Page 116 of House of Lilith

“Yes,” the left one starts, the touch of nervousness in his voice taking me by surprise. “Um… Lady—”

“MissRomanov,” the right one cuts in, slightly annoyed.

It makes me finally put the name to the faces.

The O’Malley brothers.

“Nyx is fine,” I say, breathing a sigh of relief.

“Well,” the nervous one starts, a piece of paper in his hands, “we’re here to tell you…”

And he hesitates again.

“Right now,” the annoyed one cuts in again, snatching the paper from him, “down at the camp, there are the following Grimm Academy event regulations being broken.”

That makes me frown, but he just looks down at the paper and starts reading. “Article four, article five, article seven—”

It finally hits me and I jump straight in, my eyes narrowing. “Howe sent you, didn’t he?”

The nervous one rushes to answer. “He did, Lady—”

But the annoyed one just jabs him in the elbow. “Will you shut it?” he hisses in a low voice. “He said to read ‘emall.” Then he clears his throat and turns to face me again with the paper in front of him. “Article thirteen—”

I shake my head in frustration. “Well,” I cut in again, “you can tell Howe to go fuck off.”

And I move to walk around them, regulations be damned, when I hear the annoyed one just keep going, “Article twenty one—”

It makes me stop midstep and turn back to them. “Twenty one?” I demand, my hands balling into fists. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

And without so much as a moment of hesitation, I start marching straight to the camp, the two brothers tailing me in silence.

*

It does come as a little surprise, when I start approaching the plateau and see how festive it all looks. There are fires lit everywhere, wreaths of flowers adorning all the wooden posts and people gathered in cheerful little groups, drinking and laughing.

But it’s not the party I’m here for. So I motion for the brothers to take me to Howe and I follow them to the largest group of people around the largest fire.

And there he is, standing with his back turned to me, but almost as soon as my eyes fix on them, he throws a look over his shoulder and spots me.

His mouth cracking into a grin, he says something to the guy to his left, patting him on the back. Then he turns on his heel, walks out of the circle and drawls, “Who do we have here?”

Fucker. But he doesn’t let me answer. He dismisses the brothers with a quick nod and turns back to me, leaning a little to say, “I thought you said I’d be seeing whoever the fuck I want,exceptfor you.”

“Oh shut it,” I drawl. “Where are the fireworks? Don’t you know they could anger the mermaids?”

He blinks at me, feigning innocence. “Oh, sorry about that. Did I forget to inform you wewon’tbe breaking any of those regulations after all?”

For a second, I just throw daggers at him. “You fucker,” I finally say, but then I see his eyes dart to my fucking bow and I frown.

There’s a split second of silence before he lets out a little snicker.

“Whatare you looking at?” I demand, blood rushing to my cheeks.

“Nothing, sorry,” he rushes to say, stifling a laugh. “I mean, I did tell people to dress up a little so you wouldn’t stand out as much, you know, arriving from your fancy party.” He gestures at the bow, his face beaming with amusement. “Butthis…”

Snap his neck. I want to snap his fucking neck. “I’m leaving,” I spit out and I turn to walk away.

He appears in front of me, making me stop midstep. And there’s this playful urgency in his voice when he leans in to say, “Not unless you want me to tell everyone why this is such a special,specialday.”

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