He just watched me without a word, knowing I had more to say and allowing me to finish.
“I’ve never trusted anyone before,” I admitted. “Not my grandmother or Dante. Not even Milo. That feeling scared me far more than your tattoo did. So I used it as an excuse to push you away, telling myself you’d lied to me, assuring myselfit was for the best, but I was wrong. This isn’t easy for me but that doesn’t mean I should run away from it. Even though I know I don’t deserve this, I want it. I want you and it’s fucking terrifying.”
I finished, breathless, heart racing in my chest. I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut and disappear so I wouldn’t have to face him now. I was mortified and vulnerable and desperate in a way I’d never been before and it made me sick. I hated this weakness, hated my heart for this betrayal, hated my lips for saying those words out loud where he could hear them. I was the strong one. I was the one who held emotion at bay and did what needed to be done. I’d broken rules before but not like this. Harrison was a Third Ringer. We were doomed to fail before we even began and yet I couldn’t stop myself from running headlong into the damnation.
I looked up, pulling my gaze from where it had strayed to the carpet as I’d avoided looking at him during my declaration. He was beaming at me, a silly crooked grin on his lips, listening with rapt attention. Nose wrinkling, I opened my mouth to speak again but, before I could say a word, he took two long strides to reach me and knelt on the fraying old carpet. I froze, lips poised open, as I stared down at him in confusion.
“You told me to beg,” he reminded me, arching a brow. A coy grin split his lips and I couldn’t help the laughter that bubbled up and out of me in that moment. His eyes shone at the sound of it like a million tiny twinkling stars in his iris. “All I ever needed was a chance to win your heart, beautiful.”
My heart. It twisted in my chest. An ugly, broken thing, I’d never believed anyone else would ever want again but here he was begging for it. Could I do it? Could I give it to him and pray he didn’t break it like so many before had done?
Watching him, seeing the adoration in his gaze as he looked up at me from where he knelt on the carpet, I thought I could.
Leaning over him, my hair falling around us, I grabbed his face in my hands and kissed him. He bobbed his chin, tilting his head back and deepening the kiss. He reached up to grab my wrist and stood, sliding his fingers down my arm to my back where he pressed me firmly against him.
There were so many things fighting to keep us apart; thousands of years of separation between our rings, Tribunal law, a rebellion, my own insecurities. Yet we found our way to each other again and again in spite of it all because there was something even stronger, something I couldn’t explain, pulling us toward one another.
It was almost enough to make me believe in the gods.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Milo
There was a riot on the Deck this morning.
I dispatched every available cousin, aunt, or uncle willing to assist the Guardians with calming the rabble and arresting those responsible. Apparently, our presence hadn’t been well received and had only served to heighten the rage boiling within the veins of the lower ringers. Things in the city were reaching a tipping point, I could feel it. We were on the precipice of something huge I wasn’t certain we’d be able to bounce back from. So the meeting Olympia had managed to set up between the leaders of the rebellion and myself this evening was more important than ever.
I was pleasantly surprised by my cousin’s initiative, I had to say. When Pax had come to deliver her message and inform me of the meeting, I was surprised. Not so much that she’d made contact with the rebels but that she’d left any of them alive to meet with at all.
Olympia hadn't been the same since that mark on Harrison Fletcher’s back was revealed. I knew it bothered her more than she would ever let on but she refused to talk about it and Iknew better than to pry. As it was, I hardly saw her at all. I only received reports of her whereabouts from Pax when she managed to hunt him down to give them. She was always after Wolf or Bade or watching for rebel activity or checking on the Bexleys, not to mention whatever tasks grandmother was assigning her as well. Olympia was doing precisely what she always did when something occurred which she did not wish to face. She was making herself as busy as she could to avoid dealing with it at all.
So maybe I should. Regardless of how my cousin felt about it, Harrison did have the mark of the rebellion tattooed on his back. If he didn’t truly have any intention of joining them, perhaps he could serve as a valuable source of information. There was no indication Wolf knew about the boy’s involvement with a First Ringer. In fact, knowing Olympia, no one but the three of us knew anything about it at all. Maybe the rebels would believe him if he asked to join them and if they let him sit in on some of their meetings, if he could give us a heads up the next time a bombing was planned or some other violent act plotted, that could make all the difference when it came to protecting our people and saving lives.
“Sir,” Pax interrupted my thoughts on his way into my study.
The door swung shut behind him, giving me only a moment’s glance at Cleo standing in the hall beyond. Then he was in front of me, dropping another stack of papers on the corner of my desk. I didn’t have to look to know what they were. We’d been recovering correspondences between rebel hideouts since Olympia tracked down Wolf and found his partner hiding up on the Second. If there was anything of note within them, Pax would have already read it and come to inform me himself.
“Olympia said Bade was trying to find a way into Harlowe too,” he said instead.
I sat forward at once, intrigued and careful not to touch the necklace now sitting on the edge of my desk where it had rested ever since my wife had ripped it off her neck and refused to wear it another second. Apparently, having some ancient deity living in a locket hanging around your chest was not an experience my wife was interested in.
“That’s interesting,” I replied. “I wonder what the Viper wants from Jude’s libraries. Where is Olympia now?”
Pax’s lip curled and I knew the answer before he spoke it.
“We don’t know,” he said.
I nodded and sat back in my chair once more, swivelling slightly to the left and looking out at the courtyard below my window. If my cousin didn’t want to be found, she wouldn’t. That was the problem with having a spy. You could almost never find them when you needed them.
“How are things on the Deck?” I asked without looking back at my cousin.
“Much better,” he answered. “The Guardians have cleared out everyone who was involved. There were a few injuries to innocent bystanders which the priests are attending to but no casualties. Tempers flared but it wasn’t any sort of plot like before.”
I nodded slowly, not entirely convinced that was the truth.
“They’re sowing discord,” I muttered quietly.
“Sir?” Paxon asked.
