It was as if the Milo I’d known, the serious academic with a heart of gold, was gone. In his place stood a man with nothing left, a heart so broken it was visible on the sleeve he’d always worn it on, an idealist with shattered dreams, a light that had gone out, a man who’d given up.
“Milo,” I said his name as he reached the last step, still carrying his wife.
He didn’t even glance my way but kept his gaze set firmly on the door until he reached Harrison where he stood halfway through the foyer littered with the bodies of our kin and the bodies of our enemies. His eyes narrowed into the most hateful glare I’d ever seen and it was fury unlike any I’d heard from him before that laced his tone when he spoke.
“You will pay for whatever role you played in this,” he vowed. “However small it may be.”
Harrison’s eyes widened in surprise but he did not say a word as my cousin strode past him, sidestepping bodies as he carried his dead wife out of our House. I turned back to the steps to see Pax standing with Cleo and Colby at the top of them. They watched Milo with wide eyes and parted lips, in utter shock, but I recognized grief well enough to know he wasn’t in his right mind. And, though he might never be again, he couldn’t afford to be alone now.
So I pushed past Harrison and his friends, left my surviving cousins behind, and followed after the Heir. I wasn’t sure wherehe was going but I was going too. If he fell apart, I would be there to pick up the pieces. If he wanted to burn the whole city to the ground, I’d light the match. I would be there for whatever came and I would accept what that was because this was Milo and I loved him and we were all that was left.
The others called for us within moments, having recovered from their shock well enough to follow, but Milo didn’t turn back so I didn’t either. I kept a safe distance, a few meters back, and left him to do whatever it was he felt he had to do in this moment in peace. If he needed me, I was here, but I would not interfere. Even if he was on his way to take on the Vipers alone, I’d die beside him because he was my Heir, my leader, and my family. I loved him and trusted him more than I’d ever thought I was capable of. There was no leader in this whole city who deserved my devotion more than Milo.
But Milo did not turn toward House Viper. Instead, he walked with purpose up the path to Lynx. When their golden gates appeared ahead, I waited for them to open.
They didn’t.
Milo came to a stop outside of them, still holding Isla’s body in his arms. On the other side of the bars, two Lynx cousins I didn’t recognize trembled like leaves in an autumn storm but made no movement to open the gate. I followed Milo’s gaze up above them to where Raghnall stood on the balcony facing the gates. He was draped in the ruby finery of his House and he frowned down at all of us with an expression curiously devoid of grief. Then I saw Cora.
He knew,I hissed into Luca’s mind.
Beside his grandfather, Luca flinched.
I swear to the Geist, Olympia, I did not.
I didn’t believe him. For the first time since I’d known Luca, he wasn’t being honest with me. Withme.
“You agreed to declare her your Heir,” Milo called out to Raghnall above us all, “because you knew she wouldn’t live to inherit your House. You’ve been working with him all along. You and Harlowe.”
Gasps arose from Pax and Cleo behind us.
“When did she turn against you?” Milo cried out again when Raghnall did not answer. His voice broke with emotion and I almost went to him, almost offered to carry her myself if only to give him a moment to breathe. “When did her love for me win out over her desperation for your approval? Did you truly think you could hold her heart with only contempt? You never deserved her!”
“She was never supposed to wear it!” Raghnall bellowed back, finally letting go of that mask of calm to reveal his true self, his anger and greed. “The fool girl was supposed to find the necklace and bring it to me, that was all! I even told her she could keep you if she wanted. I just wanted the jewel. But then youtold her what it wasand she started to believe I shouldn’t have the cursed thing. You got into her head about the gods and morality and she choseyou. Cosmo did what had to be done. We must have that necklace!”
“And yet, you don’t.”
Raghnall’s face burned redder than his coat, redder than Cora’s hair, redder than the blood dripping down his granddaughter’s neck.
“She believed in you,” Milo accused. “She believed in all of you, in your House. Whatever gods there may be, I hope they turn their backs on you, Raghnall of House Lynx. I hope your granddaughter’s death torments you for the rest of your days and the guilt follows you long after you’re gone. I hope you never know peace again. I pray that all your days turn dark and bitter, all your nights lonely and afraid, and let every year that passesbring you closer to the gods who wait to prey upon your wicked, broken soul.”
Cora’s eyes widened and she had the audacity to place a hand over her heart and reel back as if shocked by my cousin’s harsh speech. Luca lowered his head and would look up no more. The cousins at the gate shifted uneasily on their feet and even Raghnall’s sons behind him who’d always backed their father in every greedy, horrible decision he’d ever made, paled at the sight of their dead niece. Isla’s father was notably absent.
Raghnall sputtered for a moment, his face reddening more and more by the second, then he exploded.
“Where is the necklace, Milo?” he shrieked with fury.
At his tone, the shaky guards at the gate got their blades up, pointed straight through the fence at our Heir. Harrison and the girl with the braids were there, along with Pax, Cleo, and Colby, in an instant, their own blades poised and prepared to strike back. Pax looked over at Harrison, who’d stepped in front of me to defend Milo, with something like surprise in his expression.
And so we were a city divided. The lowers with House Avus against Lynx and Viper and at least Harlowe as well. We were at war and already down a significant portion of our House. Because of that necklace. Because of the man whose journal Nascha had begged Milo to read only a few short months ago. The scene over in Avus would be repeated throughout the city in the war to come. Brothers against brothers, sisters against mothers, a civil war ignited over a theft that hadn’t been successful anyway. How many would die?
As it turned out, we never got the chance to find out.
Because at that exact moment, the city shook. A deafening boom sounded throughout the entirety of all rings and people began screaming down on the Deck. Harrison and I exchanged one look before bolting across the ring to peer over the side, Paxhot on our heels. What I saw there stopped my heart and turned my blood cold in my veins.
It was another explosion, but not done by the rebels this time. The debris was blown into the city. Deckers coughed and fled the clearing dust. Once it settled, I saw what had caused the commotion, what would change this city and its people forever.
The twelfth tunnel and the wall surrounding it were gone.
