Page 42 of Until the End of Ever
It was said casually, in his own language. Kleos, my mother, and I exchanged a look.
“Unfit?” Kleos repeat.
“Useless to the horde. Weak. Small. I would have been eaten too, after the drowning.”
Breathe. In and out. Slow.
Mother, thankfully, was better at keeping her shit together. “That’s very wrong, darling. And we won’t let anything happen to you here, do you understand?”
“Why are you kind?”Elias asked, not even suspicious, just genuinely surprised.“The men and women upstairs didn’t wish to be kind. It is not a characteristic of your world, is it?”
A pertinent question.
“No, not everyone in this world is kind. And most people up in the vale would call us anything but,” I added. “We can beruthless. But one of our very important rules down here is that no innocent child is to be harmed.”
Elias drew his knees to his chest.“I’m not useful. I won’t birth dragons. I won’t wed. I’m a waste of meat.”
I should have murdered the dragon bitch.
“With all due respect, boy? No one gives a flying fuck.” That made it the seventh time I’d ever heard my mother utter the word “fuck” in my life. “Children don’t need to be useful. They just need to be children.”
“I’m sixteen. I won’t be a child soon. What then?”The fear in his voice was heartbreaking.
“I am three hundred and twelve. You’ll be a child for as long as I say you are,” Mother stated primly.
“Yeah—good luck getting her to treat you like an adult in the next ten years or so. I’m twenty-seven, and she’s only stopped about a year ago.” The carriage slowed at the door of the last building on Night Avenue. “And when you’re no longer a kid? You’re one of us. Then it’s your turn to protect those who need it.”
18
KLEOS
We walked into the intimidating crystal-blue hall, and while I watched openmouthed, Cassiopea called, “Kael, my darling? We’re to have a few dozen guests tonight. Get your muscled derriere moving, would you?”
It was six thirty, and she casually just announced they were to host a shit-ton of people. Every single person I know would have had a heart attack, me included. At this point, I expected the man who rushed into the hall to scream,“quick, a takeout menu!”like a sane person.
Instead, Kaelius threw his hands up, as if to thank the skies. “An impromptu dinner! You spoil me, my love.”
And then he was snogging Cassiopea. With enthusiasm.
I was too shocked to think to look away.
“Do you have to? There are young, impressionable minds here,” Lucian grumbled.
Cassiopea detached herself from her husband’s embrace. “Elias is sixteen, not six.”
“I meant me, Mother,” Lucian deadpanned.
Watching them all together was fascinating.
The stunning power couple was as different as fire and water. Where she was elegant and refined, he seemed to be the kind of man happy to wear jeans.
Kaelius looked slightly older than Cassiopea—in his forties or so, by my estimate, if he’d been mortal. But looks didn’t mean much in Highvale. He could actually be forty, or forty hundred years. The latter was more likely, given what I knew of the family.
Blond, with warm blue eyes, the man had very little in common with Lucian at first glance, save that both were uncommonly handsome. Yet I could see how Lucian had morphed into a mix of both of his progenitors; he inherited her fashion sense, poise, and grandeur, pairing it with his easygoing, adaptable nature, and clearly, his gusto for entertaining guests. Lucian loved having someone other than Cassius at the manor, that much was evident.
“And who are these beautiful girls?” Kaelius asked, smiling at me and the kid by my side.
Elias glanced down, and the rest of us froze.
