“I’m beginning to feel that age, unfortunately,” I muttered.
Nascha snorted.
“You have no idea, hafid,” she added. She rounded the desk to put a comforting hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “I’m sorry the snakes ruined your wedding day.”
“I suppose that’s another thing I’ll have to find a way to make up for with Isla,” I replied with a shrug.
My grandmother nodded, letting her hand slide from my shoulder as she strode away toward the door. At the sound of my pulling the diary from the drawer and flipping it open on my desk, she turned back around with a frown.
“Don’t lose yourself for long, Milo,” she warned. “Your wedding day isn’t over yet. You’ve got a wedding night to attend to.”
I stiffened, every muscle in my body going rigid as my grandmother swept from the room and closed the door with a snap behind her as though she’d said nothing of any importance at all.
Truthfully, I’d forgotten about the consummation, not that it’d been a major focus of my considerations for the day anyway. A beheaded boy and the raging sociopath responsible had derailed all festivities so soundly I’d nearly lost myself in the politics and forgotten I’d gotten married entirely. But I had.
Isla was mywife.
I just stared down at the pages, blinking. Sheets of paper lay scattered around the diary, bits of the copied journal Paxon and the acolyte were working to create that I’d tried matching to mentions of certain places or people in Simi’s wild rantings. The words swam on the page so I could no longer even hope to read them.
Marriage, beheading, consummation. It was too much for one day, too much for one man.
I reached for the decanter and poured myself a glass of whiskey, hoping it would settle my nerves.
“I really shouldn’t have put this off,” I muttered into the glass, staring down at the contents with a frown. But there’d never been time. I’d earned my reputation for obsessive study honestly, shutting myself up in the library all hours of the day, rushing home from the excessive parties the Patriarchs threw and the more debaucherous ones afterwards the Heirs did. Cora was the only woman I’d ever looked at with even a modicum of interest and she hadn’t returned it. Still, I should have found a way to experience intimacy, at least once, before my godsdamned wedding.
I nearly sagged in relief when someone knocked on the door. I called them in immediately, thanking gods I didn’t believe in. A distraction was precisely what I needed.
When Pax entered with a frown, however, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was a coward.
“She’s going to go after him,” Pax said, as if we’d been in the midst of a conversation before and he was picking it back up again.
I just blinked at him.
“Who?” I asked.
“Olympia. After what she saw this morning, the way she reacted, you know she’s going after Cosmo.”
I frowned and took another sip of whiskey.
“Most likely,” I admitted a moment later.
“And you aren’t going to do anything about it?”
“Olympia is angry but she isn’t stupid. Whatever she does to him, he won’t even know until it’s too late,” I said and hoped it was true.
“I can send Nick and Cleo–”
“Nick and Cleo won’t be able to stop her and you know it. We have to trust her, Pax. She’s family.”
“She’s–”
“Family.”
My tone was firm. Paxon got the hint and dropped it.
Truthfully, I’d be a fool not to worry about what Olympia would do to the head of the Vipers. She’d never liked the man and seemed to despise him even more lately. I wasn’t sure why that was. I was sure she’d discovered something about him she hadn’t known before. Given her reaction and who Cosmo had proven himself to be as of late, I knew it couldn’t be positive. I knew well enough to know that when Olympia set her mind to something, there was no avoiding it. Whatever she would do to him, she would do, and we would have to deal with the fallout. Icould only pray she’d be smart enough not to start an all out war in the process. Though I couldn’t help but think that’s where we were headed anyway, with or without my cousin’s intervention.
Paxon moved on from the issue of Olympia easily enough and instead asked if now was a good time to go over the family accounts for the month. He apologized for asking on my wedding day, it hadn’t been his intention, but now that everything had happened to call off the festivities and I was drinking alone in my study, there was no time like the present. I agreed perhaps too eagerly and dove right into the accounts for the next several hours with my cousin who’d taken on the role of steward as well as assistant.
