Page 15

KLEOS

S omehow, the world continued spinning. Gideon didn’t get himself murdered in the week following Lucian’s departure, and was assigned a perfectly boring partner he hated, no doubt for the sin of not being Lucian.

The first trip to his office I had the time for between my personal research, training, and my archives hours, showed me how much Gideon missed his new friends. Poor Timothee wouldn’t ever compare, that was certain.

Seated in the familiar guest armchair, a coffee in hand, I already noted the differences in the office space—it was much, much messier, for one. It also faintly smelled of male odor, which had never been the case with Lucian.

Lucian smelled great. I was close enough to detect a lot of the notes last week, and I’d spent every moment I wasn’t researching runes over the weekend mixing various scents to attempt to recreate it, because I figured it would be the best home fragrance known to man.

So far, I’d added grapefruit, mandarin orange, white musk, mint, bergamot, cardamom, a touch of nutmeg, lavender, cinnamon, violet, geranium, vanilla, sandalwood, leather, guaiac wood, and tonka bean. It was so close, but not there yet.

Maybe I should try oakmoss and patchouli, too?

I could have just hunted him down and demanded to know what perfume he used, but I was attempting to pass for a sane person. So instead, I brewed.

The office was diffusing a minor eau de sweaty socks. Poor Gideon didn’t smell terrible , for a guy, but his work was highly physical, and he didn’t hop into the shower before coming back to the office.

Most of the upper levels of the Guard—the training facilities and the runners’ floors in particular—were rather gross. But for six blissful months, this office had been the exception. Not anymore.

The next surprise was the coffee I promptly coughed up. “What is this diluted piss ?”

I came to Gideon’s office during my breaks because his coffee was far, far superior to the one we had downstairs. This, if anything, tasted worse .

“Turned out, Lucian replaced the coffee with his own. The bastard ground it himself, and it was fucking delicious.” Staring down at his cup, Gideon looked like he might cry. That made two of us. “This is what the department keeps in stock.”

“Oh, well, I like it!” Timothee replied cheerfully. “Thank you for the drink, partner!”

I gave the coworker all the attention he deserved: none. “Then you’d better get your own coffee.”

“I guess. I just liked his .”

In short, he missed his friend. “Reach out. Ask him where he buys his likely way overpriced coffee beans. You have his number, right?”

Suddenly cheered up, Gideon grinned. “Yeah. He also gave me this before leaving on Friday.”

He tossed me a small object that hit my forehead and fell into my lap.

“Ouch!” Rubbing the bruise, I retrieved the stone, smaller than a pinky.

It was plain, smooth, and black, but contained one single rune, carved in gold.

Laguz . Its primary meaning was water, but I just knew that this specific one was even more obvious: it stood for L .

Lucian’s signature rune. “What is it?” I asked softly.

There was an enchantment at work beyond the rune, despite the smoothness and simplicity of the stone. It tickled my fingers, demanding to be studied, torn apart and put back together. Whatever magic was at work, it felt…perfect. No flaw to untangle.

My cousin beamed. “An emergency button, in case I get in trouble. I press it, call his name, and he’d get my location to portal in.

Lucian says he’d charge me his usual rate for saving my skin—which would bankrupt me.

He’s a hundred gold an hour. But it’s nice he gave me a way to contact him like that, you know?

I doubt he distributes these to everyone he knows. ”

I was too shocked by the former declaration to focus on his point. “A hundred gold an hour ?”

“Yeah, I mean, people hire him to do crazy stuff. Fighting demons, chatting with gods, I don’t know what else. And he owns several successful businesses too, so, to be worth his time?—”

“A hundred gold an hour,” I parroted.

It was my turn to feel like I could cry.

As a trainee, I made three golds per hour—twenty-one per day—and that was generous . Three golds were about thirty dollars. Working for the Guard was one of the most prestigious careers in the Vale.

A fully qualified archivist could hope to make between thirty and a hundred a day depending on the department they were assigned to.

The researchers who assessed dangerous objects and removed, contained their curse, or morphed them to make them harmless, earned the most, but it was a highly dangerous profession, almost as hazardous as being in the field as a protector.

Protectors often switched to the high archives before retirement.

That wasn’t my goal. I wanted to end up in the library, so I would never, ever, see as much money per year as that man made in a week. And that was if he took it easy, five days a week, eight hours per day max.

I didn’t really care about money as such.

At my parents’ insistence, I still lived at home, so I didn’t need tons of cash.

I quite liked not relying on my father’s fortune for things.

In the outside world, children might live on the understanding than the previous generation’s wealth would one day end up theirs, but that wasn’t necessarily true in Highvale.

My father had the money to purchase plenty of rejuvenating elixirs—the kind of potions that actually worked, not the creams and serums sold by the cosmetics industry to the general public.

They cost a fortune—close to a million per annum—but that wasn’t a problem for him.

At fifty, he looked around thirty-five, by choice; he could have chosen a younger age to settle on, but he liked to be taken seriously.

By contrast, my mother loved to be underestimated.

At seventy, she didn’t look a day over twenty.

The Pendros didn’t need any magical aid to stop the aging process: they were immortal, which meant that their body simply stopped aging once they reached their physical peak.

They weren’t eternal: they could still be harmed and killed, but time had no effect on my mother.

She would live forever unless someone murdered her, and my father’s estate would pass to her when he died.

As for Dad, he might not be born immortal, but there was no reason why he’d ever stop purchasing the priceless elixirs keeping him that way.

I might be their daughter and technically, heir, but that didn’t mean I would inherit anything.

I had a healthy trust fund, but it would only turn over to me at thirty-five, or upon my marriage.

In short, I didn’t have much more cash than my peers.

My salary was enough to cover what I wanted or needed.

But a hundred an hour meant…More. Gowns that I picked myself, rather than those my mother bought for me, for the dozens of balls we had to attend yearly.

Gorgeous, shiny, precious jewels. The kind I stared at in the windows of stores I didn’t even dare enter. So many shoes. Hell, fucking diamonds .

How old was he? Twenty-five? Under thirty, certainly. People could look young forever here, but even from a distance, I had seen him in his teens, when I was a tween, so he couldn’t be much older than me. Twenty-something, and worth millions. Billions .

I knew he was wealthy, of course, but I never stopped to think about just how wealthy. Now I knew he was one-hundred-gold-an-hour kind of wealthy. The very concept was hard to add up.

No wonder Lucian’s mother dressed like a queen.

“He found his salary here laughable,” Gideon said with a snort. “And he earned as much as me.”

“I earn sixty per day,” Timothee cheerfully divulged. “That’s a fair bit more than when I was with the inquisitor squad. I must say, I’m rather glad to have been promoted to protector—and with the great Gideon for a partner!”

Gideon sent him a disgusted look.

My cousin was usually so nice to everyone, but Timothee was filling shoes far, far too big for him.

In every sense. The poor guy was as tall as me, and about the same weight class, too.

Not that it mattered: sorcerers could look weak and still be powerful enough to lift mountains without breaking a sweat.

But I had to wonder how he’d survived Auntie Hilda.

I gave the rune stone back to Gideon reluctantly. I wanted to hold it a little longer. See if I could guess the spells. “I’m glad you have it. No matter the cost—if you’re in danger, use it. Please.”

“I will,” he assured me. “Little chance of that happening for the next few days. I’m handling something here.”

I blinked. “Here, in town?”

That was unusual for protectors in general, and for Gideon in particular. They handled great threats. The way our city was shielded, we didn’t tend to see anything more than petty crime—magical or otherwise.

“Murders,” he growled, lip curling up to show fangs.

Gideon took after Uncle Leo, not his dragon mother in most things.

He was easygoing, laughed readily, and had his dad’s golden blond looks and deep tan.

His skin was rather tougher than the average person’s, but he couldn’t shift.

That said, when pissed—which was extremely rare—his teeth could extend into fangs, and his nails, into sharp, deadly claws.

I’d even seen him get beautiful blue-white glowing scales like his mother’s beast form once or twice.

The dark look was gone in an instant.

“Three so far, one per week,” he said. “It was on the inquisitor’s plate until the third, but it’s starting to worry Mom.”

Fuck . “The same killer?”

“Looks like. It’s ritualistic.” Gideon opened the file on top of his pile on the left and slid it across the desk to me.

I was surprised at first, but after all, I was officially part of the Guard.

“Actually, I meant to ask you to look at this. Only this page, Kleos. I don’t want you to get nightmares.”

Too late.

I stared at the page in horror. It was filled with runes.

The same senseless runes underneath my blazer, from too many different cultures, with no clear logic. All in red.

“What’s this?” I couldn’t recognize my voice.

“The three bodies—two guys, one girl. They were all covered in these. Hundreds of them. The inquisitor got a specialist from the archives to take a look, but they said it made no sense, that the runes didn’t belong together. You’re good at runes, so I wanted you to look.”

Murders.

With these runes all over.

This could have been me.

This would have been me if I hadn’t been able to stop it.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I needed to think. I needed to get out of here.

Logic dictated that I immediately strip down to my tank top and explain what happened to me, but with Timothee in the room, I couldn’t. If I did, my parents would hear about it, I was certain of that. And they would make everything even worse.

“I don’t understand them,” I tell him honestly. “But I’ll look into it.”

I already was researching them.

“I need to talk to you later. Can you come to mine for dinner?” I asked lightly, hoping he wasn’t alarmed enough to make me spill the beans.

“I don’t need a formal dinner to give you my approval, Kley. He’ll be great to you. Far more than the endless line of suitors your mother makes you date.”

“ What ?” I practically screamed.

He frowned. “So, you’re not buttering me up to tell me you’re banging Lucian?”

I gaped. “No, you bloody idiot. I don’t even know the guy.”

“Damn.” He scratched his head. “I was so certain I felt a vibe. Too bad. You guys would fit.”

I rolled my eyes. “Doesn’t he have a girlfriend anyway?”

Lucian shrugged. “Since you mention it, that never came up. Who knows? Would be nice to have him in the family, though.”

I snorted. “My mother would have a heart attack.”

At that, my cousin grinned. “Exactly what I said.”

I tossed his rune stone back at him and closed the file. Part of me was tempted to turn the pages, see more. But this was going to give me enough to think about without adding visual horrors.

I’d talk to him about it over dinner.

And Silver. Silver would kill me if she heard something that important was going on and I only informed Gideon.

Who was I kidding? The moment she heard I hid it for three weeks, I was dead anyway.