“I didn’t take you for the kind of girl to do things the way they’re supposed to be done.”
“This is how I keep my House and you keep your hands, Harrison.”
He looked down at his hands with a lopsided frown. I just pushed past him on my way back to the stairs, already taking deep breaths to calm myself and trying not to think about our new destination or what conversation awaited us when we arrived.
“Now?” he called out behind me.
I twisted to look back over my shoulder, hair sliding down my back as I raised a brow and nodded in reply. Then I turned back and continued my ascent. The sound of Harrison’s footsteps right behind me alerted me to his presence before he spoke.
“I probably shouldn’t mention we already fucked in my apartment then, huh?”
I elbowed him so hard in the gut, he had to stop walking and bend over to catch his breath. Smiling, I made my way up the stairs to the Second Ring.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Milo
Iwas going mad.
Eximius himself was driving me to insanity over four hundred years after his death. Paxon brought me new pages from the journal at Harlowe every day now that Olympia was busy with her protection detail. Finally, the narrative was beginning to veer away from resource management and record keeping and toward the issue which had cost him everything in the end; the voice. He’d heard it for the first time the day after his fifty third birthday.
It had called itself agod.
I stared at that word on the page before me, copied in our finest acolyte’s neat hand. The voice in Eximius’ mind had called itself a god.
Never, in all the stories I’d ever read about the time of the Geist and the dawn of Sanctuary in the Genesis Age, had any one of them communicated with our people in their minds, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t. Then again, maybe it wasn’t the Geist at all. Nascha had claimed there were fifteen old gods, fifteen before.
My gaze drifted to the amulet, glowing a soft blue against the dark wood of the desk. Something pulsed in the light, an uneven rhythm that didn’t seem quite natural. It wasn’t a steady glow, I’d noticed that the evening my grandmother had given it to me. It flickered and flared at odd intervals, sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly. It was tumultuous. Something about it put me on edge. That was why I hadn’t given it to Isla yet. That and I wanted to discover its origins for myself. It was a mystery, one other than the journal, and I could never resist a mystery.
I reached for it just before there was a sharp knock at my door. Dropping my hand before my fingers brushed the dark silver casing, I turned and called out for my guest to enter. Olympia strolled in immediately.
“Olympia,” I sighed. “Must we go over this again? You need to remain on the Third. The trial is in three days and–”
My words died in an instant as I noticed the man standing in the threshold of my office. Harrison’s tall frame took up most of the doorway as he stepped inside and shut the door behind him in a move I thought rather odd given the current company. My eyes swept from him to my cousin who was now standing in front of my desk, arms crossed and lips set in that firm line I knew meant determination. Whatever had brought them both here, I wouldn’t be getting out of it.
“You miss home so much you brought your witness up here for the day?” I asked, raising a brow and allowing my displeasure to show at her for not following my orders.
“This isn’t about your witness, Milo,” she snapped. “This is about Harrison. And me.”
I blinked, caught off guard.Harrisonand…her.
“I don’t understand–” I started.
“So shut up for a second and let me explain,” she interrupted.
“This is going well,” Harrison muttered before collapsing onto the seat on the other side of my desk.
“What isthisexactly?” I asked, gesturing from the Third Ringer lounging in one of my arm chairs to my cousin who looked tightly wound enough to explode in front of me.
“Harrison and I are…we…I didn’t–” Olympia started.
“We’d like your permission to see each other, Sir,” Harrison finished for her when she seemed incapable of completing the sentence herself. “Romantically.”
My gaze snapped to Olympia whose face was a mask of burning red but she held her ground and gave me one firm nod. They were serious.
I looked between them for a moment, trying and failing to hide my shock. I’d given the Bexleys free reign of House Avus grounds, I’d begun an unprecedented research alliance with the most private Second Ring House in the city, I’d married the Heir of House Lynx and combined the full might of our First Ring power in one move, but this was another matter entirely.
Sometimes Second Ringers fell in love with those on the Third. Sometimes someone from the Third met someone from the Deck. So they moved down. They always moved down. But First Ringers always found other First Ringers or, on rare occasions, one from the minor Houses on the Second. For Olympia to come to me and seek my permission to have a relationship with a man from not the Second, but the Third, was unheard of, impossible even. And yet, here she was. I knew my cousin well enough to see it on her face.
