I’ll talk to someone, Luca,I vowed.I promise. I might even talk to you, but not yet. I’ve still got a lot to sort through myself and you know how it is, how it has to be. Avus comes first.
He watched me for a moment, still frowning, but nodded a moment later. I knew he understood when he turned and made his way back across the ring toward House Lynx. I hoped Raghnall would listen to him more now than he had before. I hoped Luca could convince his grandfather the threat of the rebellion was serious. Cora wouldn’t be any help, I knew. She’d always been so self-centered and, now that she was lost in this ridiculous love affair with the Viper boy, there was no hope of reaching her. Isla and Luca were our only chance of making sure Lynx was prepared. Isla was the Heir. She should have been enough, but maybe with Luca she’d have a better chance of preparing her House for what I feared was to come.
I didn’t have time to stand around hoping someone from the House of Harlowe would prop a window open for some fresh air. Milo wanted the journal, but maybe Milo would have to wait this time.
I turned toward the stairs and took them down to the Second just as dusk settled over the horizon and bathed the stone walls in purple light. Barely anyone was out on the street at this hour. Typically, families spent this time in their homes, having dinner with loved ones and settling in for the night. But now, with things the way they were after the bombing, with the fragile balance of power in the city right now and no one being quitecertain what the next move of the Major Houses would be, no one dared venture outside after dark. No one but me.
I made my way through the bushes I’d stepped through so many times before and slid through yards until I stood in front of the Bexley’s gloriously open window. Inside, I could see the older brother sitting at the kitchen table with his arms crossed, leaning back in his chair and glaring at the middle brother who stood across from him. The red-headed wife sat between them, looking back and forth and, for once, not speaking. The fourth person in the room was more familiar than the rest. Harrison stood with his back facing the window I peered in through. He was only a few feet away. I probably could have reached out and grabbed the back of his sweatshirt if I felt the urge.
Instead, I crouched down at the corner and listened.
“She showed us that mark when she came here,” Warren spoke first, clearly in the midst of a conversation I’d missed the beginning of. “She tried to get us to join up too. We’ve been…at odds about it ever since, but she never tried to trick us into getting the mark without knowing what it was.”
“What he means to say is why should we believe you when you say you didn’t know what it was when you got it?” the wife asked, frowning at Harrison as she did. Her expression was set with the same disapproval I was used to seeing from her but without much of the patented ire that usually came with it. That, she apparently reserved for First Ringers only.
“You shouldn’t,” Harrison answered with a shrug. “If you were being smart, if you were being careful, you wouldn’t believe anyone about anything that has to do with the mark or the rebellion itself. I know what everyone saw when that asshole made me take my shirt off in front of the crowd. I know what they think. Unfortunately, it’s exactly what he wants them to think. The Vipers are making enemies of everyone in the lower rings and using the gods to do it. They won’t be looking formarks for long. Soon, they’ll just assume you’re one of them because you’re down here too. Whether you choose to join or not, I don’t think it will matter much longer.”
Warren and his wife exchanged a look. Maurice just kept glaring at his brother, not even looking Harrison’s way.
“Cosmo’s whole argument is that those of us in the lower rings are dangerous heretics who pose a threat to peace and order in this city,” Harrison added when no one else said a word. “The rebels blew a hole through the twelfth and proved his point.”
The screech of a chair against tile rang out through the night as Maurice stood abruptly and paced to the other side of the room, shaking his head as he went.
“People died,” Harrison continued. “These people are dangerous.”
“People die on the Deck all the time,” Maurice’s gruff voice answered. A hush fell over the room as he continued, facing away from them all as he spoke. “From starvation, from thirst, from being exposed to the elements, from injuries in dangerous jobs the Uppers don’t want to do, from the choices they make out of neglect and despair. People die in the Third too. Boys get beheaded. Girls get shoved through tunnels against their will, never to return. And in the Second where houses burn down and men drown to appease the same gods Cosmo’s so concerned we’ve offended.”
“That’s no excuse to blow them up, Maurice,” Warren replied, tone somber and somehow exhausted at the same time in a way that told me this wasn’t the first time he’d presented this argument.
“Isn’t it?” Maurice snapped, gaze shooting to his brother as he finally turned to face them.
Dahlia sighed, dropping her head into her hands and shaking it. Yes. They’d certainly had this discussion before.
“You don’t want to join them, Maurice, trust me,” Harrison started, stepping forward. “They spout all these lofty ideas about pulling down the top and rising from the bottom but they don't have any actual plans for what to do when they get there. They bitch and moan about how poorly the Houses are managing the city but they don’t have any better policies to put in place instead. They’re violent and radical and short-sighted. Even if they managed to overthrow just one of the major Houses, the other two would destroy them before they got the chance to keep it.”
“Not if we had enough people.”
Harrison froze, every muscle in his body visibly tensing as he reacted to the one word Maurice uttered which they’d all heard.We.
My breath caught in my throat. If you’d asked me, days ago, to choose which of Adrian’s brothers I thought was most likely to join a violent rebellion, I never would have chosen the soft-spoken, thoughtful older brother. Not when I’d grown used to the middle brother’s outbursts, had watched him tear through a line of priests to get to his sister on her last day in Sanctuary. And yet the fury on the eldest brother’s face was unmistakable. I wondered if it had always been there, simmering just beneath the surface, if we’d all missed it.
“Please tell me you haven’t already joined them,” Harrison spoke quietly.
Warren let out a long-suffering sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb.
“We’ve been arguing about this ever since she showed up at our door,” he confessed, shaking his head. “And then the bombing happened and he won’t–it’s practically torn mom apart but he’s so damn stubborn and I–”
“Maurice,” Harrison interrupted, stepping toward the older brother whose fists were clenched at his sides in a stance Iknew all too well. He was ready for a fight. “Please think about what you’re doing, what you’re signing up for. They blew up the twelfth tunnel for the gods’ sake. That’s on the Deck, not the upper rings.”
“He took my sister,” Maurice’s voice was so low, so raspy and dangerous it was almost difficult to understand him. But the words had the desired effect. Harrison blinked and reeled back, at a loss for what to say. “That bastard can claim the gods called her as much as he likes but I saw him shove her into that tunnel. I know who’s really responsible for Adrian being gone and I’ll make him pay for it even if it costs me my life to do so.”
“And our lives?” Warren snapped. “You’d barter our lives as well? Mine? Dahlia’s? Mother’s?Bria’s?”
Maurice’s gaze slid to his brother.
“He wouldn’t touch her,” he barked.
“He would,” Harrison warned, tone gone cold. “I’ve heard rumors about the way Cosmo treats his family. He used to abuse his grandson, his own heir. Dante had bruises to cover, injuries so bad sometimes he missed training because of them. Don’t, for one second, assume anyone is safe from the Viper.”
