Chapter Twenty-Five
Milo
Smoke and dust coated my lungs so that I couldn’t breathe. I hit the cobblestones with a jarring sensation. Pain shot through my right arm and there was a ringing in my ears so loud I could hear nothing else.
“–have him,” someone was saying close by and a body was on top of mine, stretched out, shielding me. “Get to Nascha.”
It was Paxon speaking, I realized when my vision focused onto him where he was hovering above me, protecting me. I saw a curtain of black hair shift in the smoke and knew he’d been speaking to Olympia, sending my cousin after our grandmother who’d been much closer to the blast.
“Pax–” I coughed up dust, stone slicing the inside of my throat until I tasted the metallic tang of blood.
“Come with me, Milo,” Paxon was screaming now. Clearly, I hadn’t heard him when he’d been speaking before. He cried out with all the urgency of someone trying to help someone who hadn’t responded before. “This way. We have to get you out of here.”
“Grandmother–” I rasped.
“Olympia will get her. You can’t be here, Milo. You’re the Heir.”
The Heir. Right.
I stumbled to my feet, ignored the sharp pain in my right elbow, and slipped on a loose stone as I followed Paxon toward where the stairs were supposed to be.
Another explosion rocked the Deck and people screamed as more smoke filled the air and obscured the way forward. I coughed and batted my left hand in front of my face to clear my field of vision any way I could. It didn’t work but at least I was doing something. I needed to do something.
I hesitated at the base of the stairs and glanced back into the haze of the thick smoke.
People were in there somewhere, suffocating and trapped, maybe blown to bits, certainly in need of medical care, but Paxon was pulling me on and the logical part of my brain was urging me to go with him.
If Nascha had been struck by the blast, if she didn’t make it, I was the Heir.
Hating myself for my cowardice, I turned and rushed up the stairs at my cousin’s side.
Nick and Cleo met us at the top, wide-eyed and stunned like everyone else.
Without a word from Paxon or I, they took the lead and started clearing the way back up to the First. Guardians rushed down while we climbed up, hopefully off to help those trapped below. As the smoke cleared, so did my mind.
Put everyone on high alert, I sent the thought to Isla as Pax and I made our way up to the Second Ring. Explosions at the trial. Smoke everywhere. People are trapped. Lock down the Houses.
I coughed into my shirt again and saw red. My vision blurred and I swayed on the last step up to the Second. Pax saw and gripped my sleeve to keep me upright, cursing. Ahead, Nick and Cleo halted, heads swiveling in all directions to assess for threats, as Paxon pressed his face close to mine.
“Sir?” he called out, sternly. “We have to keep moving. We have to get back to the House. Can you go on?”
My vision turned black before fading back in through pin pricks of light, but I nodded.
Explosions? Isla’s frantic voice filled my mind. What in the Geist’s name happened, Milo?
Tell you later.
I coughed again and groaned at the sensation of gritty jagged stones slicing through my esophagus from the inside. How had I breathed in so many of them in such a short amount of time?
“Fuck,” Nick hissed ahead. He ripped off a hastily applied bandage on his left shoulder that was already soaked through with blood. Cleo watched him with a frown. How had I not noticed the injury before?
I blinked again and my vision blurred.
“Almost there, Sir,” Pax said encouragingly from my side, though I heard the panic entering his voice all the same. “One more ring.”
I swayed.
“Harlowe,” I croaked. “Take me to Harlowe. I’m not going to make it up.”
Pax’s gaze found mine and his lips slanted into a frown. But then, a moment later, he was nodding and taking half my weight as he dragged me off in the direction of the minor house.
Jude was already there, standing tall, completely untouched by the blast, and ordering the gates closed.
He glanced up from the scholars running through the front door into the house to find us stumbling toward him.
His gaze met mine and hardened but he stepped forward to push the gate open himself, not saying a word as he stormed back into his house, leading us in behind him.
“Get Aurora,” he snapped at someone unseen in one of the corridors we passed.
Then he led us to a room with several desks and couches off to the side of the main entryway.
He muttered the whole way and, though I couldn’t hear what he was saying, I thought I could make out the words, “Fucking bombs.”
Jude saw us deposited on a few couches in the sitting room and stood in front of us with his arms crossed until a woman with long brown hair and big blue eyes appeared with a medical bag. She knelt beside me first.
“Him,” I grunted, nodding in Nick’s direction.
Her wide eyes swiveled from me to my cousin but she didn’t argue as she slid over to investigate Nick’s poorly bandaged shoulder. Jude was staring at the trail of blood my cousin had left on his pristine marble, lip curled in disgust.
“You and I both know this wasn’t Cosmo’s doing,” Jude grumbled a moment later and his eyes snapped back to mine.
I sighed but nodded in agreement.
“You saw the boy’s tattoo as clearly as I did,” he said, “and so did the rest of Sanctuary.”
“I know. When the dust settles, we’ll bring the Tribunal back together and Cosmo–”
“Your case against the Viper is done. That boy with the tattoo was your star witness. You’ve lost all credibility and let a Patriarch of a major House get away with murder. Whatever blaze comes for you in the First, know that you’re the one who fanned the flames.”
“Jude–”
“Get yourselves together. I want you out of my house in an hour.”
Pax bristled at his tone, but I just nodded in understanding.
“The journal–” I started.
“That’s done,” he snapped. “It was interesting while it lasted but we can’t risk it now. The knowledge is too important.”
Then Jude turned and stormed away, snapping at a nearby member of his own house to prepare to enter lockdown within the hour.
“Sir?” the woman named Aurora asked from where she knelt in front of me.
I glanced over to see Nick had been bandaged and cared for before holding my own arm out for her inspection.
After some poking and prodding, she declared it was fractured in three places and spent the rest of our allotted hour fitting me into a sling.
I let her work, watching the members of her house running in and out of the corridors beyond the door, listening to the sound of windows and doors slamming shut, locks clicking throughout the house.
The House of Harlowe would protect their books above all else.
I had no doubt they would toss us out onto the streets after our hour was up no matter what violence was taking place outside.
I couldn’t say I blamed them. It was in our nature to protect our own before any others, and the House of Harlowe had only grudgingly let us enter their walls after centuries of intentional isolation in the first place.
They didn’t trust us and now, the way Jude saw it, I’d given them good enough reason to never trust us again.
Because I’d known what that symbol was the moment Harrison removed his shirt and displayed it on his own back.
I’d known what it would mean that Cosmo was the one who’d ordered him to show it and what it would mean for the rest of Sanctuary to see it.
And even if they hadn’t known what it was in that moment, even if they’d forgotten the ancient symbol after centuries of poor education and historical coverups, the bombs had solidified the point well enough.
The rebellion was here. And I’d been too preoccupied with the diary of a madman to properly prepare for it.
“Let’s go,” I said before the hour was up, rising from my place on the couch and walking more easily to the exit.
My ears were no longer ringing and I’d coughed up most of the debris I’d inhaled in the blast. My arm was aching in the sling and every step I took sent shudders through my back but I figured a nice glass of brandy and some pain medication would do wonders for that.
Paxon, Nick, and Cleo followed me warily to the door before placing themselves in front of me as we left.
None of us knew what we would be walking into outside.
If people were rioting, Guardians were instituting martial law, or the rebels had other plans, other bombs.
It was a tense walk up to the First. None of us dared to speak as we made our way to the stairs and up to the next ring, cradling our injuries and keeping our heads on a swivel all the while.
Isla came storming into the foyer the moment we entered House Avus, the hem of her blue dress sliding against the smooth floor.
“A bomb?” she exploded the second she laid eyes on us. “They blew up the twelfth? What were they thinking? The Vipers are going to answer for this. We’ll call the Tribunal and–”
“It wasn’t the Vipers,” I interrupted her before turning to Pax. “Find Olympia. Find grandmother.”
He nodded and bowed once to Isla before striding past us up the stairs, Nick and Cleo hot on his heels, obviously eager to be out of the strike zone of this marital spat before it began.
“What do you mean it wasn’t the Vipers? Cosmo–”
“Managed to identify a member of the quietly growing rebellion that planned to set off a bomb once the whole Tribunal was gathered at his trial today,” I finished my explanation, sighing as I readjusted the sling around my arm in an effort to find a more comfortable angle. “I need a drink.”
Sidestepping my wife, I began to make my way up the stairs as well. Isla followed immediately, as I knew she would. She entered my office right behind me and shut the door so we were alone.
“Your arm,” she said.
“Just a fracture,” I told her. “Nothing that can’t be mended in time.”
“Is that what we have now, Milo? An abundance of time?”
My eyes slid up to find her watching me where I stood, pouring myself a glass of whiskey at my desk.
Isla was afraid. She always lashed out when she was.
As her husband, I probably should have said something to comfort her, to assure her we would be fine, but as a realist, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
The fact of the matter was that we were woefully underprepared for a rebellion and it seemed the Vipers were not.
“We’ve been focused on the wrong threat,” I told her, frowning. “I’ve been focused on the wrong thing entirely and I fear we might all suffer for my incompetence.”
“You’re the Heir, Milo, not the Patriarch,” Isla reminded me. “What has Nascha been doing about this rebellion?”
I sighed, rubbing a hand over my face as I collapsed into my chair.
“I don’t know,” I confessed. “She’s been so obsessed with her gods. It’s consumed her. Olympia only just discovered the existence of the rebels a few weeks ago and the fact that they were making plans even more recently. If we’d had any idea they would go to this extreme–”
“You didn’t tell her,” Isla said, accusatory. “You discovered a band of rebels using the symbol of the resistance again and didn’t tell your Matriarch.”
“She hasn’t been herself, Isla,” I replied but the exhaustion creeped into my tone and diminished the strength of my argument.
“She’s still the Matriarch.”
She crossed the room and stepped behind my desk where she knelt down in front of me and took my hands. Her eyes were shining with unshed tears when she looked up at me.
“You don’t have to take everything on yourself, Milo,” she said.
“You have Nascha, you have me, you have Paxon and, as much as I hate to say it, you have Olympia too. We’re all here for you, for this.
So let us carry some of your burden. Let us play a part in shaping this new future of Sanctuary you seem to envision. ”
I froze at her choice of words. This new future of Sanctuary you seem to envision.
“Isla–” I started.
“You think I don’t know about the Third Ring family you’ve given a free pass into our home?
” she asked, raising a brow. “Or the research alliance you’ve formed with a minor house?
Don’t forget the fact that I was there when you demanded my grandfather make your wife Heir to his House as well.
Things are changing in Sanctuary. Adrian may have been the catalyst but you’re the one who’s been pushing it along. ”
“And you…support me in this? Even though I’m changing the course of history. Even though I’m spitting in the face of the rules established by every First Ring Patriarch and Matriarch for the last two thousand years.”
“You’re a good man with a good heart. Even when I don’t agree with everything you’re doing, I can rely on that and know it’s coming from a good place.
You cared about Adrian Bexley and, now that she’s gone, you’re questioning the system that could have gone to such lengths to keep her down.
I get it. I might have done the same if I’d been her friend when she was here. ”
Isla’s words meant more to me than she knew.
Since I’d begun to make those decisions, I’d heard nothing but questions and concerns from my cousins, the people I trusted most in the world.
They’d done what I’d asked, of course, but I’d seen the glances they cast at each other, the looks they gave me when I issued a command they didn’t agree with, Paxon especially.
Isla’s support made me feel a little less lonely and that made all the difference.
So without pausing to consider the complications it might bring, I reached out and caressed the cheek of the only girl who’d ever truly loved me in any real way with my free hand. Then I pulled her forward and pressed my lips to hers.
For a moment, she was too stunned to move, but then I pulled her closer with a hand on the back of her head and she leaned into me.
It wasn’t a soft kiss or clumsy, like the uncertainty or inexperience of youth, but it wasn’t forceful or brutal like those driven mad by lust either.
It was calm, comfortable, like it was simply meant to be.
Her lips were meant to be on mine, my hands were meant to be on her, we were meant to exist together in the same space at the same time, as one.
When we separated, it was only enough to rest our foreheads against each other for a moment, finding peace in the quiet assurance of the other’s company. Then Isla’s eyes fluttered open and met mine.
“It’s all about to change, isn’t it?” she whispered against my lips.
“It was always meant to,” I told her. “We just have to build something better in the end, together.”