Page 64 of Until the End of Ever
“A hundred golds is what I earn per week,” Kleos muttered.
Ronan and I both stared at her, horrified.
“She’s joking,” my friend choked. “I need to believe that’s a joke.”
“It better fucking be. That’s practically slavery.”
Kleos laughed brightly, the picture of levity. “Posh gits. It’s a fairly good salary for the vale.”
Ronan brought his hand to his temple, massaging it. “I need to lie down. Or have a drink. Orboth.”
“Why in Nyx’s realm would you slave away at the Guard for that pittance?” Why would anyone, but particularly someone as egregiously talented as Kleos? She hadoptions. Healing, translating, staying at home and looking pretty in nothing but silk and diamonds, to name a few.
She shrugged. “It’s truly a decent salary. Silver manages on it, with a mortgage and all her bills. In my case, as I’m staying at home, I can keep all of it for fun. It’s enough.”
“Irrelevant,” Ronan snapped. “The point is you’re worth more. Come here and teach—well, anything you’d like. Baking, healing, thinking. I’ll pay you ten times as much.”
“You’re joking,” she said.
Before Ronan could articulate how very much he was not joking, I butted in. He wasn’t going to steal her from under me, damn him.
“You have your hands full with the ritual mess right now, and your…employment supports that,” I grunted. “Let’s reassess after we’ve figured it out. It’s not like you have the time for a brand-new job on top of researching a way to stay alive.” I shot Ronan a cautionary glare. “And when you do, there are many positions you could consider in the underside.”
On top of me. Underneath. Sideways. So many positions.
Ronan’s face said he perfectly understood where my head was at.
“I mostly work in the Guard because of Silver. It’s her dream to be a protector. I didn’t really have a dream, so I figured it’d be nice to work with my best friend and my cousin.”
“Silver would understand if you chose to do something for yourself, though. Any friend should,” Ronan added, just as we reached wooden doors. “All right. Show time.”
Then his smug expression disappeared and he walked in.
26
KLEOS
“Iwill never get used to Workplace Ronan,” I whispered as Professor Night spoke to the two dozen assembled students, his voice loud and clear. They took notes, dutifully listening to the stoic man. “It’s as weird as if it were Gideon.”
“Gideon gets serious, occasionally,” I reminded her. “I’ve seen it, like, three times in last half year. Usually when someone messed up so much it endangers his team.”
I nodded. My cousin was pissed at me just last week for hiding my runes. It rarely lasted with him. Ronan seemed able to maintain the persona of earnest adult for an extended amount of time. It must take up a lot of his energy; he seemed so utterlysomeone else.
“Any questions?” the professor asked.
Four hands shot up in the air.
“Phoebus?”
I struggled to keep a straight face. Had someone truly named their kid Phoebus? The poor boy was also blond, with golden eyes, to perfectly complete the image of a young Apollo. Or it would have, if I hadn’t met the real deal Monday.
“The runes on the victims’ skins—you gave us a list of all of them, and another one including those we assume are the most important. Can we reject that information and treat all runes as being of equal importance?” he pressed, reluctantly impressing me.
“If you’d like. But that theory is considered a fairly established fact for this project, so you might be at a disadvantage if you go off an incorrect tangent. Vesna?”
An obsidian-skinned woman with green eyes and purple hair spoke next. “The target is human-born but re-forged? And that’s an existing cold case of the Guard?” She sounded highly skeptical. “Wouldn’t we have heard of that, if it had happened in living memory?”
For that one, Ronan deferred to us. Thankfully, Lucian either had an answer ready, or managed to think of his feet faster than me.
