Page 56 of House of Ruin
Galliermo wouldn’t give him any answers.
“Last rockey game was good,” Galliermo said, changing the subject. “I had a scout from the League come see you, and he wants to come back for one more game. He’s bringing more interested parties.”
Of course, the rockey game.
“Who’s your opponent for the next game?” Galliermo asked.
“It’s been put on hold for now,” Blaze said. “But it will be against Everburn.”
A scowl appeared on Galliermo’s face. “They’re the weakest of all. Make sure you don’t fuck up.”
Blaze nodded silently.
“Get out. I have a meeting I need to prepare for in twenty minutes.”
As Blaze closed his father’s office doors behind him, there was a massive weight on his chest, as if a massive creature sat right in the middle of it.
He leaned against the cool wood, letting his head fall back, and closed his eyes.
Blaze was trapped in his father’s grip. He might have hoped it would loosen one day, but it only seemed to get tighter as years went by.
If Blaze did nothing, he’d eventually become his father.
Cruel, hateful, full of spite.
There wasn’t much Blaze would have hated more.
But he didn’t know a way out.
23
The House of Rats was just around the corner from the Snakes, on the corner where Ninth and Eighth Avenues meet. It was also an old Victorian redbrick town house, like all houses on this street, with white window frames and iron railings on tall stairs leading up to the grand entrance.
Heavy, lush ivies, with winter-frost-colored leaves weaved around the front and sides of the building, clinging to it as if their livelihood depended on sinking their roots into old red bricks and feeding on the energy of the House.
Blaze stopped at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at the red-paned door and a bronze head of a rat hanging heavily above it. Gael and Andro were right behind him.
“Do I really have to be here tonight?” Blaze murmured over his shoulder.
He would have rather been anywhere else than at this pathetic poetry night with other pathetic students who knew nothing but their own fancy misery.
Hel, Blaze would fit right in.
“Yes,Blazy,” Andro said, pushing him forward.
With a dramatic sigh, Blaze climbed the stairs. Just when he was about to knock on the door, it swung open, and a Crahenwelcomed them with a bow.
“Oh, Leveau, Weir, so nice to see you here,” Galia chirped, coming out of the room on the left. “You too, Wilde.”
Blaze was about to open his mouth to say something remarkably wrong, when Andro clapped a hand over the back of his neck, squeezing hard, and said, “We’re honored to be here, Rathone. Thank you for the invite.”
Galia awarded them with the sweetest, fakest smile and then waved them to follow her back into the room she’d come out of.
“You might want to keep your snark to a minimum,” Andro whispered as they entered a modest home library. “We are here to find out if someone in this party is trying to set us—you—up for murder.”
Blaze scoffed, “You can suck my dick, Andro. How about that?”
“Careful. One day I might take you up on that offer.”
