Chapter Nineteen #2
My gaze shot to her to find her watching me closely. So this was why she was so convinced other, older gods existed. She thought she had a piece of them right here in her closet, one she wore upon her neck every night as she slept.
“Give it to Isla,” Nascha told me a moment later. “She deserves some luck and you’ll win a fair amount of points for bringing her a big, shiny jewel.”
I snorted but pocketed the amulet. I almost swore it was emitting some faint amount of heat against my thigh as I turned to face my grandmother.
“Thank you,” I said.
She dipped her head in acknowledgement of my gratitude before waving me off toward the door so she could dress in peace.
“Keep me apprised of what you find at Harlowe, Milo,” she commanded just as the door shut between us and I was alone in the hall once again.
As I made my way back to the study, I found I couldn’t stop thinking about the necklace in my pocket or its eerie blue glow.
Could my grandmother be right? Was this necklace imbued with some power of a long forgotten divinity?
Or could my great-great-grandmother be onto something about it having luck?
I shook my head as I reached the door to the study, reminding myself I was a scholar, not a priest.
Still, I shut the door and settled in to flip through Simi’s diary once more anyway. I was sure I’d read the phrase written on the amulet before, recently. Since this was the only book I’d been reading at all recently, it was the logical first place to check.
I searched for the phrase hidden in the pages of messy scrawl but found no mention of it.
Then I reread the passages I’d already scanned through, focusing on any mention of his wife.
If Nascha was right about the history of the jewel, it would have been worn by her during his time as Patriarch, but mentions of her were few and far between.
His daughter, Adelaide, however, was mentioned nearly as much as her brother, the Heir, Atticus.
“Will you be needing anything else, sir?” Someone interrupted my reading, drawing my attention up from the pages of the diary to the dinner plate sitting on the corner of my desk and the fresh-faced preteen girl in white robes before it.
“Could you fetch me something from the library?” I asked, sitting back in my seat and blinking my tired eyes. “Perhaps engage the help of your fellow acolytes for the task?”
“Yes, Sir,” she agreed with an eager nod. “Of course.”
“I need books with any mention of Adelaide, daughter of Eximius, former patriarch of House Avus, brought to me immediately,” I informed her as she reached for a notepad and pen on the edge of my desk to jot my instructions down.
“Personal journals and letters are preferable but I’ll take any mention of her name at all, be it family records or genealogies.
She would have lived during the late 1800s. ”
The acolyte bobbed her head as she wrote the information I was giving her down on the paper in her hands.
If she had any questions at all regarding why the Heir of a major House was requesting the personal correspondences and diaries of a woman who’d lived and died hundreds of years ago, she didn’t voice them.
“We’ll get right on it, Sir,” she promised before turning and nearly running out of the study, armed with her task.
I glanced over the dinner that had been brought to me before returning to my research, though my focus didn’t last long.
“Jude is agreeable to joining the council,” a familiar voice spoke.
I didn’t have to look to know it was Olympia.
“Grandmother will be happy to hear it,” I muttered in reply, not bothering to look up from the passage I was reading.
“Will she? Is it me or do you get the impression her thirst for justice has died down in the weeks since the murder?” Olympia grumbled. I could judge her poor mood by tone alone without having to look up to see the sour expression on her face.
“Execution,” I corrected. “We can’t call it a murder until he’s found guilty.”
Olympia plopped into the chair across from me and lifted her boots onto my desk before I could object. She also helped herself to my forgotten dinner, biting into a perfectly roasted fowl leg as I shook my head and returned to my reading.
“Learn anything new today?” I asked.
“Just how much grain that asshole had squirreled away before shit hit the fan.”
I grimaced at my cousin’s crude language but kept my eyes on the words on the page.
“What’s that?” she asked, leaning forward and forcing me to look up for the first time. My gaze followed her own until it fell on the amulet I’d removed from my pocket and sat on my desk, near some papers I’d discarded in favor of the journal.
“A family heirloom,” I replied, monotone.
“Why’s it glowing?”
“No one knows.”
“Milo.”
Her tone was as flat as her expression when I looked over.
“I’m serious,” I told her. “Grandmother told me the whole story about how every Matriarch or Patriarch’s wife throughout our history has worn it during their time as leader. It’s supposed to bring luck or something. She wants me to give it to Isla.”
Olympia snorted.
“Another reason I’m glad she didn’t appoint me Heir,” my cousin said. “That thing is ugly as shit.”
I couldn’t help my grin as I shook my head with a snort.
“I need to pull you from your usual assignments for a while,” I told her.
“Why?” she asked, diving back into her chicken without concern.
“Raghnall found some witnesses willing to testify about Cosmo’s actions that day. I can’t trust the Guardians to protect them until the trial.”
“You’re worried Cosmo will have them killed so they can’t speak out against him.”
“I am. Since I can’t trust the Guardians, that means I need to source some enforcement myself.
The only people I have to offer are our own.
So you’ll be on protection duty for a while, just until the trial.
Nick will be watching a pair of brothers down on the Third.
Cleo is already busy checking on an older seamstress woman who does some work up on the Second from time to time.
I figured you can make sure some horrible accident doesn’t befall that Harrison guy and Pax can–”
“Why him?” Olympia asked, dropping her feet off the desk so suddenly she nearly sent the chicken toppling over the side.
I raised a brow.
“I just mean, why put me on him specifically?” she asked in a rush.
“He’s had run-ins with Cosmo before,” I answered, slowly, wondering where this was coming from, “and you’re the best I have.
I trust no one to keep him safe more than you.
Besides, you’ve already had more interaction with him than anyone else since he caught you sneaking into his apartment and helped get the Bexleys up here to speak with me. ”
“Right, of course.”
I was certain I didn’t imagine the calm that settled over Olympia as she relaxed back in her chair. But she didn’t resume her eating and didn’t seem able to keep her right foot from tapping after that. I’d missed something, I was sure of it, but I couldn’t imagine what it might be.
“We need–”
I was interrupted by the acolyte from before entering the study once more. She wasn’t alone this time. Two more in white followed after her, a box overloaded with books in each of their arms. They set them down beside my desk and filed out before the girl could even speak.
“She liked to write,” the young acolyte told me, blowing out a breath and giving a pointed glance at the boxes. “These are most of her journals, like you requested. We’re still looking into family records and letters but I’m sure there will be more.”
“Thank you,” I told her, looking down at the boxes in surprise as she filed out behind the others, closing the door as she went.
“What’s this?” Olympia asked with a frown, peering over the edge of the boxes to look down at the journals piled up within them.
I reached for one and read the cover.
Adelaide of Avus
1891
Brows furrowed, I pulled out another, then another.
Then I reached for one out of the second box.
Each of them had the same heading on the front.
The girl’s name, House, and year. Which meant she wrote one of these every year, but that didn’t make sense.
She must have overlapped some years, maybe had more to discuss in those than others; big events, politics, etc.
There were far too many for each of them to only be for one year.
“Who’s Adelaide?” Olympia asked from across the desk where she’d reached into the box closest to her and extricated one of the journals. “And why are you interested in whatever happened in 2018?”
My gaze snapped up to meet hers.
“2018,” I repeated. “Are you sure?”
Olympia frowned but held the journal out to me so I could read the cover.
Adelaide of Avus
2018
“That’s impossible,” I said.
“I agree,” Olympia muttered. “Who could write this much?”
“No,” I stood up from the desk and knelt down by the boxes, rifling through them and looking at the years on the covers. “I mean there’s over a hundred and twenty years worth of journals here, all under one woman’s name. How is that possible?”
Olympia rose from her feet and made her way around where I knelt over the journals to a shelf behind my desk.
Reaching up on tiptoes, she pulled the dusty cerulean book from one of the high shelves.
It was the basic birth and death records of the House.
Each Patriarch or Matriarch for hundreds of years had meticulously recorded each birth and death within the House upon those pages.
It was something to be pulled out for ceremony, to make a show of recording the birth of a baby or the death of a loved one.
I’d never used it much for research since it held hardly any more than names and dates, but if any book contained information regarding Adelaide’s lifespan, it would be that one.
“Adelaide of Avus, late 1800s,” Olympia rattled off after getting a glimpse of the first journal I still held in my hands, the one marked 1891. “Let’s see. Here. Born 1876, died…2023. Age: 147.”
I froze, my hand hovering over another journal. Slowly, I turned until my gaze met my cousin’s.
“That’s impossible,” I said again.
“That’s what it says,” she cried out defensively as if I was placing the blame for this ancient mystery on her.
“I’ve never heard of anyone living past a hundred.”
“Well, her daughter did too.”
“What?”
I stood up abruptly and crossed the room to peer over my cousin’s shoulder at the special gold inlaid pages reserved for members of the Patriarch or Matriarch’s immediate family.
“Vivian of Avus. Born 1907, died 2045. Age: 138,” Olympia read from the record. I shook my head, every logical bone in my body rejecting the information being read aloud. “Adelaide’s mother lived for 102, look.”
Olympia shoved the book in front of my face and I read the dates as written but shook my head the whole time.
“It isn’t possible,” I repeated, pacing away with my hands on my hips.
“Her mother didn’t live that long though,” Olympia pointed out, brows furrowed. “Only 83 years, that’s more normal. Maybe there was just a weird period of longevity at that time. What was going on then? In the late 1800s?”
“The last major uprising happened then,” I replied, mind whirring with possibilities as I searched my memory for the timeline in question.
“Resources were diminishing and we went a couple of Cullings without anyone being marked. The priests were investigating the phenomenon when the rebels stormed the First Ring. That’s where that symbol came from, that uprising. ”
“It can’t be a coincidence.”
It couldn’t. But what was the connection?
“Anything else?” Olympia asked, turning her attention back to the record book and whatever else was written there.
“I don’t know,” I replied, shaking my head as I scratched my chin. “The uprising was all anyone really recorded. That and–”
I froze, then whirled suddenly around and made a beeline for my desk.
“What?” Olympia asked.
“Eximius,” I replied, breathless. “Eximius was going mad.”
I flipped the diary to the first page and looked down at the date.
1891.
I shook my head, blinking rapidly and feeling like my brain was short-circuiting. Olympia was right. This couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, but I didn’t have the slightest clue what the connection could be.
“So papa Simi goes crazy and suddenly all the women in his family start living a crazy long time?” Olympia asked, seeking verification.
I pushed back from my desk and stared down at the journal with hands resting on my hips.
“I guess so,” I agreed, though I still wasn’t willing to connect the events. I couldn’t see how they could possibly be related.
“Milo,” Olympia said slowly.
I looked up to find her wide eyes glued to the page in front of her. I crossed the room once more and looked down at whatever had gotten her so spooked. When I read the words on the page before me, something in my very soul shuddered.
Nascha of Avus. Born 2302.
Grandmother was a hundred and nine years old.