Page 27 of Until the End of Ever (To the Cruel Gods #2)

LUCIAN

B ehind the smiles, the sweetness, the healing energy, Kleos was evil. That was the only explanation for why she decided to torture me with that backless silky top.

She’d wrapped herself in her shawl, but I saw peeks of her bare skin every time she moved at brunch. In public. Where I was supposed to keep my hands to myself.

She liked me. Kleos Valesco liked me, Lucian Regis. And she wasn’t running. Not after hearing words like permanent and serious.

I was going to keep her. I was going to bind us together until the end of time. I was going to spend the rest of my life adoring her, worshipping her.

“Are you ready?” Kleos asked a beaming Elias as we settled inside Ronan’s carriage.

I made a mental note to look into getting my own.

When it was just me, it was convenient to borrow Ronan’s or my parents’, but Kleos deserved her own carriage.

She clearly liked horses. I’d have to get started on a stable.

There was enough room in the ground garden for one.

I made a mental note to ask Ronan how he handled his.

“Excited. We didn’t have schools back home. We learned by watching. Once of age, we could earn…” He looked up, his finger on his chin as he considered the word. “ Apprenticeships .”

That was the only term he returned to his native language for.

I whistled. “You’ve learned to speak English so fast.”

Elias grinned. “Languages are easy. There are many in our world. Each tribe has their own. There is a ritual performed on children. We all understand each other.”

So it was a skill one could acquire through magic, not a gift inherent to dragons. “Do you know the ritual?” I leaned in eagerly.

“I’ve seen it done to many three-year-olds. Chants, and a potion so full of honey we can barely taste the blood. But I don’t know it precisely.”

I sighed. The likelihood of a ritual from his world making it here was low. But understanding every language—learning them overnight, being understood across worlds? That might just be worth a trip to Terra.

“Can you learn to write as well as speak?”

Elias grimaced. “With time. Writing is harder. It depends on the differences in script.”

I palmed my breast pocket for the miniature journal and resized it before handing it to him. “Is your alphabet different?”

“Much,” he replied, frowning.

I handed him a pen, that ever-curious part of me always eager for knowledge. “Write something. I’ll write it in English underneath.”

He started to scribble along a blank page. Next to him, Kleos gasped. “That’s Runic!”

“What?” I slid to their bench on Elias’s other side—I didn’t trust myself to think about anything except touching her if I sat closer to Kleos.

Indeed, the boy was scribbling runes, mixed up, inside out, added together to form words and sentences.

Kleos and I exchanged a knowing look over his head.

“I wrote, my name is Elias, son of Elunia. I am sixteen winters and have found my beast. Could you write it for me?”

I absentmindedly did as I was told, and then added the alphabet underneath. “These are our letters. If your runes are like ours, do they work phonetically? And then some runes are words in themselves.”

He dipped his head. “Yes, this is the sound ba , but also berkana , for nourishment and fertility. They use it to calm the anxious, and ease the births.”

“Our berkana’s the same!” Kleos gasped.

Soon, we were comparing all his runes, finding them similar, equivalent, or in some cases identical.

With that knowledge, Elias assimilated the alphabet with ease, and started to practice writing his name, along with a few words.

His letters were oddly sharp, yet elegant, and he made several mistakes, relying on sounds, but for someone who had not even known the existence of English yesterday, he was still downright prodigious.

By the time we’d rolled up to the entrance of Night Academy, I intended to tell Ronan he’d be an idiot not to enroll the kid straight to college, no matter his current level in written studies. He’d catch up, fast .

The carriage wasn’t even checked at the gate, given the fact that the doors bore Ronan’s sigil of a moth with wings shaped like crescent moons, and a body reminiscent of a pen, with two crescents on top and at the bottom.

The official Nachtigall sigil was two crowned nightingales in flight with the same crescents; they looked alike at first glance, but he hadn’t kept many of the original symbols.

That made me think about the Regis sigil, chosen by Cassius and improved upon by my mother: a full moon with a spiral within, flanked by two crescents, and intertwined snakes fighting over a skull underneath, representing both Hypnos and Thanatos, our patriarch.

Mother added the moons, believing the snakes were a bit too dramatic.

I never made use of it; I was the spare after all.

Damian owned the signet ring with the full sigil.

Mine was a simple ouroboros. I wondered if it was time to pull a Ronan, so to speak, and design my own.

Unlike my friend, I didn’t have any issue with my family; it wouldn’t be an attempt to put distance between us.

But Kleos wasn’t represented in my sigil. I didn’t like it.

It occurred to me that I was treating the matter like the woman was already bound to me, when she’d only agreed to let me regularly shove my cock inside her less than a day ago. And after three seconds of deliberation, I decided I was just fine with my approach.

At the end of the long alley flanked by the oldest light trees in the entire underside, the carriage stopped by the gate of the main facility.

Elias hopped out first, followed by Kleos. I could see the same look of speechless wonder on both of their faces, and I remembered it was Kleos’s first time on Malice, too.

Malice Avenue, through the gate of Loki, only housed three institutions.

The Frejr House was the only hospital in the underside.

There were several smaller healing houses every other avenue, but any serious ailments were treated in the four-floor edifices, twice as large as the Hall of Truce above ground, and just as opulent.

Opposite, there was the town hall, though any true underside event took place in the town circle.

However vast and magnificent, the hall wasn’t nearly large enough to house all of the underside.

It was the place where the leaders gathered to discuss community matters, before anything was shared with the vale.

Damian held the Magister office in there.

Neither were as important as Night Academy.

They say it takes a village to raise a child; we unders took the adage literally. Night Academy was larger than the entire vale. I was certain even Ronan was incapable of naming every one of the large gothic halls.

Raised and educated by Cassius out of necessity in my young years, I’d never attended the kindergarten, elementary school, middle school or high school, let alone their dorms, so I didn’t know my way around a good half of the place.

Ronan’s carriage stopped in front of administration, one of the only lower buildings—as it wasn’t designed to comfortably fit hundreds of thousands of students, all of their professors and staffs.

That meant this place gave a fairly good view of the entire campus with the dozens of high towers and domes, each grander and the last.

“This is insane. You could fit all of the vale here twice , and it’s a school?”

I grinned, sliding my arm right behind the small of her back to encourage her to walk inside. And just maybe because I needed to make contact with her bare skin like I needed air. My palm buzzed with an excess amount of energy the moment I touched her, as usual.

“Each of the avenues through the gates have half as many inhabitants as the vale itself. That means a lot of people—and consequently, a lot of kids.”

Kleos sucked in a breath. “That makes no sense. I mean, if there are that many unders, why don’t you guy win every election, for one?”

I snorted, but the reply came from Ronan, greeting us with a brief smile. “We would. If elections were what one might call fair. Ah, Elias. Glad to have you with us. If you’d follow me.”

Kleos’s mouth fell open again. Taking pity on her, I brought my mouth close to her ear.

Damn all the hells, she smelled even better than usual.

“That’s Workplace Ronan. Spooky, I know, but you’ll get used to it.”

“He’s not smiling. Ronan’s always smiling,” she insisted, sounding completely confused.

I couldn’t blame her. I was pretty shocked the first time I’d witnessed that nonsense too. “Not at work, he doesn’t. The kids are between, well, three and twenty-something. And they all need to take him seriously.”

Somehow, he pulled it off. I never understood how they didn’t all see through the mask.

We followed them at a distance, Kleos attempting to not gasp each time we saw an interaction between Ronan and one of the students.

We escorted Elias to a room where two men and a woman were seated behind a desk, and I couldn’t help the wave of protectiveness that overtook me. I caught the eye of one of the professors, and saw them flinch at my glare.

“Professor Night,” a pretty girl said with a respectful bow just as Ronan closed the exam room.

Ronan smiled professionally—another mindfuck to anyone who knew him. His “I’m a Teacher” smile was nothing like the infuriating, knowing grin we all knew. “Good morning Manuella. How’s the essay on confirmed myths coming?”

She scrunched up her nose. “I mean, Professor Bucknail didn’t even properly define confirmed . The Loch Ness monster is confirmed as per many a tale and sightseeing, and we all know that was just kelpie sighting…”

Ronan crooked a brow. “That sounds like a promising conclusion, wouldn’t you say?”

“Oh!” the girl blinked. “Thank you, Professor.” Then she happily trotted away, beaming.

“You’re… good at this,” Kleos accused him.

Because we were alone, the buffoon smirked and shrugged, back to himself. “No need to sound so shocked. I’ve taught kids since my PhD—for about five years last spring. Of course I’m good .”

“B—but,” she stuttered. “You’re serious! And what’s with Professor Night ?”

Ronan snorted. “You’d think I’d ask a bunch of non-German kids to spell Nachtigall? I’m not a confirmed monster. Now, you guys cut it a little close, so we’d better head to the auditorium.”

He set off towards the back exit of the administration building, and crossed the grounds to one of the main study halls, reserved for those specializing in theoretical magic—where he and I used to study.

“The official story,” Ronan explained as we followed, my hand still on Kleos’s back where I liked it , “is that we’re studying an unsolved criminal case—which is close to the truth.

They’ve all signed a privacy contract in blood.

I prepped the materials. Feel free to correct me as I present it.

I’ve let the kids know we have a trainee from the Guard on hand to answer questions.

You, Lucian, are the wallet. You offered a hundred golds to the most inventive, feasible theory. ”

“Only a hundred?” I huffed. “Perish the thought. The world is going to think I’m going skint.”

“A hundred golds is what I earn per week,” Kleos muttered.

Ronan and I both stared at her, horrified.

“She’s joking,” my friend choked. “I need to believe that’s a joke.”

“It better fucking be. That’s practically slavery.”

Kleos laughed brightly, the picture of levity. “Posh gits. It’s a fairly good salary for the vale.”

Ronan brought his hand to his temple, massaging it. “I need to lie down. Or have a drink. Or both .”

“Why in Nyx’s realm would you slave away at the Guard for that pittance?” Why would anyone, but particularly someone as egregiously talented as Kleos? She had options . Healing, translating, staying at home and looking pretty in nothing but silk and diamonds, to name a few.

She shrugged. “It’s truly a decent salary. Silver manages on it, with a mortgage and all her bills. In my case, as I’m staying at home, I can keep all of it for fun. It’s enough.”

“Irrelevant,” Ronan snapped. “The point is you’re worth more. Come here and teach—well, anything you’d like. Baking, healing, thinking. I’ll pay you ten times as much.”

“You’re joking,” she said.

Before Ronan could articulate how very much he was not joking, I butted in. He wasn’t going to steal her from under me, damn him.

“You have your hands full with the ritual mess right now, and your…employment supports that,” I grunted.

“Let’s reassess after we’ve figured it out.

It’s not like you have the time for a brand-new job on top of researching a way to stay alive.

” I shot Ronan a cautionary glare. “And when you do, there are many positions you could consider in the underside.”

On top of me. Underneath. Sideways. So many positions.

Ronan’s face said he perfectly understood where my head was at.

“I mostly work in the Guard because of Silver. It’s her dream to be a protector. I didn’t really have a dream, so I figured it’d be nice to work with my best friend and my cousin.”

“Silver would understand if you chose to do something for yourself, though. Any friend should,” Ronan added, just as we reached wooden doors. “All right. Show time.”

Then his smug expression disappeared and he walked in.