Chapter Thirty-Five #2
“Thank you for returning this,” I told him, nodding down to the necklace resting on the corner of my desk, covered in blood I no longer wished to know the origins of. “But I think it’s time I see the more important one returned to us. Pax?”
Pax dipped low once before crossing the room and holding the door open for me.
I made my way toward the threshold doing everything I could to appear calm and collected on the outside despite every instinct in my body screaming at me.
A Viper had tried to kill one of my own and Olympia seemed to think it had something to do with that necklace.
Regardless of the reason, war had well and truly begun amongst the Major Houses.
There was nothing Cosmo could say to explain why one of his people was down on the Second trying to murder one of mine.
And there was nothing I could say to him to make up for the fact that they’d failed and lost their life to my cousin in the process.
A First Ringer was dead and another was injured. Blood spilled was blood owed.
I became aware of Harrison following after me as I reached the foyer and turned so suddenly he nearly ran straight into me.
“I hope you don’t intend to come with me,” I spoke quietly to ensure my voice wouldn’t carry to the members of my family I could see from here, still chatting over their breakfast.
“She was nearly dead when I last saw her,” he snapped, still furious. “I need to know she’s alright. I need to see her. She’s my–”
He stopped himself just in time, eyes sliding to Pax who waited impatiently just beyond us.
“I will send word to you about her status as soon as I’m assured of it myself,” I vowed.
“Milo–” Harrison started, his own tone dropping to just above a whisper.
“You’ve practically announced yourself as a sworn enemy to the Patriarch of House Viper,” I reminded him. “Your presence will only serve to raise tensions even higher. If I have any chance of retrieving her from that vile pit of snakes, I must do it alone, as the Heir of my House.”
His gaze slid to Pax again and, for a moment, I thought he would argue against my bringing a guard, but he let it go with a reluctant nod.
I turned to leave once more but hesitated when I noticed him march over to one of the benches my grandmother preferred to occupy during her obligatory parties and settle in.
I raised a brow, awaiting an explanation, and watched as he crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall before giving it.
“I’ll wait here for your update,” he snarled, nearly spitting the last word in my direction.
I sighed but turned away from him and met Pax by the door again.
My cousin shot one final glare in the Third Ringer’s direction before we hastened through the door and down the path leading to the gates.
A few aunts in the garden turned to watch us as we left, whispering to one another the gossip of my departure which would surely reach the rest of the family by lunchtime, but it didn’t matter.
Whoever saw me leave, whatever reason they suspected for my doing so, didn’t matter.
The only thing that mattered to me in that moment was ascertaining the status of my cousin, demanding an explanation for why they were holding her, and seeing her freed again.
We took a sharp turn the moment we were through the gates and made our way toward House Viper, standing like an obsidian castle across the ring.
Pax rapped his knuckles against the iron gates once we reached them, like one would when knocking on a door, and a familiar boy with knives strapped across his chest raised a brow at the action before taking his time meandering over.
Holden flipped his hair out of his eyes, always in an attempt to draw your eye to the one streak of green he’d dyed into his dark locks, before glaring down the bridge of his nose at me.
“What do you want?” he grumbled, not sparing a glance in Paxon’s direction.
“An explanation from your Patriarch, pretty please,” I answered in a tone I’d intended to come across as friendly but really sounded more annoyed than anything else.
His eyes flashed as his lip curled.
“Grandfather isn’t expecting you,” he said.
“And I wasn’t expecting violence perpetrated by the Vipers down on the Second Ring last night,” I replied. “But dead men can’t make appointments.”
A look of shock crossed Holden’s face before he could rein it in. Then, blinking, he took half a step back and reached for one of the knives strapped across his chest. In an instant, Paxon laid a hand on his own blade and took up a threatening stance beside me.
“I wouldn’t do that, Holden,” he hissed.
Holden’s gaze slid from me to Pax and the weapon at his belt.
“I don’t–” he began.
“Open the gate, Holden,” a familiar voice rang out from the courtyard.
I looked up to find Myrine watching from down the path. Her arms were crossed and her expression was set in a scowl that had always rivaled her son’s.
Holden didn’t hesitate to do as she said, clearly grateful to have someone else around to make the decision for him. As he pulled back the bar and let the gate roll open, Myrine marched down the path to meet us.
“I imagine I know why you’re here,” she began once she was close enough, “but so we’re clear–”
“I want my cousin back, Myrine,” I barked.
She gave one quick nod before turning her back to us and marching back to the House. With one uneasy exchanged glance, Paxon and I followed, leaving Holden to lock the gate again behind us.
Myrine marched us through her ancestral home until we reached a door I’d only stood outside of twice before. She knocked quietly and waited until the villain beyond bid her enter before pushing open the door and ushering us inside.
Cosmo was seated behind his desk, leaning over letters and record books, jotting down notes in the margins and responses on fresh sheets of paper.
He didn’t look up for a moment when we entered, just continued his work as if we weren’t even there.
I waited for a moment but it grew so disrespectful, I could no longer take it.
“Cosmo,” I said.
Finally, he looked up.
“Well, if it isn’t the boy who tried to put me on trial for murder,” he crooned, clearly amused with himself as he took his time removing the reading glasses perched on his nose, folding them up, and putting them away in a drawer. “What have you come to accuse me of now?”
“Kidnapping.”
He nodded slowly, sitting back in his chair and examining me with the same shrewd eye which seemed to make so many others uncomfortable. I merely waited for him to speak again, to explain himself.
“And who, precisely, am I to have kidnapped?” he asked, feigning ignorance.
“My cousin,” I informed him. “Olympia.”
“Ah, well, this has clearly all been a misunderstanding. The girl gave herself up on her own this morning.”
“Gave herself up. As if you’re the Guardians?”
“Apparently, anyone is capable of leveling a charge against anyone else in this city now. As that seems to be the case, proven by your own actions of assembling a council which goes against everything this city was founded on to go after a Patriarch of a Major House based on the words of some angry lower ringers, I feel I’m fully within my rights to hold the girl until she can face justice.
Though I imagine that may take some time as we clearly have some reconfiguring to do when it comes to who presides over justice in this city. ”
He was smiling at me now, clearly entertained by the predicament he felt I’d placed myself into voluntarily.
He believed he was ten steps ahead of me and, truthfully, he might have been.
Cosmo of House Viper might have always been ten steps ahead of me, but had I ever truly had a chance?
Who else was capable of contemplating the evil which seemed to run through this man’s diseased mind without end?
“You were able to await your own trial in the comfort of your own home amongst your own family,” I reminded him. “Who are you to claim Olympia cannot do the same?”
“Her own family has proven incapable of holding her within the confines of her House,” he argued. “As the crimes she stands accused of are quite serious in nature, it would be in the best interest of the city’s safety for her to remain held somewhere she cannot escape.”
“And what crimes, exactly, does she stand accused of?”
“Murder, for one.”
Pax tensed beside me but I maintained my composure.
“And who is she supposed to have murdered?” I asked calmly, using his own words to frame the question.
“My beloved grandson, Bade,” he replied and I hated to admit that there actually seemed to be a bit of grief behind the old man’s eyes.
From the corner where she stood behind him, Myrine’s lower lip wobbled.
“As I understand it, Bade attacked Olympia as she was returning home last night,” I announced.
Cosmo’s gaze sharpened at that. It seemed I held a piece of information he wasn’t pleased I’d gotten.
“Who told you that?” he asked, which I noted wasn’t a denial.
“Olympia,” I replied.
“Impossible. My men retrieved her early this morning where she’d crawled down onto the Third to recover from her wounds. She couldn’t have come to tell you anything.”
“I didn’t say she had.”
He frowned at me, clearly unhappy about my vague indications that I knew more than he thought and wasn’t willing to tell him how. For a moment, we simply glared at one another, neither of us willing to give up the ground necessary to progress the conversation at hand.
“A son of the First Ring is dead, Milo,” Cosmo said slowly after a moment of silence. “Blood spilled means blood owed, you know that.”
“She defended herself,” I argued.
“I suppose we’ll let the Tribunal decide that. Unless, of course, you intend to reconvene your blasphemous little council to see to your cousin’s fate? I don’t think you’ll find the minor houses as agreeable to that as they were before.”
His gaze narrowed in an attempt at intimidation that had me clenching my jaw to keep from exploding and telling the vile old man exactly what I’d always thought of him. Instead, I maintained my composure long enough to give a curt nod.
“We’ll convene the original Tribunal, then,” I agreed. “When?”
“Five days.”
“Five—you intend to keep my cousin wrongfully imprisoned for five days?”
“Wrongfully is yet to be determined. As I said, it isn’t safe to let her roam the streets. What if she were to come after yet another member of my family?”
Every muscle in my body was rigid as I glared down at the Viper Patriarch who seemed to have an answer for everything.
“You’ll allow us to see her,” I demanded. I would not take no for an answer on this. “Every day. You’ll let us visit her to ensure she’s being treated properly while in your care.”
“You may visit her once a day,” Cosmo allowed, gesturing between Pax and I. “One of you and no one else.”
I frowned but agreed with a nod. It was likely the best offer I was going to get and, since my cousin had wasted no time turning herself into the Vipers, she hadn’t left me very many bargaining chips to offer in our negotiations.
He already held her here, condemned for a crime I was certain she’d committed, surrounded by angry members of the victim’s family who’d be all too happy to slit her throat themselves.
I needed to tread carefully here. As much of a risk that this was to the peace of the city itself, it was a question of my cousin’s own safety.
I had no intention of mourning my own loss if I could help it.
“We’ll see her now, then,” I announced, raising my head high though fully aware I’d lost this round miserably.
Cosmo grinned fiendishly back at me, eyes alight with the same understanding, before nodding once to his daughter who stepped forward to escort us to my cousin’s cell.