CHAPTER 18
EMBER
The seminar was boring,as expected. Stuff anyone would know, but no actual advice about how to take care of a teenage girl in this day and age. Ares refused to sit next to me, and in the car on the way back to the Carlyle he was silent.
It wasn’t until we reached the elevator that he spoke to me. “I need to go get Avaline’s laptop, and then I’ll be up.”
There was no doubt he was uncomfortable about what had happened at the Suzerain, though I couldn’t parse out what was making him so itchy. “Was it the reconciliation that did it?” I asked on impulse as he turned to go. “All that bloodshed and violence?”
He spun, his eyes wild with some emotion I couldn’t gauge. My breath quickened as he stalked towards me. He stopped a hair's breadth from my face. “Do you think that’s something I should beproudof?”
I thought about it for a few moments. There was, of course, talk about how dangerous Ares Necroline was, that he was a brutal head of the Dynasty. But Roman had been worse by far. The man had believed in governing through fear, after all. When he was king of Orphium, this place had been a bloodymess. He’d made the newly-forming Authority look gentle in comparison.
But Ares had changed things. He’d killed a lot of his uncle’s cronies, and tortured even more of them if his reconciliation was accurate. But his dynasty had come to heel. They’d improved under his rule and things were changing, if slowly.
“Yes,” I finally answered. “I do. Changing things takes a terribly long time and brutal effort. You’ve done your best.”
Ares breathed deep, his chest grazing mine. Our encounter in the laundromat thrummed in my bones, the memory a living thing. His pale green eyes narrowed as he bent over me, bringing his lips to my ears. “No, Ember, I’ve done myworst.”
Shivers ran through me, straight to the base of my spine, then lower. He straightened, his face a mask of intimidation. A Necroline prince, through and through—no,a king. It was wild how different the public version of him could be from the man I’d seen in private.
“And I would do it all again, if given the chance.” A cruel smile played at his lips as he turned away from me, his words haunting me as he walked towards the long back hallway that led to the business wing of the Carlyle.
Watching him go, my knees turned to jelly, relieved he couldn’t see the slump in my shoulders or hear the way my heart raced for him. The way he spoke had shaken something loose in me. Something I wanted to put firmly back in its place. Something I could not have, could not even dare to want. I closed my eyes against the storm of emotions brewing within me and waited for the elevator.
Upstairs, I found everyone waiting awkwardly for me in the parlor, which meant I had to pull myself together on the double. I shooed them all away, motioning for Lara to follow me with the girl. The child was still asleep as I showed Lara the room I’d made up for Sera, decorated in the soft silvery tones she’d always loved, with tiny little stars on the ceiling that glowed softly in the dark.
Lara set the girl down on the bed, pulling the fuzzy lavender blanket up over the girl’s feet. “Do you think she’ll be okay?”
I didn’t know much about teenage girls, so I shrugged. “I have no idea.”
Lara frowned as she left the room, leaving me to shut the door. “You did a nice job with the flat,” she said as we walked down the hall. After all her bluster from before, that was rich coming from her now. The praise still warmed me, though. I couldn’t deny that. “Can I see my room?”
My heart thumped with nerves as I pushed open the door across the hall. Lara touched the brass light switch and several lamps cast their golden glow around the deep emerald tones of the room. Lara walked to the wall of bookshelves that surrounded the windows, her mouth falling open. “These are my books…”
“They’re not,” I interrupted, not wanting her to get her hopes up. Lara was the type to annotate all her books with her deepest feelings and reactions. “Your books burned with everything else, but I did my best to replace them. I tried to find replacements for everyone’s treasures.”
Lara smiled, a soft and fragile thing. The first time I saw her, she’d given me that exact same look. She’d been stuck in a pillory in her village square, the people she loved most in the world throwing rotting vegetation at her. When we sensed her ascension, we came for her, but they’d already found her out.
The second she saw us, she knew we were there to be her family. To be the ones who would never leave her behind. Whowould accept her for who she was. Or at least that was how it was supposed to work. My chest ached. Without Max and Sera, both Lara and Rhi coming home felt temporary.
It hurt too much to think of them leaving me again. As Lara flopped down on the giant bed, I backed away, whispering, “I am glad you like it.”
I turned before I could hear her respond. I found Rhi and Avaline Reyes in the sitting room. Rhiannon sat at the writing desk by the arched floor-to-ceiling windows, scribbling away in her journal, while Avaline sat on the floor, eyes closed. I sat down in the green velvet wingback next to the writing desk and watched the necromancer for clues about what she might be doing.
Rhiannon set her pen down, sighing as she closed her journal. “Avaline is summoning spirits to safeguard the flat from surveillance tech.”
I nodded, but said nothing.
Avaline opened one eye, then grimaced. “Would it be possible for the two of you to go elsewhere? You’re making me nervous.”
Rhiannon placed her journal in her bag and nodded, rising out of the desk chair in a motion so fluid and graceful that I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Avaline had a similar reaction. Her cheeks flushed a tiny bit as she looked away.
I sighed as I followed Rhi out of the room. “Do you have to do that to people?”
She looked over her shoulder as she walked towards the kitchen. I don’t know how she knew the layout of the flat already, but it didn’t surprise me. “Do what?”
“Be all irresistible like that. You’ve got everyone under your spell,” I hissed as we entered the kitchen.
