Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Milo
It was raining tonight.
I drank deeply from a glass of grandmother's preferred wine as I stared through the windows of the study I’d made my own.
The diary laid open on the desk far behind me, ignored for the moment.
I'd locked myself away for a week after the party, only emerging late at night to stumble back to my room or at various intervals throughout the day to relieve myself.
I'd become a ghost haunting the primary residential wing of the House.
I never saw the children our priests taught during the day or other cousins assigned to various tasks around the First Ring and beyond.
I never saw aunts or uncles or even my parents anymore, never spoke to anyone outside of these walls, just Nascha and Paxon and Simi.
I sighed and glanced back at the journal, running a hand over my face in an effort to wipe away the exhaustion.
It was growing late in the evening, several hours past dinner, but the idea of another night spent in fruitless search through those fraying pages suddenly felt impossible.
I couldn't do it. I wouldn't. I needed to do something else instead, something productive but less mind-numbing, something I'd loved so much before Nascha had named me Heir and tasked me with sifting through the rantings of a madman. I needed the library.
Setting the glass down beside the bottle Paxon had brought with dinner hours earlier, I abandoned Simi and exited the study for the first time prior to midnight in a week.
I made my way through the halls of House Avus, nodding in greeting to various cousins and servants as I passed.
They watched me go in awe and whispered as I left, clearly shocked to see me emerged from my hideaway.
The library doors were open when I reached them.
That wasn't unusual. I had a fair amount of cousins, aunts, and uncles who enjoyed perusing the fictions upon the shelves from time to time and even a few who enjoyed reading the histories like me, though none enjoyed them so thoroughly or pursued them as vigorously as I did.
But I stopped dead in my tracks when I crossed the threshold to find Olympia's head bowed low over a dusty tome in the center of the room.
"Olympia," I uttered her name before I meant to speak.
Her head shot up at once, her gaze meeting mine and burning through me the moment it did, as always.
"Milo," she replied, monotone.
The sound of my name relieved the tension brought on by shock.
Olympia was the only one who still called me Milo rather than Sir or Heir.
Maybe it was a sign of disrespect. Maybe I should have demanded she show more regard for her Heir, but I didn't. It made me feel human again, like the man I once was, the boy I'd been before. It was familiar, friendly even, and I couldn’t deny that I was craving a bit of closeness lately.
So I crossed the library and came to a stop in front of her table, looking down at the book she was reading out of curiosity.
My brow furrowed. I couldn't have possibly guessed a stranger title if I'd tried.
"Semiotics and Symbology Through The Ages," I read the cover from the top of the page and raised a brow at my cousin. "Odd choice of topic for such a dreary night."
"Should I be reading one of my mother's bodice-ripping romances instead?" she replied drolly, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms as she glared at me.
I smiled back. Aunt Helena always did enjoy her erotic romances.
"Why the sudden interest?" I asked, rather than continuing that line of conversation. I lifted one corner of the book and let it fall back to the table.
"Can't a girl take up a new hobby?" Her tone was flat, bored, disinterested. It was precisely the tone Olympia used when she was up to something and didn't want you to know it.
"I know you're working for her now. I know this is her doing, whatever it is. I can help. No one in this House knows this library better than me. No one has done as much research among these shelves. Tell me what you're looking for and I'll help you find it."
She considered my offer. I could see her thinking about it, weighing the risk of telling me about whatever secrets lied between her and my grandmother against the monumental task set before her and how useful a bit of help from someone knowledgeable about the research could be.
Finally, she relented. With a sigh, she sat forward again, dropped her arms to her sides, and abandoned the classic Olympia offensive position.
"There's a symbol," she told me then, sliding a piece of paper out from under the book's open cover across the table to me.
"Three rings overlapping and covered in a thin spiderweb design.
I've seen it recently and remembered it from somewhere.
I just can't remember where. I know it's old.
I'm pretty sure we learned about it as kids but I can't find any mention of it in these books. "
She frowned down at the book in front of her, clearly disturbed by her failure. Olympia and I had that in common. We both hated failing. We pursued vastly different paths but hated failing in them just the same. I could help her now. She couldn't help me, no one could, but I could help her.
Determined, I reached for the paper and slid it closer.
I pulled out the chair across from my cousin and sat down, staring down at the strange design she'd clearly drawn from memory from wherever she'd seen it recently.
It was just as she'd described. Three circles overlapping in the center with a thin design of webs on top of them.
It was familiar. Just as she'd said, I had the strangest sensation I'd seen this symbol before but couldn't quite remember where.
Abruptly, I stood from my seat and made my way toward my most favorite aisle in the library; the histories.
The sound of chair legs scraping against the tile a moment later informed me Olympia was following. I didn't slow in my stride as I ran my fingers over the spines of the books on the shelf, searching.
"What is it?" she asked, the first trace of eagerness entering her voice. Maybe Olympia could be turned into a scholar after all, if she could be convinced to chase the adrenaline of a hunt for knowledge rather than glory.
"If we've both seen the symbol before, it will have been during either lessons of history or religion as those are the only subjects riddled with symbology like that.
If it were religion, I imagine it would be far more recognizable.
There are only fifteen of them, after all, and we're required to memorize them young.
You'd recognize the symbol for Deimos if you saw him, would you not? And Callidora? Lemnus?"
She nodded slowly.
"But you didn't recognize this one," I said. "Not on sight, at least, but you know you've seen it. Tell me, Olympia, how much attention did you pay during the history lectures?"
She frowned and I had my answer.
"I thought so," I replied with a nod of understanding. "You aren't the only one. Uncle Elias does tend to drone on and doesn't know what he's talking about half the time anyway."
"So the symbol is old," she said, verifying her original suspicions. "From some time in the past? But how are we going to find out when?"
"Through logical conjecture and process of elimination," I answered, pulling a few volumes from the shelves.
I carried them back to our table and set them down.
Olympia dropped into the chair opposite me and reached for the nearest one.
"We know there are certain periods of history more prone to symbolism than others.
Transitions in the Priesthood, successes in the Trials, uprisings, succession disputes, etc.
If we can determine the intended meaning behind the symbol itself, that would help us narrow it down.
Even if we can't, though, this will help us cut out quite a bit of uneventful in-between time.
I suggest we start with the creation of the Priesthood itself.
I know there was quite a bit of upheaval when it was first announced to be led by a member of House Lynx. If we can cross-reference—"
"I found it."
I froze, lowering the book I'd lifted from the stack to peer across the table at my cousin. She was staring down at a page in the book in her hands, the one she'd grabbed from the stack the moment I set them down. Her eyes were wide, lips parted slightly in surprise.
"Or we might get lucky," I finished, blowing out a breath and leaning over the table in an effort to get a glimpse. "What is it? What does it say?"
"I—it's nothing," she said. Quickly, she tried to slam the book shut, but my hand was there in an instant.
I winced as the thick pages slammed against my fingers but snatched it out of her hand before she could react.
Flipping it around, I gazed down at the familiar symbol on the page, only slightly off from what Olympia had drawn herself.
Then my eyes drifted to the label beneath it and the words below. I froze.
I lifted my eyes slowly to meet Olympia's gaze. She looked fearful. I couldn't blame her.
"Olympia," I said slowly, carefully. "Where did you see this?"
She shook her head once, unwilling to say.
"Olympia, you have to tell me where you saw this."
"No, I don't," she snapped, standing and snatching her drawing of the symbol from the table between us. She crumpled it up and stuffed it in her pocket before I could say another word. Then her piercing dark eyes found mine. "Don't breathe a word of this to anyone, cousin."
"If someone is using that symbol again—"
"Not a word, Milo. I mean it."
I stopped speaking and watched her for a moment, leering over me in fear and anger.
This was the moment that had always been coming for Olympia and I.
A moment in which we'd decide whether or not to trust one another.
She'd been my only real competition when it came to succession, the only other member of my family I thought would have a fighting chance of luring Nascha away from proclaiming me her Heir, but she'd never really been in the running and she'd always known it.
It was a thorn in her side and a gaping hole in our relationship, but it was done now.
I was declared and she was still finding herself useful to the House.
She was too intelligent, too skilled, to ever not have a place here.
I would need her just as much as she needed me.
If our grandmother taught us anything, it was that.
And yet I always knew there'd be a moment in which we'd both have to choose each other.
We'd both have to trust each other. This was it.
So I reached halfway across the bridge and prayed she'd meet me there.
"I trust you, Olympia," I told her, my voice quiet, my tone measured so she saw how much I meant it.
She blinked, stunned by the words and the intensity with which I'd spoken them. Her eyes searched mine with suspicion. She didn't believe me, but I hadn't expected her to. Olympia was the sort of person who wouldn't support anyone who didn't prove themselves to her. I would.
"You know what's at stake," I whispered, even more quietly. "You'll do the right thing."
She blinked again. Then, without another word, she stormed from the library and was gone.
I watched the doorway she'd disappeared through for a moment and realized that was probably the first time anyone had ever told my cousin they trusted her. Most people didn’t bestow trust lightly when it came to Olympia.
Turning back to the table in front of me, I couldn't help but allow my eyes to rest on the book Olympia had found the symbol in.
The symbol of resistance, of rebellion. Every child born into a First Ring House was taught the history of the uprisings, warned of the signs, and encouraged to be diligent in recognizing them again, but there hadn't been a rebellion in five hundred years.
The priests had done such a good job at erasing that history so only the major, and probably some minor, Houses had knowledge of them.
We'd grown comfortable in our luxurious homes, content with our failure in the Trials and our participation in the Culling, but if there was anything I knew from studying history, it was that it always repeated itself.
If we were due for an uprising, Olympia finding that old symbol indicated it was coming sooner than we could have anticipated and maybe we hadn't done as good of a job at hiding Sanctuary's rebellious history as we thought.
I sighed, wishing I'd brought a glass of grandmother's wine to the library. I'd come here to get away from my worries for a night, not to add to them. Yet I couldn't ignore what my cousin knew.
This was Cosmo's fault. The way he treated Adrian, his show of force outside of the last Trial, and the way he'd been ranting and raving to anyone who would listen since that Sanctuary had fallen away from the gods and the poor needed to be cleansed of their blasphemy was only serving to heighten the tensions which existed in an already vulnerable city.
Nascha had always claimed Cosmo's underestimation of the lower rings would be his downfall.
We could only hope he wouldn't bring the rest of us down with him.