Lira had spent three years diving deeper than anyone, selling shards to afford a single ticket to the upper city. Not to find him. Just to stand where he had stood. Pathetic. Pure. And utterly hungry.
And the fog parted, just a little, as if surprised.
The door would open only if the desire was true, and only if it hurt. Lira was a diver. Her lungs were forged in the pressure depths below Aethelgard, where she harvested fallen star-shards from the mud. Her hands were scarred, her hair bleached white from the chemical fog. She had no business seeking out the Jewel House. But she had a name on her tongue like a splinter she couldn’t swallow. jewel house of lust
In the floating city of Aethelgard, where the rich sailed on silks and the poor dived for scrap metal in the cloud-fog below, there was a legend whispered only in the amber-lit backrooms of brothels and gambling dens: the Jewel House of Lust.
He was a sky-merchant’s son. Three years ago, he had saved her from a collapsing dredge-shaft—not out of love, but out of a kind of careless nobility. He’d smiled, wiped the blood from her brow with his sleeve, and said, “You’re tougher than most men I know.” Then he’d vanished into the upper markets. Lira had spent three years diving deeper than
She reached into her chest—not literally, but it felt literal—and pulled out the hot, clenched knot of wanting. The fantasy of being seen. The lust for a life she had never earned.
The door opened. Inside, the air smelled of honey and rust. The Jewel House was a single long corridor lined with alcoves, each containing a gem the size of a fist. Rubies, sapphires, emeralds—but wrong. They pulsed. They breathed. When Lira stepped close to the first one, a deep violet amethyst, she saw herself inside it. Pathetic
At the end of the corridor was a single empty pedestal. And on it, a note:
Kaelen.