She trailed off with a distance in her eyes I recognized. Trauma, guilt, grief.
Pax started speaking quickly then, keeping his voice low and checking the corners and windows and closets as if expecting another snake to be laying in wait. He theorized this was a planned hit organized by the Vipers, a way to weaken us before the true House war could begin, a way to repay us for my insolence as Heir and Olympia’s crimes against them and whatever else. I wasn’t listening. I knew my cousin was speaking and the words floated over to me on occasion but I didn’t heara word of it as I stared down at my wife’s face, frozen in death. I was stroking her hair, I realized. When had I begun doing that?
Colby came careening into the room just as Pax was trying to coax us all out and to somewhere he thought was safe, limping and covered in blood from head to toe. Pax’s eyes widened at the sight of him.
“What in the Geist’s name–” Pax demanded, straightening.
“They got inside,” Colby gasped out. “A whole group of them, all of them, they forced their way inside and just started attacking, killing. I tried to save Irene. Milo, I tried to save your mom but one of them shoved me aside and then Helena jumped in front of her and it–I tried–I–”
The blow struck and rolled off of me in waves as my soul absorbed another loss. My wife, my grandmother, my mother. All dead.
“Where are they now?” Pax interrupted, stepping forward with a blade covered in blood.
“Gone,” Colby replied. “We killed enough of them that they just…gave up and left. Elias and Lincoln are going through the House, making sure there aren’t more, and Blair is locking down the gate but we weren’t…they just came in and started killing. We weren’t ready. We didn’t think–”
I’d heard enough. My father was out with my Uncle Elias, hunting down the rest, likely on a path of vengeance I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to. It was over. We hadn’t known it was coming and now it was over, with a number of ours dead I didn’t even want to consider.
I rose, lifting Isla and cradling her in my arms. Her head slumped forward to rest against my chest, face hidden by the copper curtain of hair which had come unbound from her braid. The bird pin clattered to the floor as her arms dangled down. I gripped her behind her back and under her knees, carrying her like a man should carry his bride.
“Milo, wait–” Pax began, stepping forward.
But I pushed past him, carrying Isla to the door where the others were gathered. They stepped aside, wide eyed, the moment I appeared in the threshold, and did not try to stop me as I carried my deceased wife down the hall.
“Where are you going?” Pax called out from behind me.
I didn’t answer him. I just turned the corner and kept walking, doing everything in my power to ignore the blood staining the walls around me, dripping from my hands, and trailing from my wife’s throat.
I was only capable of going through the motions, completing the next step I knew must be done. If I stopped, I would break apart. I would shatter into a million pieces and never be whole again. So I just kept going, on to the next step. And that was to visit the only man who might grieve this woman as much as I did, the only man who could help me now.
Chapter Forty-Two
Olympia
Isaw the first body before we even reached the gates.
Behind me, the girl with the braids gasped and the old man grunted a warning. I hardly heard them as I stood staring at the body of my uncle Ambrose where he’d fallen at the gate he’d obviously tried to defend. Fighting to ignore the blade sticking out of his chest, his wide sightless eyes staring up at the dark sky, and the blood dribbling out of the corner of his mouth, I moved to step over him.
“Olympia,” Harrison said behind me.
Lips pressed tight, I swallowed and kept my gaze set firmly ahead on the open door in front of me, the entryway of my House. A slight tremor began in my fingertips as my boots came down on the path behind the gate. I didn’t turn back to Harrison or the others, didn’t glance at my uncle again, as primal terror enveloped me so thoroughly I would have ceased to function if not for that one hope, that one thought, circulating in my mind again and again.
Get to Milo. Get to the Heir.
I crossed the path with a frenzied step in a desperate bid to get to my family as quickly as I could, to protect them, to save them. A thought flitted through my mind that I should have grabbed the knife from my uncle’s chest, that I was without a weapon of my own after so long imprisoned in the Viper’s House, but it vanished the instant I stepped into the foyer of my home.
Bodies littered the marble floor, some in striking emerald but most in deep, rich blue.
“Geist!” Harrison cursed from my back as he ran into me.
My eyes scanned the room, not comprehending what I was seeing, too numb and stunned to come to terms with the reality crashing down upon me, crushing me beneath the weight of grief newly given. I recognized the faces laying in pools of blood, amongst slit throats and stabbed abdomens. Cousins, aunts, uncles. My aunt Irene, Milo’s mother, and beside her, their fingertips almost touching as if they’d been reaching for one another, my own.
My legs wobbled and I collapsed, knees splashing into the blood running down the marble toward the door. Harrison gripped my arms and held me upright, kneeling there as I stared at Helena’s face. Her eyes were open, tears frozen on her cheeks where they’d fallen before her death, her lips were poised as if she’d been speaking, and she reached for her sister. A pained sob escaped me as grief plunged through my chest so deep I knew I’d never recover.
I pulled myself to my feet, with considerable help from Harrison, and forced my gaze to the stairs. Breathless, I stumbled forward, stepping over the bodies of my fallen family members as tears streamed down my face and fell, mingling with the blood below. I had to get to Nascha. I had to get to Milo. Gods, I hoped they were still alive. I hopedsomeone–
I halted at the bottom of the steps because Milo had appeared at the top of them.
His wife was in his arms. Her body, clothed in rich blue silk that contrasted sharply with her copper hair, was limp against his. Blood dripped from where her throat would be above his hands to trail down the white marble steps and join the others. She was dead, but it wasn’t that macabre vision that had my knees wobbling once more. It was the look on Milo’s face. I could live a thousand years and would never forget that haunting expression.
