Page 6 of Burn Bright (Cobalt Empire #1)

“It is painfully the other way around,” Charlie says.

“Ben can be the judge of that.” Eliot adjusts the strap on his shoulder and gives me a short once-over, as if gauging whether I’m about to bolt.

“Seeing as how you’ll be living with us now.

Front row seat to the chaos.” His smile is genuine.

It draws mine out. “Welcome to the bachelor pad.” He raises and lowers his brows.

“Where sins are made and prayers are kept.”

It’s a true bachelor pad in the fact that all my brothers are single and in their twenties.

As am I…except for being nineteen. I don’t feel my age, though. The past few years, I feel like I’ve aged about ten more.

“I’ll show you to your room, young prince,” Eliot says, turning on his heels like we’re in a play. For him, life is one beautiful stage.

I start to smile, but it wanes fast at a realization. “My room?”

He walks backward, eyes on mine. “You think we’d let you sleep on the floor?”

I was hoping.

A rock wedges in my ribs, and I follow Eliot to his side of the apartment, just as Charlie calls out to me, “Does Beckett know you’re already here?”

“No.” I stop in place. “I told him not to worry about picking me up.”

Charlie curses under his breath, drops his feet to the ground, and immediately calls our brother.

Phone to his ear. “He’s already here…okay.

Il est énervé contre moi.” He’s angry with me.

Long pause. “Je ne peux pas être tenu responsable de lui.” I can’t be held responsible for him.

“Oui, oui. à plus tard.” Yes, yes. See you soon. He hangs up.

“Beckett has a performance tonight,” I tell Charlie.

“He’s taking tonight off for you.”

I wince. “I told him not to.”

“Well, congratulations. You’re one of the few people he would sacrifice an evening performance for.”

Fuck. I grimace and expel heat from my lungs with a big exhale. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I don’t care what it makes you feel,” Charlie says. “It’s just the truth.”

“Brutal, brother,” Eliot says with less levity.

“I warned all of you that I wasn’t going to be soft on him.”

Irritation scrapes down my neck, and like word vomit, I sling back, “I wasn’t expecting you to be Maximoff.

” Our older cousin who has an off-again, on-again friendship with Charlie.

I think they’re currently on , but there is one undying truth: where Maximoff is purely good, Charlie is purely evil. Day and night. Hero, villain.

For some reason, I got stuck with the villain brother.

Charlie is equally as irritated as I am now that I brought up Moffy. “Sorry he’s not here to coddle you like you’re twelve.”

“Only you would think coddling is equivalent to being kind .”

“I’m unkind. Moffy is the best. Moffy is the greatest,” Charlie says in a mocking, disinterested tone. “Don’t you get sick of smelling his shit? Or do you really, truly believe it doesn’t stink?” He cocks his head at me. “You’re going to be in a world of hurt when you realize he’s not perfect.”

I never thought he was. But at the very least, Maximoff Hale has never made me want to punch my fist through a fucking wall.

This time, I ignore Charlie. “Where are we going?” I ask Eliot.

“This way.” He guides me down the short hall and opens a door. “After you.” He extends his arm, and I stride inside…his bedroom.

The whole space is engulfed by an ornate four-poster bed with a thick burgundy canopy and even darker bedding.

Squished in the corner is a reading nook, and beneath heavy curtains lies a desk that houses piles upon piles of manuscripts and treasured copies of Poe.

It’s familiar and as gothic as his childhood bedroom. The walls are even the same blood-red.

He drops my duffel. “It’ll take me about ten minutes to strip the bed and put on a fresh set of sheets, and I’ll have all this cleared out.” He gestures to manuscripts—what I assume are plays. He used to be in a prestigious theatre troupe in Hell’s Kitchen, but that job fell apart late last year.

He grabs a cardboard box from the floor. I come forward to stop him. “I don’t want your room,” I tell him.

“Is it the paint? Tom said it might scare you. You can always paint it blue.” He wears an endearing smile. “For the Empire.”

I laugh, the sound light in my chest. “Yeah, for the Empire. Because I fit in so well.” I’m not bitter about being the odd one out. This is just a fact to me.

“None of us are the same, brother,” Eliot reminds me. “That’s what makes us gods among men.”

“I thought it was just being born from the Rose Calloway and Connor Cobalt.”

“The mother and father of gods,” he hollers like he’s in a stadium announcing their entrance.

I smile, but it’s harder to hold these days. “I’m not displacing you, man. I can’t.”

“We don’t mind. Tom and I willingly shared a room ninth through tenth grade.”

“You’re not in high school anymore.”

“Ah, but to some, I have Peter Pan syndrome. So in certain eyes, I will never grow up.” He opens his hand with this reasoning. “So what say you?”

“I say I can’t. ”

He tosses the empty box aside, then clutches my face with two strong hands. “You can.”

“I can’t.”

Eliot squints. “You can.” He nods to himself like it’ll process within me.

“I can’t.”

“I don’t think I like this game.”

“Probably because it’s not a game.”

“Vrai, vrai, vrai.” True, true, true.

Then the door flings open. “Dude, I can’t fucking believe him…” Tom trails off as he looks up from his phone and sees me. “Oh, you’re here.”

Eliot punches Tom in the arm.

“Oh you’re here!” Tom changes his tone with fake excitement.

I rub the side of my neck. “Don’t worry, it won’t be for long,” I mention.

“What? No, no .” Tom raises his hands with the phone. “Sorry, Ben. Like I am super fucking happy you’re living with us. Trust. Please. But I’m just dealing with the biggest pain in my ass.”

Eliot leans on a bedpost and muses, “Is he a pain in the ass because you want him there?”

“I’m not talking about Phoenix, and no —no, dude, I don’t want to sleep with Phoenix either.” Tom groans all the way to the bed and plops face-down into the rumpled comforter.

He’s number five.

Tom Carraway—he’s eleven-months younger than Eliot, and they’ve been thick-as-thieves since they were kids. Eliot was right when he said none of us are the same. They might be alike in how they play with fire, but Eliot is usually the one who goes up in flames.

It feels like I should be closer to Tom since I’m sixth-born and he’s fifth, but he spent his whole life at Eliot’s side.

I can understand why.

Eliot knows how to make people feel extraordinary.

So many times, he’s made me feel like I’m everything.

Number one brother. Best person on the planet.

A star in an undying constellation. Then there are times where I feel like he’s forgotten I even exist. The shadow he leaves in his wake is unbearable. Everyone wants to be in his light.

I pick up my duffel while I ask Tom, “Who’s bothering you?”

He rolls onto his back, forearm over his eyes. He looks the most like Charlie. With the same golden-brown hair, but Tom’s is shaggier and often hangs in his eyes. He has on Vans and a The All-American Rejects band tee. Nothing that Charlie would wear.

“No, today is not about Alfie Bugsby,” Tom says, naming the problem. He rises up like he’s a zombie awakening from the dead. “It’s about you. I’m completely focused on you, dude.”

Honestly, I don’t want him to be. My brothers have lives outside of the mess I’m fucking dropping on them by even being here, and I don’t want them to change their worlds for me at all.

“Alfie Bugsby,” I repeat. “Isn’t that your new drummer? The one that your label put in your band?”

“That’s the one.” Tom physically winces at his phone. “He’s seriously trying to rewrite three of my songs. After he already changed the tempo to our EP live . Fucking live , Ben. On stage at Tangerine. He screwed the entire show. At this rate, we’ll never release our first album.”

“Let’s not doom The Carraways,” Eliot says.

“My band is doomed. The second I didn’t choose Phoenix as my drummer because I was worried he was too hot and he’d distract me—it was doomed.” Tom gives me a distraught look. “You don’t listen to them, do you? The band that Phoenix plays drums in?”

“Nothing Personal?” I ask.

“He knows the name of the band,” Tom says to Eliot.

“He knows the name,” Eliot echoes like this isn’t good.

I almost laugh. “You vent about them at every Wednesday Night Dinner,” I remind Tom.

“Never by name.”

“Their rock single is also all over the radio.”

“When did you start listening to the radio?” he interrogates, like this has to be some elaborate ploy to cause him distress.

I lift my shoulders. “I listen to a lot of things, including your music. Which I love.” This barely edges him away from a cliff. The Carraways’ EP is cycled in my repeat plays all the time. It’s just more emo-punk like My Chemical Romance and not as mainstream as Nothing Personal.

“Radio is banned,” Eliot announces. “No one’s allowed to turn it on until the band that shall not be named breaks up.”

Tom nods repeatedly like this is a great idea. Albeit dramatic, but great. It’s nuts. My family is certifiably nuts. I smile a little more. Until he says to me, “You don’t have their songs saved in your playlists, right?”

Uh, yeah.

I do.

I like all kinds of rock music, and Spotify has recommended their songs to me about a billion times. I’ve known Tom has a feud with the band, but I didn’t think he’d ever see my playlists or grill me on it.

I could lie.

I have the ability to lie and do it pretty well. Evidence: I’ve lied to my therapist before, and he never noticed. Though I’m definitely not the best liar out of my siblings. Being cunning and skilled enough to deceive receives applause among Cobalts. It’s a positive attribute.

But I don’t love lying, especially to them.

Which is why skirting around the truth of my empty bank account is going to be impossibly fucking hard.

I thumb at my cheek where I have a beauty mark. “So I might’ve saved a couple of their songs?—”

Tom groans before I even finish and flops backward on the bed. “Fuuuuck me, dude.”

“So incestuous of you,” Eliot banters.

“Shut up,” Tom moans into his palms. “Ben Pirrip, you’re giving them listens, numbers, hits .”

Eliot tilts his head to me. “Don’t listen to the enemy’s music. Solidarity, baby brother.”

“I’ll delete it.” I pull out my phone and easily remove all traces of Nothing Personal. I’m just reminded of how much Tom and Eliot eat, breathe, and shit loyalty . It runs through all our veins to certain degrees, and theirs is to the extreme.

I tense when I shove my phone back in my pocket.

Tom has very bad history with Harriet Fisher. If he knew I’m meeting up with her for a job interview…yeah, this isn’t going to end well. But no one gets anywhere being careful.

So I can delete a song I like for Tom. But I can’t delete a person. Which means I suck at the whole loyalty thing.

Probably because I can’t be pressured to do anything I don’t want to do. I have a titanium-strong backbone.

Which does make me a Cobalt.

I’m just not a very good one.

“House meeting!” Charlie calls from the living room. “Beckett is home!”

Tom springs off the bed and pushes his hair out of his eyes.

Eliot follows.

I’m the last one out—but I’m trapped for a beat by the humongous, ornately framed painting on the wall.

My eyes grow wide at the dark oils illustrating the sack and annihilation of an ancient Roman city.

A storm brews in the background as warriors kill and seize prisoners.

A woman in white is being yanked backward by an aggressor.

Marble pillars are crumbling. A bridge is broken.

People drown in the water. Buildings and boats are on fire.

It’s The Destruction of the Empire by Thomas Cole.

The fourth of five paintings in his The Course of Empire series. Our parents gave us each a replica of a particular one. They depict the rise and fall of a civilization. This one—the one given to Tom and Eliot—has always disturbed me.

It’s an empire at war.

“BEN!” they all call.

I tear myself away. “Yeah, I’m coming!” Duffel on my shoulder, I go to my brothers.