Page 134 of The Duplicity of Thieves

Killian

Aedonaeus the Asshole isn’t quite who I thought he was. It always made me want to pull my hair out listening to Eris put him on a pedestal, and I had hoped they would be together in the end. It would put me out of my misery. They seemed perfect for each other since they’re both narcissistic and cold. Tonight, I saw Aedonaeus’ true colors, not the facade he has always put up for the world. Aedonaeus isn’t shallow and charming, he’s bloodthirsty and calculated, and he loves her.

It’s a feeling I thought he was incapable of. The number of women he's escorted in and out of his life within minutes is no secret among us. Of course, the moment he saw something worth having he pounced on it and locked her to him. Jo should never have met him in the first place. Stafford wasn’t supposed to bring her here. His task was to get us as far away from everything as possible. He was supposed to smuggle her out of the Underworld and away from this shitty predetermined fate Kate had preached about, even if I wasn't a part of it. She was supposed to finally have choices.

Kate, Hekate, that know-it-all pain in the ass, warned me time and time again that one day ‘the time will come’. I never understood what she meant. All those years with half-truths and ignored questions, and she told me the truth would lie within Li Labo o Davös Hoyas. Like I knew what the hell that meant.

Despite her insane unhinged nature, Kate really was quite rational. It's what people didn’t understand about her that made her crazy. They didn’t understand what she had done to save her own people. Neither did I, but I now know how to recognize sacrifice, and Hekate sacrificed something great, even though she never spoke of it.

The way the Rem tale of Hekate goes, is that she had once been a priestess for the goddess Nyx, Nyx’s own personal dedicated witch. She warned everyone that death was coming. They say she offered salvation to our people. That she claimed the king and queen of monsters would return and save us all. When the Burning began, she offered safety to those who would follow her in the name of the Davös Hoyas.

They called Hekate a heretic. A betrayer. A disgrace. They all burned anyways. Almost all of them. The few that heeded her warning and followed became known as the Remnant. She led our ancestors to where the Republic now stands, and they cut themselves off from the rest of the world. It didn’t take long for them to find her ideas wrong, and they called her a heretic, too.

To me she wasn’t Hekate. She was Kate, the woman who was like my big sister. I didn’t know any better. Once I was old enough and learned her true identity, I inwardly defended her. I knew Hekate, and she wasn’t evil, but by then her face had been long forgotten. You spend years listening to your big sister and believing the words that spill from her mouth. She spoke of the great king and queen of monsters. They were the subject of almost every bedtime story until I was too old for them.

She traveled a lot. Each time she returned from wherever it was that she would go, she looked more haggard and wearier. Something changed in Kate once she had come back from that final trip.

Not long after that, I confronted her for the truth. Not about Jo or even about my ‘coincidental’ discovery of her. I figured out later that it was bullshit, but I didn’t mind because it brought her to me. No, Kate told me the truth about myself. I had never been anything but a pawn in her game. After that, things began to fall apart in my mind. The only thing that I knew for certain was Josie. I knew I needed to protect her from them all.

In the end, Hekate—the betrayer, the heretic, and the disgrace—ended up being exactly who they said she was; I ended up being a coward, and a traitor in my own right; But Josephine had escaped the tragedy. There’s still time. The darkness hasn’t eaten her alive. That’s a win in my book. It wasn’t all for nothing, and it’s up to me to make sure it never is.

I remember the day I found Jo so vividly. Kate had given me a package to deliver to Stafford. I always took the back way when I was making a delivery, even though I never knew the contents. The Lethe was always so serene, but that day I stopped on a whim. I was thinking about how something so beautiful could be so wretched.

When the first hand broke the surface I thought I had imagined things. It disappeared, and the Lethe was as still as glass. Not a ripple in the black depths. The next time the surface broke I dropped that package, and my brain froze. What do you do when someone starts to come from an ancient pond that’s rumored to have foul Magic?

I knew she was drowning, but I was afraid. Aedon was right: I’m a coward, and I’ve always been one. I watched the beautiful girl struggle. Jo dragged herself through the sticky black sand and expelled so much black muck from her lungs that I was sure she would be dead. The symbols on her skin oozed, and her icy blonde hair was wet and sticking to her face. She had looked up at me with silver eyes and said something that I had never understood until now. Something I never repeated to anyone, including Josie. Aedon?

I regret a lot in my life. I regret not walking away the moment I pulled Josie from the Lethe; I regret not telling her I love her from the first moment I knew it; I regret not being the one holding her hand in that tunnel; and I regret sending her, unprepared, into the world to fend for herself. Despite those regrets, I know I did something right because as much as I hate it, Jo seems happy. She not only has the protection of me, but the crown, and that’s worth a hell of a lot.

The way she stood before me, a pixie of chaos, with the crown on her head, must be a shadow of who she once was, the shadow of a queen that commanded monsters. I’ve dreamed about her every single night. Her face, shining like an iridescent moon during a solar eclipse. Seeing her again made me feel like a dead man who has risen from his grave, dusts himself off, and walks into a lake to drown just to do it all over again. That’s what loving Jo is like. I know there's violence in the way she moves, and that her delicate nature is precarious. It didn’t stop me from falling for her, and it doesn’t stop me from loving her.

How could I have been such an idiot? Thinking that she would somehow have waited around for me. That the next time we met she would be happy to see me. After all of these years, she must have thought I was dead. I knew that. It was the only way to keep her safe.

Seeing her standing there with Hades’ chosen son, Prince Aedonaeus the Asshole, was a slap in the face. I had never liked him and seeing them there fitting together perfectly was so painful that it twisted my gut. So, then I made another stupid decision out of selfishness to reveal our connection, and then another by cornering her. To take a chance and risk Eris finding out that I had any sort of connection with Jo was an asinine one. The last thing I need is her to find similarities between Jo and the box.

For now, she doesn’t think of Jo as anything but a problem. If she did then she would run straight to that bitch to tell her the newfound discovery. She already has enough reason to hate her since she's won Aeondaeus’ affection. Enough for him to marry her. If I had spent any time listening to Eris’ ramblings maybe I would have known that it was Josephine, my Josephine, that had married the prince of the Underworld. We could have avoided the entire party.

I could have protected her again and figured out how to remove Aedonaeus from the equation; free her from his womanizing grasp. Jo deserves more than some jackass with a crown. I’m so desperate to think there's nothing between them that I try to convince myself it’s true.

I’m not foolish enough to think that Jo will leave him for me. She’s restless and reckless, and that’s exactly the type of person Aedonaeus has always been. He loves creating quiet chaos, and Jo is loud about it. The perfect fucking pair. But he revealed himself when he said no one has the Grimoire, because I know she does. She doesn’t trust him, and even though it’s selfish, I can’t help but think about putting a wedge in that gap and driving it deep.

I can still see Aedonaeus’ face, looking to her for constant reassurance and validation. He watched every move she made and adjusted accordingly. He had cornered me and threatened me, trying to protect her from me, the man who has spent his life trying to protect her. It’s a side of him I’ve never seen before. No one has. She's won over the Underworld without lifting a finger, and Eris is beyond pissed.

“And did you see her with that stupid crown on her head? Acting like she’s already the queen? She should be ashamed. Fucking scars carved all over her ugly skin. And his name!? Flaunting it like some whore,” Eris rants next to me. “Are you even listening?”

“Yes, dear. She’s a whore,” I say lifelessly.

No, they’re in love, and I’m over here reaping what I sowed, a punishment of my own doing.

“I’ll bet his father put him up to this. Forced him to marry her to fix his reputation, and he just can’t say it,” Eris continues.

I hear it before I feel it. A roar like the earth is opening up. Maybe it will finally fucking suck me in. The earthquake shakes the mansion, and it threatens to collapse. After a few minutes it quiets, and eerie silence follows.

“What was that?” Eris jumps up and thrusts open the doors to the balcony.

Outside, there is no sign of anything having happened at all. Only deadly silence, even the leaves are soundless in the breeze. Then I hear it. It must be hundreds of miles away, but I know what the sound is.

Kate told me a story almost every night as a child. I was curious and enamored by them. One night I finally asked her how we would know that the Davös Hoyas had returned. She told me a story that I hadn’t heard, and one she never told again. TIt frightened me. I’ll never forget that very last line she read to me.

Upon the return of the Davös Hoyas, the kele will scream to the heavens with joy.

That scary story from my childhood has finally come true, just as Kate said it would. Now I’m haunted by them. The soulless wails of the Damned.

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