Page 15 of Xerxes Ascendant
Apparently that was the Coterie’s doing. Spearheading the recovery of the city, the blatantly illegal organisation had been doing a lot of good in restoring key infrastructure after the Fall, but it came with some inevitable posturing, too. And that included presenting itself as the pinnacle of stability and competence, represented by its own establishments being in pristine condition. Hence, the damaged Houses Epsilon and Sigma having been hastily restored to their former glory in a no-expense-spared show of strength...and disgustingly extravagant wealth.
“Hell yes I want to work,” said Kyle. “If I do nothing for one more second, I’ll go crazy.”
“I wouldloveto do nothing,” Indira answered with exaggerated wistfulness. “After I’ve dropped you off, I’m gonna go home, put my feet up, and chill out ‘til morning.”
Kyle knew that was bullshit. His cousin wasn’t any better at sitting around than he was. But before he could call her out on her teasing, he was distracted by a cat.
It was sitting tall on the lowest of the steps up to House Epsilon’s front door, a long, sleek tail wrapped around its paws and its ears pricked in eternal alertness. Carved expertly from smooth marble, whoever had made it was certainly familiar with cats. Kyle could almost see the mischief in its stone eyes and inert tail.
“That’s new,” Indira commented unnecessarily, watching him crouch down and pet its head.
Why the Master had chosen to add the decorative cat to the House’s restoration was a question Kyle was not going to ask.Anyone. It might imply he had an interest in the answer being about himself or his furry children, and Kyle. Didn’t. Care.
If he told himself that enough times, would it make it true?
As he tickled the cat beneath its chin, it seemed to him that it was missing something. The creature was perched proudly on the steps, watching over the building at its back, but it seemed disconnected from it. Lost. Kind of like him.
He stood up, struck by an idea.
“Can you use your wand to draw an epsilon rune on its chest?”
Indira raised a single, wordless eyebrow at him.
“What?” Kyle fidgeted, instantly regretting the request. “It’s to represent the House.”
“You know I’ve seen your Master shirtless, right? I know exactly what itrepresents.”
And then she began to bitch about his recklessness in asking her to draw a rune when they didn’t know what it would do.But his cousin must have had some idea, based on that complex science of angles and length of lines that Kyle had never grasped, because she took his place on the ground and drew the runing wand from her leather jacket.
“Wait,” he said, hesitating. “Maybe we should get permission first.”
Indira scoffed.
He didn’t stop her when she placed the blade to the cat’s chest, right where its heart would be, and began to carve through the stone as if it was made of synth-butter.
He should have.
Because his cousin was right: this was about Akira. He’d put a cat outside of House Epsilon for Kyle, and Kyle was engraving it with a piece of the man in turn. It was foolish and painful to connect them like this when any association beyond the purely professional relationship of boss and employee was unwanted.
But stars take him to their fiery depths, Kyledidwant it. His body and soul thrummed with a visceral need for the other man; to coax out those wry smiles of his, to bury his face in his neck and breathe deep that intoxicating scent, to fold himself protectively around Akira’s smaller form and cement their joining into something unshakeable. Eternal.
He forced it away.
Indira hummed as she worked, seemingly unconcerned by the risk of the spontaneous rune going terribly wrong...or her casual defacing of Coterie property. But that was his cousin at heart: as much of a chaos demon as any of Kyle’s cats, and similarly deceptively innocent in her outward appearance. A blonde, bright-lipsticked angel, all smiles and sweetness until the claws descended and ripped you to shreds.
Declaring it necessary for engineering reasons, Indira added a slight flourish to the mark with deft twists of her runing wand’sbladed tip – a thickening of the bottom curve – before drawing back to admire her work with a cocked head and critical eye.
A faint green glow began to emanate from the rune on the cat’s chest, shedding soft light over the lower steps.
“It’s doing something!” Kyle said delightedly, and then paused. “Whatis it doing?”
Indira shrugged. “The epsilon symbol represents permittivity, so I’m guessing it’s measuring how much electric field is reduced in a dielectric material compared to a vacuum.”
Kyle stared at her. “Huh?”
“For all intents and purposes,” she clarified with a fond smile, “it’s doing nothing. Merely shiny and looking pretty...just like you, airhead.”
Kyle beamed. “You’re so fucking clever.”
