“It has to be.”
I sighed. We’d been through this before. My grandmother’s fervent belief of some vital information being contained in the rantings of a madman was forever at war with my steadfast assurance that I’d read it all and hadn’t the faintest clue what she imagined could be in it. I knew she was searching for something else, something more than what had driven a former patriarch of our House mad in his middle years, but she wouldn’t tell me what. I’d grown so frustrated with researching without knowing what I was looking for that it had become a source of conflict between us. I’d never been opposed to my grandmother before, but I’d also never been so certain she was keeping secrets from me. Despite our quibbling, I knew there could only be one reason Nascha was pushing me so hard lately.
“What’s he done now?” I asked warily. I didn’t truly want to hear the answer but, as the Heir of my House, I had a responsibility to. Whatever the patriarch of House Viper was up to would affect us all and my position was such that I could not afford ignorance.
“He’s got the priests on his side,” she replied, voice soft, quiet.
I blinked at her.
“I thought he already did,” I said. “We’ve been planning for his takeover of the church for years now. After that display right before Adrian and Dante’s ninth trial, I thought it was obvious.”
“There were some still holding out, some who still had concerns about Cosmo’s methods, but they’ve joined the others now. I don’t know what he offered them or what line of bullshit he’s feeding them now.”
I reeled back in surprise. My grandmother never swore.
As she began climbing the steps up into the glass-encased greenhouses of House Avus, robes billowing out from a body more frail with age than she would admit, I could see how upset she was for the first time. I rushed forward to help her, reaching for one hand while she rested the other on my shoulder and climbed the aging stone steps.
“They serve him now, the lot of them,” she grunted with her first step forward and frowned. “I haven’t helped relations with the church, serving my old gods, I know that. But the truth is a hard thing to set aside, even for appearance’s sake. And they hate old Raghnall even more than me. They think he’s lost to his greed.”
“He is lost to his greed,” I muttered.
Nascha looked down at me from the top step with a frown.
“We’re all lost, boy,” she said, shaking her head. “And if we keep our heads buried in the sand, we’ll never be found again.”
I watched her as she took a few steps forward, stretching her old legs and striding among her beloved herbs and spices. She paused to examine a sprig of thyme and I walked dutifully behind her, hands clasped together at the front, a posture which displayed patience.
“The only way out is together,” she said after a moment, an expression of rigid determination settling onto her features.
“Out?” I asked.
She turned back to me and gave a sad smile.
“The old gods speak more than the new, hafid,” she said and there was something in her tone that called to my very soul. A deep, profound sorrow, a recognition of something lost,something which might never be regained. Did she truly love her old gods so much? And what did she mean by their speaking more than the Geist?
I opened my mouth to pose those exact questions when a cousin of mine came sprinting into the greenhouse and skidded to a stop a few feet from our grandmother. His eyes were blown wide with fear and he was panting. He’d obviously been sent to fetch one of us, likely Nascha, and had expected to run much further past the greenhouse to the temple but had found us here instead.
“Breathe, Colby,” Nascha spoke, raising placating hands as she addressed her grandson. “What is it?”
“It’s Olympia,” he gasped, bent over and breathing hard to catch his breath. “She’s gone. Again.”
Chapter Two
Olympia
No one, not even Nascha herself, could imprison me in that infernal glass house she called a home if I didn’t want to be there. And, simply put, I did not.
Even though she’d coddled and condescended the entire time she’d placed the key in the lock and turned it, she’d still locked me away. Rather than helping me through my “anger issues”, rather than guiding me through my “grief”, my grandmother had found it easier to toss me into my room and leave me there until I was no longer a danger to myself or others, or so she said. But she’d put my own cousins on guard to keep me hidden away. She’d turned our family against me and they’d obeyed her orders without question. I was certain one of them had already run for her now, after however long it’d taken them to realize I was gone.
I grinned like a fiend as I took the steps down to the Second. It was practically a habit by now. My feet knew the route better than my mind but not so well as my heart. It was stupid, foolish, and embarrassing, this trek I’d begun to make every night since he’d gone into the Tenth. But it was unavoidable as well. Dante and I hadn’t been bonded the way we’d been raised to believe wewould but that didn’t mean I had no ties to him at all. And there was still something about that Adrian girl I knew in my bones wasn’t right.
So I strode straight across the cobbled roads of the Second Ring the moment my feet hit the landing at the bottom of the stairs. Glancing side to side to ensure no one was out late enough to see me, I made my way quickly into the hedges of the house opposite the stairwell. I’d found this entry point early on. It was a breakage in the shrubbery, a hole in the hedge which opened straight onto the immaculately kept lawn of the Alanis family.
It was so dark amidst the brush that even I, with my enhanced sight, could hardly see. I cursed once when a thorn pricked my side and internally scolded myself for wasting time at House Viper before this. I should have come here first. Cosmo had his secrets and I would uncover them in due time, but the Bexley’s had their secrets too. I’d learn them all or die trying.
I crept through lawn after lawn, doing my best to stay in the shadows, skirting fences or climbing over them when no other way presented itself. Finally, I was there. A beam of light stretched from the kitchen window out into the night. I slid against the side of the brick house to its edge, only daring to peer around the corner and look inside when I heard voices from within.
The oldest brother was sitting at the table, frowning over a rumpled up piece of paper stretched out on the wood before him while that treacherous acolyte from House Viper, Dante’s cousin, made exaggerated movements with her mouth as she pointed at the page. The eldest brother’s brow wrinkled as he then made the same exaggerated movements with his own mouth.
