Page 29 of House of Lilith

“So here,” he says when he stops and pokes his finger right where it saysThe End of the Games, “you’ll find theGrimmAcademy version of the events.”

I squint to where he’s pointing, but he just looks up and gives me a summary. “The Games of 1867, the last Games to ever happen until now, never got to be finished. Our two Academies started off on equal footing, somewhere around the Winter Solstice Ball the Fiáin Academy started winning and then, just as they were about to start the last Game, the Grimm Academy’s Pied Piper called it off, accusing the Fiáin Academy’s Archon for rigging everything in his team’s favor.”

My eyes narrow. “So it really is possible?” I ask.

“This is theGrimmAcademy version, as I’ve already said. Right here,” he says as he points to another section of the text, “we have the information on the Box. There’s not a lot, as its secrets are being kept, well, secret. Basically, all we know for sure is that it was made by Dame Gothel and that she used duskenwood to create it.”

“Does that tell us anything useful?”

He shakes his head a little. “It’s an extremely rare material and it’s got powerful magic of its own. So far, no one’s managed to do any research on it without getting seriously injured or straight out dying.”

I just nod thoughtfully.

“On the other hand,” Ricky keeps going, matter-of-factly, “there’s no proof,none, that any kind of tampering has ever been tried on the Box. It was petty jealousy on part of Grimm Academy, as well as an excuse to attack ours and try to get ahold of its power.”

“They do seem power-thirsty, even now,” I say as my mind rushes back to the players I saw in the Ring today.

“That’s because they are.”

An image pops into my head, the image of the Shadowscape girl. I try to resist the urge — I don’t want to give Ricky a reason to pry — but before I can do anything to stop it, I find myself using a deliberately flat voice to ask, “That prince you mentioned, the one who got engaged…”

Ricky gives me a couple of sharp nods. “Yeah. That’s Maximillian Aalders the Second.” His eyes lighting up, he whispers, “Look what kind of cool stuff they have here.”

And he presses some button on the table and its surface starts moving, the wood seeming to come to life. I frown, fixing my eyes on it to see what’s going to happen. First, little valleys and peaks start being formed, then roads and rivers get cut into them, along with their names. And before I know it, the table has turned into a relief map of Europe.

“That’s fucking cool,” I say as I look up at Ricky.

“I know, right.” It’s with a lit up face that he snaps out of it and goes on to explain, “Maximillian Aalders the Second, he’s the prince of this territory right here.” He points to a large valley encompassing the lake we’re currently camping on, the Sobbing Lake. “The Academy’s inhisjurisdiction and the vampire King seems to be putting a lot of faith in him, despite the other princes having more territory.”

And it’s interesting and relevant, what he’s telling me, but it’s not the prince I want him to talk about right now. I make an effort to be as nonchalant about it as possible. “And the girl who played Shadowscape with him yesterday? Is that his fiance?”

“Yeah. Anastasya Konstantinova Romanova,” he rushes to reply. “But I’ve read that those close to her call her Nyx.”

It makes me blow a laugh through my nose. “You’vereadit?”

He nods. “Yes, she's a duchess from the famed three-century old Romanov dynasty,” he says matter-of-factly.

It makes my eyebrows shoot up. “Fucking hell,” I say as I run my hand through my hair. “A duchess, you say?” I ask as another image of her pops into my mind.

But my friend’s eyes are already scanning the map before him, excitement once again clearly written on his face.

I watch his finger as it lands far north, circling a huge chunk of territory all in white, with the sea stretching along its seemingly deserted coast. “Now, that’s allhers.” He looks up at me and says, dropping his voice to a whisper and giving me a conspiratorial smile, “People say the Prince is only marrying her for the land.”

“Really?” I ask. But I don’t wait for an answer. “So the two of them,” I start, “Aalders and Romanov, they're the ones to keep an eye on here.”

“Him, yes. Her, not so much.”

My eyebrows shoot up. “Despite all that land? And isn’t she about to become Princess?”

Ricky lets out a little chuckle. “It’s not like wherewecome from. In the vampire territories, the King chooses his Princes wisely because they’re the ones keeping the realm together. But Princesses… I mean, they often have property of their own and they do technically have power, but they don’t actually exercise it.”

Now that makes my eyebrows shoot up, and not just because I myself come from a very different land. It’s got more to do with the look in those big, dark eyes, so intelligent and determined. “I don’t know ifthat’strue,” I find myself saying.

“What do you mean?”

“Nevermind,” I say with a wave of my hand. “So basically, they’re there to secure the line and look pretty.”

“I mean, it’s not all that bad, especially if you’re not a princess. Take de Groot for instance. She’s very powerful and she’s a woman. But she does take shit for it.”

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