipe overhead, leaving dark stains on the cobblestones below. More of those vines wrapped around the metal, their roots digging into cracks in the stone walls. Fungus grew in patches where the dripping water pooled. The city was eating itself from the inside out, rotting while people like Vex ran free. She reached the end of the alley and looked back at the square. The basement bar entrance still waited. Inside were people who knew things, who traded information for coin. But the photo in her jacket changed everything. The city had documented Vex years ago and filed him away. They'd let him walk while ash still floated over the orphanage ruins. Kat turned toward the bar. The City of the Black Flame remembered—it just didn't care. She would make them both pay attention now.