“How do you know that?” Maurice asked, gaze narrowed in examination. “Did Adrian tell you?”
“Yes,” Harrison lied easily, too easily, but it worked.
Maurice deflated, closing his eyes and shaking his head.
“Someone has to do something,” he muttered a moment later. “They can’t keep getting away with how they treat us. Not after Adrian. She proved we’re just as worthy of the gods as they are. They can’t–”
“I know,” Harrison said. “And you’re right. So maybe let’s hear what this Milo guy has to say?”
They exchanged a look, clearly perturbed by the idea, but nodded in agreement anyway.
I breathed out a sigh of relief, though still disturbed by the conversation in its entirety, and turned toward the husk of the home next door. It had burned nearly to the foundation. A few charred walls remained standing and a door swung on its hinges in the evening breeze. Papers fluttered over the floor, flipping up and dancing in the wind, and I wondered when she’d come back, if she’d managed to gather all the evidence of her involvement in the rebellion and hidden it away somewhere else. I wondered where she was now. Back on the lowers? Or squirrelled away somewhere else up here I’d never find her?
A thought occurred to me as I considered the task of hunting her down once more and felt a bone-weary exhaustion at the very idea.
Why hunt the rabbit when I could hunt the Wolf?
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Milo
It had been a long day. I’d spent most of it doing damage control after the bombings and keeping Raghnall at bay. The man was ready to storm down to the lower rings and start smashing heads against the cobblestones until he got some answers, but I managed to talk him down, advising him to hold off until we could devise an actual strategy that would help us uncover those actually involved rather than pissing off the whole of the lower rings. The last thing we needed now was to turn everyone who wasn’t already with the rebels against us. That would create a force in Sanctuary we couldn’t possibly hope to reckon with.
Still, I couldn’t keep the journal from my mind. Maybe I was going mad too. I certainly felt like it at the moment, standing in the middle of my own bedroom and staring at the glowing necklace on my wife’s vanity table with dark circles under my eyes and a dazed expression one only got from lack of sleep. I dreaded the very presence of the amulet and yet I couldn’t look away from it. I could almost swear I heard it calling to me, even standing a few feet away as I was. My fingers twitched at mysides, itching to reach out and brush against the smooth metal one more time. I had to test my theory. I had to see if it spoke to me every time. I had to discover why it didn’t speak to Isla.
I reached out, stretching my shaking hands toward the glowing object. The moment my fingertips made contact, I heard him. He spoke in a voice as ancient as the city itself, as thunderous as Cosmo bellowing at the crowd, as rigid as Raghnall when he only barely managed to restrain his fury.
Free me, mortal. I can make you a king. I can make you a god.
I pulled my hand back as if burned. This had to be it. The reason Simi went mad, the voice he was hearing in his head. Had he worn the necklace around his neck, never knowing it was the cause of his madness? Or had he simply been near it, touched it, too many times and that thing had buried itself inside his mind? Was such a thing possible? Then again, how wasanyof this possible?
So many questions swirled through my mind whenever I thought of this strange amulet and the voice inside which claimed to be a god but one stood out above the rest: where did Simi get it? Had it come from his mother before him, passed down the way Nascha claimed? If it was such an established part of our history, why was he the first to hear the voice? It seemed like a simple question, a matter of timing and logistics, but somehow it felt vitally important, like knowing where this object came from might be the only way to truly understand how it could exist. But the only mention of the necklace was after he’d already given it to his wife who, as far as our history told, had never gone mad. Which meant she hadn’t heard the voice either. So it didn’t seem to affect women. Had Simi known that? Is that why he gave it to her, for safe keeping nearby but far enough away not to plague him?
I needed to ask Isla. There was nothing else to be done. Maybe she’d think I was mad. Maybe history would record me as having lost my mind before I even managed to inherit my House. Maybe my journals would be studied someday by some academic and they’d say ‘he just snapped and no one ever knew why’. But I had to ask because I was who I was and it actuallywoulddrive me insane if I didn’t.
I heard the door of the bathing chamber attached to our room, where my wife had been taking her evening bath, creak open then and I turned to do exactly as I’d planned.
“Isla–”
My words died on my tongue.
My wife stood in the doorway between our bedroom and bathing chamber wearing a slip of light blue silk trimmed in matching lace. It was short, falling against the smooth skin of her upper thighs with a slit that went even higher. Over her breasts was simple lace, dipping low and sheer so as to leave nothing to the imagination.
I forced my gaze to rise to meet hers.
“You–you look–” I started.
“You’re my husband, Milo,” she interrupted before I could pay her the compliment she was certainly due. “And you’re a good man who’s held me to no expectations but, well, I have some expectations of my own.”
She strode across the room and stepped in front of me, reaching up to the blue silk tie resting against my buttoned shirt. With a soft pull, she loosened it, relieving some of the pressure on my neck. I breathed out involuntarily, watching her move as she pressed forward, resting her palms against my chest.
“You’re kind and thoughtful and intelligent and so very honorable,” she said, somehow managing to make the compliment sound more like a curse. “For once in your life, Milo, I’m asking you to do the dishonorable thing here.”
I raised a brow and reached up to grip her hands, holding them in my own between us as I gazed into her deep brown eyes.
“Or are you going to tell me your thoughts are as pure as your actions?” she asked, disappointment evident in her tone.
“I’ve never claimed to be pure, Isla,” I reminded her. “I’m not a perfect man by any measure of the word but I’ve tried to do right by you. I’ve tried to give you time to come to terms with this marriage, with our union, because I know it was never your choice.”
