Page 32 of Until the End of Ever (To the Cruel Gods #2)

KLEOS

“ A re you sure I can just show up in jeans? You guys look formal.”

It was the third time I’d bugged Lucian about my outfit, so he only smiled and kissed the back of my hand.

Ronan, seated on the opposite bench, chuckled. “Darling, if you believe Lucian or I own jeans, you don’t know us that well yet. This is as casual as we get.”

Now that I paid attention, Lucian did look a little less regal than usual, in a soft black leather jacket and blue fitted shirt.

“Excuse you, I own jeans,” Lucian protested.

Ronan snorted. “I’ve known you for twenty-four of your twenty-seven years, Lucian Regis, and you’ve never worn jeans in my presence.”

Lucian didn’t miss a beat. “I’ve never seen you in a lacy thong, and I still know you own half a dozen in your size.”

Ronan opened his mouth, presumably to riposte, then simply shrugged. “I mean, point. Anyway, Kleos, you look perfect. People who own jeans—and don’t consider them the equivalent of intimate lingerie—do wear them to meetings in the town hall.”

I grinned at the two friends, amused by their banter. “You guys are like siblings.”

Not unlike Gideon and me.

“Perish the thought. My sibling is a self-important dick,” Lucian said.

“You can say that again,” Ronan agreed. “I wouldn’t have minded someone growing up, though. A little brother or sister would have been nice.”

His wistful smile was almost as uncharacteristic as the professor persona.

“How about Lucky?” I wondered. “You said your parents fostered her.”

“She was twelve when her family passed away—I was already out of the house. I mean, she’s always been around, as we were neighbors, but presumably, a sibling would have been a constant presence, you know?” He looked out the window as he spoke. “Maybe the old house wouldn’t have been as lonely.”

I nodded. “I’m glad I had Gideon. My house was pretty cold, too.”

“You guys can have Damian for a week. Just say the word, he’s yours. You’ll see you missed nothing.”

I laughed. “What’s so wrong with your brother?”

“Everything,” Lucian and Ronan replied together.

“By the way, mentioning Lucky reminded me: she told me yesterday that she was looking for a few ingredients. She started brewing last night; her spell should be ready in a day or two.”

“I have a full stock of potion ingredients,” Lucian pointed out. “She could have asked me.”

“Yeah, she said the potion’s pretty low grade—the kind of things kids can get ahold of. You wouldn’t stock spider eggs or kelpie hair.”

Lucian wrinkled his nose. “They’re not useful for any potion worth my time.”

“Precisely.”

“I’ve worked with kelpie hair as a child,” I said, remembering brewing with my grandmother. “What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s…” After thinking a second, Lucian settled on, “Cheap. Kelpie are magical horses, yes, but frankly, some people even consider them shifters. Their nature is too changeable to offer the strength needed for a powerful potion. For the permanence ointment I apply to fabric, I use unicorn hair. Kelpie would be weaker.”

“Therefore, if she’d raided Lucian’s stock, Lucky would just have found fancy-ass components. But she’s not trying to create a permanent, or even particularly strong potion. She doesn’t want to send you to your ancestral plane forever.”

I nodded, remembering enough of my old classes to understand that the same effect could be gained when swapping every ingredient in a potion, or every component in a spell, but it changed the intensity of the result. Just like writing runes on paper, stone or skin could have different effects.

“We’re here,” Lucian announced just as the carriage halted.

“Here” was the same street at Night Academy, but this time our destination was opposite the hospital, in the great golden domed hall he’d indicated last Wednesday.

Outside, a steady stream of colorful people walked in, greeting each other. Ronan’s carriage wasn’t the only one, so we had a little walk to join the queue. I stopped at the back of the line, while both men kept walking.

As one, they turned to look at me.

“Is she queuing ?” Ronan asked, making it sound like a rare, potentially contagious disease.

“We’re all going to the same place, aren’t we? No sense in cheating.”

Lucian released a long-suffering sigh. “She’ll learn, eventually. I think.”

Each of them slid to my flank and grasped one of my elbows.

“Kleos, darling,” Ronan said, “we walk in first because if we join the queue, people will be confused and slightly offended.”

“Offended?” I repeated.

“Each founding family has a certain set of duties—duties we all perform. In exchange, the general population considers it their honor to celebrate us. Throw a city-wide party every time we have a birth or marriage, mourn with us at funerals. And yes, they also let us pass first.”

I shook my head. “Their honor, really? Don’t you mean, they feel like they have to, so they do it reluctantly?”

“Erm.” A complete stranger, unashamedly eavesdropping on our conversation, weighed in.

“Celebrating the founders is a privilege, actually.” The woman, with feathers instead of hair and eerie corvid eyes, held her head up straight.

“They no longer accept tributes, tithes, or even taxes for their services, though they’ve never stopped performing their duties to our city.

Respecting them is the least the rest of us can do. ”

Murmurs of assent came from everyone within hearing range, and I was yet again struck anew by how much I truly didn’t know about the underside. About Highvale’s heritage.

“Come on, let’s get you inside before you piss off someone with claws or fangs out,” Lucian said.

No longer questioning it, I let the two men guide me straight to the entrance of the town hall.

Like many staples in the vale, it was a monument to the gods.

Each mural, sculpture, and painted ceiling was praising one or another of the great myths I’d read during my life, but unlike the ones we could find up on the surface, these did not solely focus on the Olympian divinities.

To my left, one detailed white and blue fresco clearly showed Hades, and his great helm, holding a bident pointed down towards the earth, and Zeus, holding his lightning bolt up high, with Poseidon last, summoning a wave with his trident.

All three brothers, ready to fight. The rest of the art showed their enemies, though I couldn’t for the life of me decide if it was about the Titanomachy or the gigantomachy.

The gods had waged too many wars to keep them straight.

But on the opposite wall was an eerily similar mural, likely by the same artist based on the style.

This one was in color and showed another three brothers.

At the center, one eye shut, Odin pointed a sword toward an unseen enemy, a raven on each of his shoulders.

He was also flanked by two other gods. At first, I assumed, his brothers Vili and Vé, but like Poseidon, one of the two icons seemed to be calling to water.

It must have been Njorer , then. I frowned, confused as to what could have united a Vanir god with the king of the Aesir.

Probably giants. The third god, I had the hardest time identifying.

I wanted to ask Lucian, but the moment I turned to him, it occurred to me that we were in a social setting and I was being rather rude, staring at the walls rather than the many friendly people.

I tore my gaze from the mural, forcing myself to pay attention.

The tall man with golden brown skin and amber eyes chatting with Ronan and Lucian was someone I’d also seen across ballrooms. His first name, I’d never found out, but I was fairly certain he was a Hyperion.

“It’s Loki,” Lucian whispered to me. “See the snake and wolf by his side?”

I grinned. “Did you read my mind?”

“I wondered who it was for ages. I figured you would, too.” Louder, he said, “Abrax, this is Kleos Valesco. Kleos, Abrax Hyperion. You’ve already met his mother Iulia, head of the temple of Apollo.”

Iulia had looked around twenty-five, and Abrax, just as beautiful, seemed to be in his thirties, so we had that in common. I offered him my hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

He looked at it for several seconds before extending his, barely touching mine before clearing his throat. “Ah, the Valesco-Pendroses. And here I thought you all stuck to the new part of town these days.”

I suppose I had to eventually meet some resistance. Not all unders were going to warm up to me. “I don’t talk for all Valescos, or Pendroses, but I rather like it here,” I replied lightly, refusing to let him bother me.

“So it appears. If you’ll excuse me, I see your charming cousin, Lucian.”

Abrax moved away fast, clearly scared to catch my valer-pox.

Watching him move towards the beautiful dark-haired woman Lucian always danced with, I said, “He’s?—”

“A pompous git,” Lucian completed for me.

Ronan offered, “A pontifical twat with too many mommy issues?”

I grinned. “I was going to go for a dick, but hey, that works too.”

We moved towards the bar like everyone else, and when the crowd parted to let Lucian and Ronan pass, I most definitely did not complain.

“A glass of the Chateau Margaux I sent ahead, please, Ed,” Ronan said.

Ed had four arms, and made use of all of them as he listened to the order.

“Aged Scotch for the old man, and—Kleos?”

I scanned the bar, the counters filled with what seemed like an impossible number of bottles.

“Do you have mead?” I asked hopefully.

Most bars didn’t stock it, but I could see literally hundreds of bottles displayed behind the various bartenders.

“Otherwise, just cider will do.”

“Poncy wine, expensive-ass boring Scotch, and mead coming right up!” he called cheerfully, winking at Ronan.

Lucian slid a gold in a tip jar, but I otherwise saw no other money exchange hands, well, anywhere.