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KLEOS

H e was funny. Who in all the realm had allowed someone like that to be funny on top of everything else?

It didn’t seem fair that someone as gorgeous, powerful, talented, wealthy, poised, could top it all off with charm. I blamed Aphrodite. Only she would have seen fit to allow the existence of Lucian Regis.

Watching him bicker with my cousin, putting up with Gideon’s shameless antics, and enjoying pulling his leg as I drank the best tea I’d ever tasted, feeling more awake than I had been for month, was just too much.

During my entire tea break, I itched to close the distance between us once again, put my hands on his skin again.

It was a familiar compulsion, one I usually felt around someone unwell.

I knew better than to trust it. Lucian was perfectly fine.

My perverted, half-obsessed self just wanted to check if his skin really felt as smooth and warm as it seemed.

A few brushes of his fingers had not in any way sated my curiosity.

“Get a grip,” I muttered to myself on my way out.

I was not going to allow myself to think about him calling me love earlier. Or the way he quite simply erased all my exhaustion, my anxiety, my worries, my dark thoughts, in the space of five seconds.

Of course, the worry came back eventually, but for one blissful moment? I was just…good. Great . I would have compared being on the receiving end of his energy to an orgasm if it was sexual at all. The sheer pleasure was innocent, but no less overwhelming.

Back in the archives, it was hard to hold on to the sliver of happiness as I yet again hit a dead end in my research.

“Out late again?” Deborah asked as she passed in front of my cubicle.

“Oh, hi. Yes—” I cleared my throat.

I only was in the archives for four hours a day—the rest of my time were spent in trainee business up on the ground floor of the Guard. I had the exact same training regimen as Silver, and our aptitudes in each field would determine our final placements.

In the archives, there were tons of options.

I could end up in the armory, or the research department, which assessed each case’s findings, the less-than-glamorous but certainly useful cataloging department, the library, or the museum, located on the ground floor of the Hall of Truce, but no less a part of the archives system.

I was hoping for the library, and that was Deb’s current position. She’d caught my interest, and was helping where she could.

I wondered if I could get a hand with this after all. I had no intention to share the details about my runes to anyone, but there was something Deb could tell me.

“It’s for a personal project, actually. I have a question, if I’m not bothering you?”

“Always.” She smiled kindly. “I was just heading out, so perfect timing for personal projects. Shoot.”

I struggled to find how to word my problem. I had too many questions, and they couldn’t be asked without some confessions first. “When I was young, I used to come to the Hall of Truce with my father sometimes. When he had to pick up a file from work, or be at a meeting.”

She nodded, unsurprised. Leander Valesco had been high magister for almost fifteen years, elected three times in a row. It was expected that his kid would have spent a fair bit of time in the building housing offices of the council, magister, and senate.

“I used to head down to the library, and I remember an old man,” I said quietly.

I had to take a moment, as the memory of the kindly old man always reading in the same corner, his worn yet handsome face pensive, never failed to bring back the horrific stench of burning flesh, the terrible sensation of being set ablaze from the inside out.

The only time I’d truly been in pain, until last week.

I cleared my throat, willing myself to focus.

“He dressed in, well, all fashioned robes, like the council, but pale blue, or perhaps sage, and velvety.” The council robes were black, red or white depending on the rank of the person.

“I’ve never seen those colors on anyone else here. And I haven’t seen him since then.”

I wasn’t allowed to return as a child, for years, but my parents had both stormed into the archives to attempt to find him, to no avail.

“He was a rune expert,” I finally told Deb. “And I really need someone with his expertise—” I interrupted myself as I took in her expression.

She was afraid .

“What?” I asked, standing.

Deborah shook her head. “No, it can’t be. I must be wrong.”

She wasn’t. I could tell. The very fact that she seemed freaked out assured me we were on the right track. Finally, finally, someone had a clue to help make sense of the whole mess. The runes on my skin, not faded at all, and maybe even what happened when I was seven.

As she seemed so nervous, I approached as carefully as I could make myself. “Whatever you can tell me, I will be nothing but grateful, Deb, I assure you. I need to understand?—”

Oh, bugger it all.

I had worn sleeves all week. It wasn’t conspicuous in October, so no one had questioned it. I just pushed the cuff up, exposing my left wrist a few inches. “Something is happening to me. Please .”

“Dear gods,” she whispered, studying the angry marks.

Glancing to her right, then left, she took my hand and dragged me all the way to her small office, firmly closing the door. “When did that happen?”

“Last week. I woke up with all those. If my mother knew, she’d make a fuss.

Not in a good way. I’m trying to figure it out, but the marks make no sense.

One is a witch’s rune, another, a damn zodiac sign, and a third, a hieroglyph, a Chinese character—horse, I think.

I can’t make heads nor tail of it. The old man—he was good at runes. And he helped me once.”

That was an understatement. The old man hadn’t helped me. He’s saved me.

I was such a curious kid, always opening a book. Strange covers, signs I couldn’t read, magic , fascinated me.

I wasn’t thinking when I opened the volume with a blue cover that both looked like leather, and an entire constellation of galaxies.

And then I burned from the inside out, my entire soul paying for my curiosity. Even at that age, I understood that it was the end. I would die. There would be nothing left of me, all for the offense of opening a book filled with more than any mortal could comprehend.

“Silly girl.”

The voice sounded in my head, and I wondered if I’d imagined it. But the next moment, I blinked, and there was a man on his knees, holding up a feathered quill, its tip pressed at my hip.

There were three freshly carved runes, one on top of the other. And I could read them. Just like I could read those from the pages of the book I’d thrown to the floor.

On my skin, there was kenaz , for knowledge, and hagalaz , for change, thurisaz , power.

And suddenly, instead of reading runes , I understood what those three meant together.

The man had written words on my skin, in the language of the universe.

May the knowledge change her, by my power.

They formed a full sentence in my head. An order.

A spell . Those three runes could have meant an infinity of things, in that exact order.

Kenaz was also creativity. Hagalaz could be used for less, destruction, hailstorms, and so many things.

But I understood my marks as easily as if the words were scribed in English.

Glancing down, I discovered the book, which had seemed so eerie and mysterious moments ago, wasn’t pretty drawings at all. It told a story. One I could read and understand, runes dancing in my mind.

Long ago, there were three brothers, who went by many names, and by their will ? —

The man shut the book, adding it to his pile, his smile reaching the corners of his eyes. “Learn from the lesson, child. Curiosity has already killed you once.”

That wasn’t right. I was alive. It didn’t kill me, did it? I was fine, and no longer in pain. In fact, I felt amazing. Before I could say so, he returned to his seat, and I never saw him again.

Soon after, it became obvious that something had changed in me.

My magic, for one. But also, I suddenly knew things I had never learned, like the history of a beautiful statue by Apollo’s temple.

Hyacinth, the god’s lover, coveted by Zephiros, and torn apart between the two forces.

I knew the boy holding Zeus’s cup was called Ganymede, and that Zeus had abducted him before making him immortal.

Hera wasn’t impressed. The accidental magic coming out of almost every child in Highvale was cute, endearing.

Mine set fire to rooms and made the children who dared tease me scream in terror.

As I replayed the events in my mind, growing up, I looked for the man many times to thank him for saving my life—unlike my parents, who intended to shout at him.

I was fifteen the first time I was allowed back in the library, and I immediately returned to the same spot.

I never found him. Frequently, I’ve looked up, catching a glimpse of something light blue from the corner of my eyes. It was never him.

But now, I needed him.

He’d know. He’d understand the runes I couldn’t read; I was certain of it.

D eborah whispered, although we were alone in her small office. “Kleos, you can’t go around asking for them . They don’t…they don’t come on demand. They all hate when we show presumption.”

“Who do you mean?” I repeated, frustrated. “I’m just talking about an old man, not a bunch of people.”

“You really don’t know?” she shook her head. “I’d thought a Pendros would have been told.”

I flushed, feeling clueless and foolish.

Deborah came from a family like my mother’s, long integrated in Highvale.

They had a tendency to keep details on the history of our city to themselves.

If we’d been closer, perhaps my mother might have educated me, but Zenya Pendros was busy, almost never home, and when she found time for me, it was reserved for lectures and unending lists of expectations, not history lessons.

“Oh, the heavens forgive me,” Deborah murmured. “The gods , Kleos. The gods come here occasionally. And if you were blessed to see one of them once, and survive it, unharmed? Take the win. Walk away. Don’t look back. And for pity’s sake, don’t demand an audience.”

Oh.

Oh .

“Well, that makes an awful lot of sense.”

I actually feel rather dumb for not adding up two and two before.

Everyone knew, in theory, that gods had built this city. Only it was hard to imagine that when people were actually talking about real, living, breathing gods.

And yet…who else could have stopped me from burning inside out with just three runes, forever altering who I had been in the process?

“The gods can appear in their temples, or in the Hall of Truce—that’s why it’s called that.

They’re all in agreement about playing nice in here,” Deborah told me.

“But it’s rare, Kleos. And most of the time?

Highly dangerous for mortals. There are stories—horrific ones.

When Zeus visits?” She shivered, shaking her head.

Could it have been Zeus? Maybe. He had a horrible reputation, but I was a kid. He was known for doing awful stuff to women—and men—not seven-year-olds.

I decided it didn’t matter. There was no hope of finding the old man now. I thought he could have been a council member who chose to not socialize at the many galas my parents made me attend, or maybe a senior librarian who’d since retired. But a god? There was no way I could get his help.

I was back to square one.