#MUSEUM HEIST | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

damedechance · 4 months

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seek&destroy

read pt1 on ao3 || listen to the playlist

You're telling me I got to talk with @foundress0fnothing for the past few weeks (my favorite person) and write about Gwynriel (my two favorite idiots)? I have seriously enjoyed getting to know my precious giftee a little bit more during this event and I am so so so excited to finally share part of what I've been working on!!! Em, I hope you know how cherished you are in this little fandom community, and I hope this fic can bring you even just the littlest spark of joy! Love you endlessly, Santa 🌟

Pairing: Gwynriel

Parts: 1 of 5

Rating: Explicit (for eventual smut)

Summary: Those with a link to a realm long gone now live in secret, and Gwyneth Berdara is one of them. After a horrific tragedy rends her life apart, Gwyn finds herself in good company with her fellow Valkyries, a group of vigilantes who work to restore the forgotten relics of a land called 'Prythian.' When Gwyn's work brings her to an illustrious museum, her own world collides with that of the mysterious Shadowsinger--an encounter that leads to her vowing to bring him to his untimely end. [[FOR @acotargiftexchange]]

Read below for all of Chapter One:

CHAPTER ONE

Too. Many. Legs.

There were just too many legs, Gwyn thought, as she stared in open-mouthed horror at the projector screen. Just as she swallowed down a gag at the sight of the ghastly images before her, the presenter gestured passionately towards the slides, his tall frame and abhorrent posture giving the illusion of the rounded shell of a beetle. So uncanny was his resemblance to the subject of his own presentation, the species he’d apparently devoted his entire career to–the cerambycid beetle. Gwyn fought back a shiver. Or a scream of terror.

Not that she wasn’t sympathetic to his cause. A glance at the pamphlet in front of her revealed that he held a PhD in entomology–a degree she knew from personal experience was all but impossible if you didn’t feel truly dedicated to your work. He was probably a sweet old man, she struggled to convince herself. Someone like her, a person so entirely enamored with their subject of study that the less attractive facets of the field were of no consequence. In fact, she admired that sort of devotion.

Still, the clearly impassioned man wasn’t exactly persuading her to actually take up an interest in the study of insects. Gwyn suspected that the sight of those beetles was the primary driving force in that decision. Especially since she still couldn’t keep her eyes open for more than five minutes at a time, and was currently squeezing them shut as she counted out her deep, steadying breaths. Just a few moments of relief from the images on the screen was all she needed.

When she opened her eyes again, the presenter had switched to the next slide, which revealed a close-up view of the beetle’s segmented underbelly. Heaving, Gwyn bit down on her tongue as she felt the blood drain from her face. To distract herself from the urge to evacuate the contents of her stomach, Gwyn allowed her eyes to drift aimlessly about the room.

For not the first time, she was grateful that she’d been able to secure a seat for herself in the back of the auditorium. The badge hanging from the bright red lanyard across her neck proclaimed her a professor of entomology at the Dunmere College of Arts and Sciences, but she imagined that if any of the other conference attendees saw how green her face was, that title would prove itself somewhat implausible.

If nothing else, Gwyn needed to be sure that her act was flawless tonight. By the end of the Annual Entomology Society Conference, she wanted to have every single person in this room reasonably convinced that she was an ardent scholar of…bugs. Or, at the very least, she needed to not raise anyone’s suspicions to the contrary.

Perhaps if she simply kept sitting in the back, then.

Sighing quietly, Gwyn shifted down in her seat and allowed her legs to spread out in front of her. If she were to be stuck here, listening to the keynote speaker for the next–she checked the clock hanging above the door–five minutes, she should at least get comfortable. She crossed her arms over her chest, fingers tapping impatiently across her biceps, and stared unseeingly at the screen.

The minutes passed excruciatingly slowly. More legs, more antennae, more larvae, and by the end of the time Gwyn was biting on the insides of her cheeks to prevent herself from screaming in abject horror at each new, impossibly grotesque image. Until finally, the presenter reached the end of his slides, and only a blank screen appeared above his head.

“Right,” the bug doctor said. He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose, and began shuffling his papers over the podium. “Thank you all for such a thrilling discussion of cerambycid communities and their impact as an invasive species.”

Thrilling. Gwyn snorted to herself, and when more than a few heads turned in her direction, she quickly masked it as a sneeze.

“I will be available for a Q&A session later this afternoon,” the presenter continued, his finger prodding one of the papers on the top of his stack, as if pointing to a time. “Until then, I suggest perusing the rest of the museum for the insect nursery, where I am told some cerambycid beetle larvae are on display. Do take note of the well-progressed sclerotisation of the mouth parts, and if you find yourself peckish, I hear the cafe has an excellent gelato stand.”

That the presenter could possibly utter the words sclerotisation and gelato in the same sentence only served to confirm for Gwyn that she needed to get out of that room as soon as possible. Eagerly standing up, she shoved her notebook full of fake notes into her bag, and began to walk down the auditorium steps with the rest of the meager audience. Entomology was not a popular field apparently, and Gwyn could hazard a guess as to why.

As she approached the stage where the bug doctor still stood at the podium, politely accepting words of praise from some of the other attendees, Gwyn thought she hear the words antennal sockets and low tubercles, and immediately quickened her pace, slipping past others to ensure that she was towards the middle of the pack, instead of at the very end.

Sighing in relief as soon as she stepped out of the auditorium and into one of the connecting halls outside of the exhibits, Gwyn followed the flow of the crowd. She slipped her phone out of her pocket, pretending to be texting so that none of the bug enthusiasts would attempt to engage her in some conversation about pupation. Only looking up occasionally from her notes app where she just repeatedly typed the words ew ew ew, Gwyn nearly yelped when she heard a voice in her ear.

“You missed your turn,” Emerie said, her voice slightly crackling through the earpiece hidden behind Gwyn’s hair.

She cleared her notes app, quickly typing the words, I know. And Sorry.

A tinny sigh in her ear. “That’s okay, just don’t attract attention. Pretend to look interested in the exhibit.”

Gwyn locked her phone, slipping it back into her bag as she lifted her head. Immediately regretting the action, once she came face to face with hundred of wiggling, nasty looking larvae.

This time, Gwyn couldn’t hold back her yelp, though she did manage to close her mouth in time to capture the sound, so that it didn’t disrupt the group of people that had gathered to marvel at the nasty little things. Pointing out some fascinating detail of another, as they crowded around the glass window into the bug nursery. In hindsight, Gwyn really should have expected that following the crowd of conference attendees would have led her here.

Carefully controlling her breathing rate so that she wouldn’t alert the others, Gwyn took several steps backwards from the case before turning and walking in the direction of the entrance to the next exhibit. One glance around the room revealed to her that the rest of the entomologists were already deeply engrossed with the contents of the many cases around them, and so Gwyn was able to easily slip out of the room without attracting notice.

The adjoining exhibit, a hall of various bones and skeletons, was relatively less crowded, and Gwyn was just as easily able to weave her way in and out of the gathered bodies. She allowed her head to swivel around, if only to appear as any other mildly interested patron, but stayed resolute in her path towards the exhibit that she’d originally missed.

“Slow down,” Emerie hissed in her ear. “Or at least pretend to be looking for the bathroom.”

Gwyn huffed, shoulders sagging as she forced herself to slow down somewhere in the middle of the ocean exhibit. Above her, the lights illuminated the room in slowly shifting shades of blue, casting the impression of walking along the ocean floor. She ran a hand over her face, and continued walking at a much more deliberate pace.

Admittedly, the museum was rather impressive and on any other day, Gwyn would have been among all of the other patrons, staring wide-eyed at the displays and devotedly reading each and every plaque.

But she wasn’t here to admire the museum. The entomology conference had only been an excuse for Gwyn to come to the Helion Museum of Natural History. If she had simply attended as a regular patron, without a purpose for ambling through the halls other than pure entertainment, she wouldn’t have been granted a keycard that allowed her access to some of the more restricted sections of the museum.

She’d already taken advantage of that privilege the previous day, when she and the other conference attendees took a tour of the research wings, where the archivists and conservationists worked. Their guide had taken them through room upon room of lovingly organized samples stacked in neat rows upon the shelves or spread across tables as researchers gently worked to clean and preserve them. The ultimate purpose of the tour had been to view the yet unveiling showing of moths as the archivists carefully pinned and labeled them, but Gwyn had conveniently slipped out under the guise of a bathroom break before that ever happened. That night, she returned home to Nesta and Emerie with a neatly drawn map of nearly the entire research wing.

Now, as Gwyn ambled through the ocean exhibit, the brilliant displays of coral and skeletons of various sea creatures rose up around her. She walked slowly, arms crossed over her badge so that anyone passing her wouldn’t note that she’d wandered off from the rest of the entomologists. Emerie gently murmured her approval in Gwyn’s ear, just as she crossed the threshold into the next exhibit, a sign above it advertising the Space and Astronomy hall.

The entrance was a long, dark tunnel with white swirling lights on the rounded ceilings and walls. Not resembling stars, but instead pulsing from one end to another like a portal. Gwyn was the only one walking through it, and belatedly she realized that this was a relatively slow day and hour for the museum. She hadn’t seen many other patrons, except for the rest of the bug crew, and as she walked out of the tunnel and into the dimly lit chamber that was the space exhibit, she realized that she was the only one there, save for the security guard currently leaning against a wall and staring at the toe of his boot.

Gwyn adjusted her glasses, slowly winding around case after case of space memorabilia. Some artifacts collected from the surface of the moon, and hundreds of chunks of rock from meteorites that had crashed to earth. She paused at a few signs for good measure, but her gaze was drawn to the ceiling above, which was a careful recreation of the constellations in the night sky.

As she made her way to the end of the hall, Gwyn nearly tripped over a small pedestal that appeared to rise up out of nowhere. She stumbled back, staring dumbfounded at the small, square case that shone more brightly than any of the others in the entire museum thus far.

Just a small, glass box atop a narrow pedestal at the center of the corridor, right before the entrance to the next exhibit. And she was so close, Emerie was murmuring in her ear a list of reminders of what to take note of as soon as she entered the next room–but Gwyn couldn’t resist. That one lone box, that felt like it had been waiting for her.

Slowly, she approached, carefully leaning over the glass case to observe the contents, only to see that it was a single glass tube, stoppered at the end with a metal cap.

Gwyn sucked in a sharp breath, holding it as if letting it out would disturb the little granules safely behind several layers of glass. She admired it, this fine powdery substance within the tube that almost looked like glitter, it was so reflective. She didn’t know what it was, only that it was beautiful, catching the light in this oddly mesmerizing way, and there was so little of it. A pinch, really.

Her eyes flashed to the small sign below the display, and read the label: Presolar Grains.

Lips parted in awe, Gwyn looked back to the small tube, and recognized the particles inside as actual stardust. The dust from stars formed billions of years ago, before the sun even existed. She reached out, her five fingers spread across the glass as she crouched to get on eye level with it.

How something so outstanding could be kept in a place as unassuming as this–just perched on a small pedestal in a vacant section of the museum–was a wonder to her. There should have been hundreds of people crowding around this very case, craning their necks for a chance to see it, this evidence that something had existed before the sun.

“What is it?”

Gwyn jumped as soon as the voice sounded behind her, whirling around with her arm out in front of her with the impulse to shove the person away. With Emerie berating her in her ear, Gwyn managed to suppress her instincts just in time, her eyes widening as they trailed up a man’s chest to his face.

She was met with easily the most gorgeous eyes she’d ever seen. Like molten bronze, these fluent pools of amber and hints of green, and she staggered back, catching herself with a hand atop the case behind her.

“Careful,” the man said, a hint of amusement in his voice as he took half a step forward. Either to catch her, or peel her hand off the case, she couldn’t tell. “The guards might think you’re trying to steal something.”

Gwyn tore her hand off the case as if she’d been burned, hastily stepping aside to put as much distance between herself and the display as she could. She had the strangest feeling, that his eyes had tunneled straight through her, and could somehow see her true intentions as if they’d been written out just as plainly as any other sign in the museum–there was no other reason. He knew why she was there.

But as her heart hammered in her chest at the prospect of her cover being blown, the man only gave her a small smile, really just a fleeting jump at the corner of his mouth, before stepping forward and leaning over the case.

“What are you doing?” Emerie was screeching in her ear. “Leave, geology is in the next room.”

But so perplexed was Gwyn by the man in front of her, that she felt rooted to the spot. Her head cocked slightly to the side as she studied him. How he silently mouthed the words as he read them on the sign, how the slight hook of his nose caught the light emanating from the case, sending an elongated shadow across his face, carving out his cheekbone. Those eyes that were framed by long arching eyelashes and hair that was so dark it seemed to absorb and devour all of the light.

Something about him bothered her.

Suddenly, his head turned, an amused smile already melting over his face as he looked at her. Gwyn jumped, eyes going wide as she pretended like she’d been doing anything other than assessing him. But the man straightened, stepping away from the case to stand slightly in front of her.

“What’s your name?” he asked, his eyes slowly traveling down to the badge around her neck before she could answer.

Gwyn hurried to cover it with a hand, some deeply ingrained instinct of self preservation telling her that she couldn’t trust him despite his friendly smile or Emerie’s pleas for her to just act normal.

He lifted a brow at her, his gaze snapping back to her face.

“Is it a secret?” he said.

“Diana,” she blurted, forcing her hand to lift away from the badge. “Diana Bishop.”

He simply stared at her for a moment, before letting out a short, caustic laugh.

“Okay.”

Gwyn narrowed her eyes, her hands turning into fists as she studied him. Gorgeous face aside, he looked absolutely normal. Black shirt tucked into immaculately pressed and tailored trousers. Stylish, attractive even–but decidedly normal.

Why, then, couldn’t she smother the feeling that he knew all of her deepest and darkest secrets?

“What was that?” she asked, flinching slightly when her voice came out slightly more accusatory than she supposed it should have. She could at least keep up the appearance that she didn’t suspect him of anything.

“Just let it go,” Emerie hissed in her ear. “Apologize and walk away.”

Apologize. For being her best friend, Emerie apparently didn’t know her at all, because instead of walking out, Gwyn took a step forward, invading the man’s space, crossing her arms over her chest so that they bumped against him. And when she looked up to his face, where she expected to see reproach, instead she saw eagerness.

“Nothing,” he practically purred. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Diana.”

Gwyn frowned, her eyes roving over his face for any sort of tell. Reason told her that he couldn’t have been like her. He was tall, and built like a damn soldier with those broad shoulders and muscles pulling the fabric of his shirt taut over his chest, but there was no way he was dangerous. He had to be normal.

And then there was that gut feeling. Like electricity arcing over her skin, sirens blaring in her ears. He had come out of nowhere.

“And what’s your name?” Gwyn said derisively.

“Fine,” Emerie sighed, resigned, into her ear. “If you won’t listen to me, fine, but when Nesta comes back–”

Irritated, Gwyn jerkily tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, hooking her finger into the clear cord of her earpiece and tucking the entire thing into her palm in one movement so that he couldn’t see.

“Azriel,” he said, reaching his hand out. She noticed scars running up the lengths of his fingers towards his wrist, and she stared at the nearly mesmerizing patterns for far too long before she realized that she was meant to shake it, and she still had the earpiece in her palm.

“I have to go,” Gwyn said slowly, backing away and angling her body towards the entrance to the next exhibit.

She put Azriel at her back as she paced towards the short corridor leading to the gems and minerals exhibit, her steps quickening as she passed by the security guard she’d spotted earlier.

Azriel wouldn’t follow her, she assured herself as she crossed into the gems and minerals exhibit, where there were countless glittering gems winking at her beneath the lights. He wouldn’t follow her, because she had been so off putting and strange, he wouldn’t deem her worthy of the effort.

Placated for now, Gwyn adjusted her glasses over her nose, and swiveled her head about the room so that the camera hidden in the frames could capture the overall layout of the exhibit. It was a rushed job, not nearly as meticulous as it would have been if she wasn’t so paranoid that Azriel would jump out of nowhere with twenty armed guards ready to escort her to some secret dungeon in an underground government bunker.

Been there, done that.

She considered popping her earpiece back in, but just as she rounded the first display case at the center of the hall, a mother and child came bounding down the aisle, stopping right next to her to admire a row of amethyst.

She backed up, allowing the little boy some space, and was about to continue her walk around the rest of the room, when she ran into something hard, all of the air whooshing out of her lungs.

“Ugh,” Gwyn grunted, as hands wrapped around her upper arms and steadied her.

“Sorry,” the same voice from before said, helping her to turn around. Of course he’d followed her. She’d been off putting and strange, and he was definitely not normal.

Gwyn glared up at him, all pretenses of being some bookish bug enthusiast easily forgotten. He had found her out, she was sure of it, and she now dedicated all of her efforts towards thinking of a way to get rid of him. Collecting footage of the display cases so Emerie could catalog the contents for later was secondary, because clearly he was a threat to the mission.

Belatedly, she wished she hadn’t taken out the earpiece.

“What do you want?” Gwyn said, a hushed whisper so that the family behind her wouldn’t pick up on the thinly veiled hostility.

Azriel furrowed his brows. So he was going to pretend to be confused, then.

“You left in a hurry,” he explained. “I thought you might be in some sort of trouble, so I came to ask if you needed help. I didn’t mean to run into you.”

Gwyn scoffed. “Yeah, sure. Look, I really should be getting back.”

He hummed thoughtfully, his eyes drifting down to her badge again.

“To the… bugs?”

“Screw you,” Gwyn blurted.

She whirled away, stalking down the aisle as the mother gasped and clapped her hands over her son’s ears. Gwyn didn’t even bother with trying to capture more footage. Her cover was blown, and all she needed to do now was lose her tail without attracting anymore attention.

Unfortunately, that also meant it was rather easy for her pursuer to catch up to her.

She supposed she could kill him, if it came down to it.

“Did I insult your profession somehow?” He asked, jogging up beside her. “Was I not supposed to call them bugs?”

He came in front of her, trying to capture her gaze, which forced her to halt right beside a large tower of some type of quartz. She knew, not because she bothered to look at it, but because the reflection of it glimmered in his eyes.

“Get out of the way,” Gwyn said through her teeth as she rolled the earpiece within her palm. She glanced around him, eyes noting the camera wedged up against the ceiling. Murder was out, then.

He only smirked down at her, and just the sight of that gentle arch of his mouth was enough to convince her that he was privy to her homicidal intent, somehow. Any normal person would have walked away by now. He was staring her down like an adversary.

“Sure,” he said easily, stepping out of her way, and then waiting. Like he expected her to walk with him. “Maybe you could show me around? I had a bug phase as a kid, you know.”

Gwyn pushed ahead for the exit, struggling to ignore him as he easily matched her pace. If she could just lead him into an empty stairwell, she would be able to lose him. Knock him unconscious, and then leave him there for some poor museum employee to find. She could do it.

She tried to ignore him, and failed because then he started rambling about egg sacs, and Gwyn couldn’t take it anymore.

“Shut up,” she said. On an impulse, she grabbed his arm and pulled him with her towards a door marked Staff Only in a secluded vestibule off of the gem and mineral exhibit.

As the door clicked shut behind them, Gwyn immediately regretted her decision. Chest heaving, she looked around to see that she’d brought them into a storage room. Small, but not as tight as a closet, even with the towering stacks of clearly labeled bins around them. There were no windows, and the only lights were the strips of LEDs along the floor marking the narrow aisles.

“Diana,” Azriel said slowly, letting out a low breath as he glanced around the room. “This is all very flattering, but are you sure you want to do this here?”

“What?” Gwyn shrieked, her hands balling into fists. She backed up towards the door, where she thought she saw a broom, and considered using it to knock him out.

He was crowding her, slowly walking into her until her shoulders pressed against the door. She had been so sure, before bringing him in here, that he wanted to capture her, and with each vanishing inch between them, her mind was thrown into further disarray.

She had to get rid of him.

“I’ll admit,” he said, “There’s clearly something between us.”

Gwyn shook her head, trying to order her thoughts before she looked back up at him. “What are you talking about?”

“But don’t you think it’s a bit too soon for clandestine meetings in dark rooms?” he said.

His hands came up on either side of her head to cage her in. He leaned down, leveling her stare with one of his own, and she watched as his gaze drifted to her mouth.

“What were you thinking we would do?” he murmured. “When you led me in here?”

“Don’t play with me,” Gwyn said, her pulse thrumming in her ears. She reached out a hand, groping for the door handle.

“No?” he said, face angling to the side. Like he might try to kiss her, and the thought of it was no more terrifying than her realization that she wouldn’t have minded it.

And again, like he could hear every one of his thoughts, his mouth curved into a smile.

“Then what should I do with you?” he asked.

“Look,” Gwyn said, her fingers finally landing on the handle. She pressed herself flush against the door as he stepped closer, so that his chest wouldn’t brush against hers. “Just let me go, and I promise–”

“Let you go?” Azriel murmured, smirking at her.

“Yes,” Gwyn said flatly. She stared resolutely back at him, unwilling to allow him to see even a shred of nervousness. She could do this. She could knock him down right now, if she wanted.

So why wasn’t she?

“Let you go,” he repeated, humming as if he was turning the idea over in his mind. Considering it. His face dipped to the side, his lips somewhere near her ear when he whispered, “Why? Have you done something you shouldn’t have?”

Gwyn’s mouth fell open, her eyes roving restlessly up and down the side of his face as she tried to reconcile the part of her that desperately wanted to see him lying across the floor as she smacked him repeatedly with the broom handle–with the part of her that wanted to see him lying across the floor as she crawled over him and pressed her tongue to his neck.

Her fingers slipped off of the door handle, and were reaching for his shirt collar to do something, when the door suddenly opened behind her, knocking her into his arms. She scrambled for a moment, her hands peeling his off of her waist as he tried to steady her.

Above them, the overhead light flashed on, and she squinted against the harsh light as she turned to face the person who had walked in.

“What are you doing in here?” one of the security guards frowned at them.

Gwyn’s mouth opened and closed, struggling to come up with a reasonable excuse as Azriel scrubbed his hand over his mouth beside her, trying to hide a grin. She had just landed on I got lost, when the security guard groaned, stepping to the side to let them pass.

“They don’t pay me enough to deal with this,” he muttered to himself. He looked up at the ceiling, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’d think adults would behave with some decency.”

Gwyn glared at the security guard, brushing past him and out the door. She expected Azriel to be right behind her, but once she’d gotten over her indignation at having someone assume she’d been doing indecent things with him in public, she turned to look behind her.

Only to see the back of his head.

He was going in the opposite direction.

Stunned, Gwyn tore the lanyard off over her head and chucked it into the nearest trash can. She headed straight for the main staircase at the end of the vestibule, where she knew she could reach the museum atrium and eventually the exit. She needed to get out of there, needed to get lost in a crowd so she could rid herself of the feeling of being watched.

He had let her go.

It didn’t make sense, Gwyn thought as she hurried down the steps. He’d clearly been onto her, had clearly recognized that she was up to something. Any reasonable person wouldn’t have let her go, especially not if she had been his target in the first place. Gwyn wouldn’t have let him go, if the roles were reversed, and if she wasn’t so concerned with getting out of the damn building, she would have been right on his heels.

There was something wrong, Gwyn knew. And she would have to head back to Emerie and Nesta and tell them.

Tell them they needed to call this mission off.

#acotar secret santa #acotar gift exchange 2023 #gwynriel #gwyneth berdara #azriel x gwyn #azriel acotar #azriel shadowsinger #modern au #museum heist #enemies to lovers #meet ugly

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damedechance · 4 months

Text

seek&destroy

UPDATE: ⇀Read on ao3: Pt 1, Pt 2, Pt 3 ⇀Listen to the playlist

Pairing: Gwynriel

Parts: 3 of 5

Rating: Explicit (for eventual smut)

Read below for an excerpt from ch.3:

CHAPTER THREE

“We only have a couple of hours before the police show up onto the scene,” Emerie said, turning back to her computers and beginning to click through the photos. Hundreds of them it seemed like, and Azriel was the subject of every single one. “Maybe until morning for them to completely case the museum, and probably about as long for the break-in to appear in the news.”

“What are you getting at?” Gwyn said, shaking her head slightly as she tried to process what Emerie was saying. She narrowed her eyes, watching as a series of photos of the shadows flew across the screen. The little one by her foot in the stairwell, the serpentine ones wrapping around her legs.

“Bear with me,” Emerie said. She finally landed on an image of Azriel’s smirking face beyond the metal bars of the gates. Gloating, undoubtedly, but something adoring in the gaze, too. A bit ravenous.

Emere turned to face Gwyn, as Nesta got up from the chair by the window and came to sit on the floor on Emerie’s other side.

“We’ve never left so much evidence behind,” Emerie began. “A broken lock here, or a smudge of dirt there. We’ve had a few bad cases where Nes completely trashes a place, sure–”

“Get to the point,” Nesta interjected, crossing her arms over her chest.

“But nothing that could be traced back to us,” Emerie continued. “Until him.”

Without looking, Emerie stretched out a hand and tapped the screen. Right above Azriel’s grinning mouth.

Smothering the inexplicable urge to smash Emerie’s laptop into a million silicon pieces, Gwyn crossed her arms over her chest and tore her attention away from the screen. Gaze flicking between Emerie and Nesta, she said, “What do you want to do about it?”

Gwyn knew what she wanted to do, and most certainly would accomplish it just as soon as she figured out how to find him, but Emerie and Nesta appeared far less concerned with the absolute humiliation of being thwarted for the very first time. It was the strangest role reversal, one where Gwyn relinquished her need for meticulous planning followed by devout adherence to said plan, and something about it had unmoored her. She felt her body swaying in this sea of rage, and could only hug herself tighter in a pitiful attempt at controlling the waves.

“His team was very smart,” Emerie said, letting out a slow breath that could only be reluctantly impressed. “The entire time you were in there, I was trying to find any digital trace of them. We hadn’t hacked the security camera system yet, since you knew your way around them so well, but someone else did, and I was following that trail for so long only to find out it was a dead end. They’re clever.”

Gwyn frowned, glancing over to Nesta to see if she would confirm. Nesta’s disappointed expression mirrored her own, but then she nodded towards Emerie. “Just listen.”

Emerie pointed again to a different part of one of the screens, a string of numbers and letters that was incomprehensible to Gwyn but appeared to mean something of significance to Emerie.

“There was nothing,” she said. “Until…”

Her finger moved, gliding over the screen until it landed on one of the videos playing on loop. Shadowsinger’s back facing her, as he ran through the tunnel, wings tucked behind him. His hand going up to his ear, briefly.

Nesta leaned over and punched a key to turn on the sound.

“Lower the gates. Yes, I’m sure–lower them.”

Over and over, the same string of words punctuated only by Gwyn’s own rattling breaths as she chased after him. The groan of metal, as the gate began to come down, only to abruptly be cut off as the loop started again.

“This gave us more information than it seems, at first glance,” Emerie said, eyes still fixed on the screen as she went to lower the volume again. The loop continued on faintly, as she spoke, “Firstly, it was the first time he indicated that he wasn’t working alone. But whereas you and I were in constant contact the entire time, even if you weren’t directly speaking, I hadn’t caught one signal from his own radio. Not one, until he decided to speak here.”

“What does that mean?” Gwyn said, unable to tear her eyes away from the sight of those colossal wings, as pixelated and grainy as they were in the camera feed.

“It means two things,” Emerie said. “First, I was able to trace the signal. I’ve been working on it right up until you two arrived, actually, and I think I was able to narrow it down to the most likely point of origin.”

“Good,” Nesta said gruffly. She got up onto her knees, as if she was about to head out the door again. Gwyn was about to join her. “Where are we headed?”

“Wait,” Emerie said, slapping a hand over Nesta’s arm to pull her back down. “Because there was something else about the signal that bothered me. Why would he choose to make contact with his partner like that, if he had made it so far without? Especially in such an easily traceable way? Our own comms system has layers of security around it that are practically miles thick, but I was able to find him in less than an hour.”

Gwyn pressed her lips together, deep in thought as she continued to trace the shape of those wings with her eyes.

“Maybe he was desperate?” Gwyn ventured. “I did stab him.”

Emerie shook her head immediately, and thrusted her hand at the screen. “Look.”

She pressed a key, and the video feed of him running from her in the tunnel was immediately replaced by the one of him on the other side of the bars.

“He was practically begging for you to touch him,” Emerie said. “It wasn’t desperation. At least, not to gate away. He didn’t need the gates to get away from you.”

She pressed another key, and the image began to move. A video of him stepping back, before the shadows swallowed him and he disappeared.

“Then what do you think it was?” Nesta said, her own gaze slowly veering away from the screen to look at Gwyn. She didn’t meet her eyes.

“He didn’t want to get away.”

Emerie turned to look at Gwyn.

“He wanted you to find him.”

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