Page 41 of Love & Heart Braking

Silence fell. The wheels of the carriage didn’t even creak, which was freakin’ amazing.

I started humming. “Mmm, mmm, mmm. Do-doo dah.”

“Stop or burn.” Fire burst from his fingertips, and I regarded his flames.

Fire mage.

And that gave me my answer. He was an Opifi. One of the twelve.

“Are your clothes fireproof? I’ve always wondered that about your type.” I waited for his answer.

He moved to the opposite bench, looking out the other window.

Annoyance. Seriously underrated.

When this guy had gatecrashed Love in the Dark and thrown down a whole heap of threats, he’d seriously pissed me off.

And I didn’t have talons, so…

Making sure to clear my throat and sniff every few seconds or so, I peered at the road ahead. We’d turned off the main street out of the suburb center a while back, and though this street was the same width, I’d visited enough estates by now to know this was a driveway.

Thick trees pressed in on all sides.

Being earth guardians, the Ventrams would never set them alight. But one look told me that running off through the trees would be next to impossible. This was as much of a trap as the driveways of the Cinereses or Dethnels. The Hucses’ driveway looked feeble in comparison, though their driveway message was that they didn’t need any defense but themselves.

The carriage wound between huge trees, and I craned to look upward. The Ventrams had a treemansion.

Dang.

That was super cool. Why did assholes always have the awesome stuff?

Paygrade was first out the door when the vehicle stopped. Smirking at his eager exit, I exited too.

I sniffed loudly.

He strode off, and smirking again, I followed slowly after, making sure to have a good look around.

The treemansion wasn’t anchored to the trees themselves. It appeared that one massive hover charm covered the expansive house—which had to cost many arms and many legs to sustain constantly. My mouth dried at the thought of the price tag. Owning most of the land in Nepos would give a person a few coins to spend though.

I glanced at the carriage, wondering if I should dive back in and hide behind the curtains. I was about to go head-to-head with the nastiest bastards in Nepos. Seriously, maybe the carriage was the right choice. I took one step in that direction, then squinted at a white blur beneath the vehicle. It was gone in the next instant, but I retreated without hesitation.

Paygrade likely put a nasty curse on there.

Treemansion it was.

No sooner had I caught up with the fire mage than he grabbed my arm and jerked me onto a wide stone platform. The slab began to rise and, forgetting to give Paygrade a piece of my mind, I gazed straight up to the hole in the mansion floor above.

Less than a minute later, we were walking down a hall made of some rudimentary substance that appeared to be clay, though it possessed a grittiness, too, as though sand had been mixed in. I supposed earth guardians wouldn’t use wood to build their homes. I peeked out every window we passed, which were left open to the air instead of containing a pane of glass. The treemansion wormed between the trees, and the location of the carriage was quickly lost to me.

He walked through a low archway, and as I entered the huge chamber after him, I couldn’t help the feeling of awe.

The circular room was open to the sky and only contained a circular ring table and a hole in the very middle of the room that was open to the ground far below. I had a very strong feeling nameless people had been pushed to their deaths through that.

Four people sat in the room, close together on one half of the ring table.

Not the twelve representatives I’d expected.

Acribus Cineres. Mr. Hucs—a.k.a Soleil’s father. And two others I didn’t recognize. One was huge—clearly an earth guardian and, I could assume, a Ventram. Which would make me expect the final to be a kraken and representing the last of the top four families, the Dethnels.

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