Jasper sms the door to his room and locks it shut with a sb of wood before shouting at Adamus as loud as he can without attracting his aunt and uncle’s attention, “Where the fuck have you been!”

  Adamus plops down on Jasper’s bed.

  “Ahh, I missed this. Warm bnkets, a nice pillow, now all I need is a good woman. Although you may already have one nearby, judging by all these flowers…”

  Jasper pounds the bedrest at Adamus’s feet. “Answer me,” he demands with a scowl.

  Adamus ughs. “Whoa, who took a shit in your soup? Rex. I’ll answer all your questions in a minute. Just let me get comfortable and warm up a little. I’ve been out in the freezing cold for days.” Adamus pulls the bnket over his dirty rags of clothes and yawns.

  Jasper grips the bedrest tighter in frustration. He shakes the bed once Adamus closes his eyes. “Hey! What’s your problem?”

  “You’re in my bed! You’re the leader of the Division of humanity, and you’re in my bed and refusing to tell me why.”

  “I will tell you.”

  “Then tell me!”

  Adamus is silent for a moment before stating, “Let me sleep first.”

  Jasper leaps atop the bed and sps Adamus.

  “What was that for?”

  Jasper sps Adamus again.

  “Hey!”

  Jasper winds up another sp. “What happened in Rome?”

  Adamus lets out a deep sigh and pulls his wrapped arms out from under the bnket. He pces his palms against the back of his head and looks Jasper dead in the eye.

  “A lot… A lot happened.”

  “Like what?” Jasper squints, still ready to sp Adamus.

  “My Father died. Now fuck off and let me sleep.”

  Jasper unleashes the sp. Adamus slumps in the bed and caresses the red bruise on his face. “Ow! Why do you keep hitting me?”

  “I don’t know how else to get your attention!”

  Jasper reaches for Adamus’s arm.

  “DON’T!” Adamus screams, pulling his arms tightly to his chest. Something moves beneath the tightly wrapped fabric covering his skin.

  “Just… don’t…” He whimpers as Jasper rises from the bed.

  Someone knocks on the door.

  “Jasper? What was that noise?” Cire mutters outside the room in a half-asleep daze.

  Adamus tosses the bnket over himself. “I’m not here,” he states, still with his wrapped arms pressed against his chest.

  Jasper sighs and steps over to the door. “It was nothing, Aunt Cire, I just dropped something.”

  “Oh… Alright then,” Cire yawns and walks back to her bed.

  Jasper breathes a sigh of relief at her departure, but that relief soon turns back into frustration once Adamus starts snoring.

  Jasper tears the bnket off the bed. A Ratroach flies out of the fabric as it flutters to the floor. Jasper hurries to open the window and wave the animal outside.

  A gust of wind bsts into the room. Snow covers Jasper’s flowers as the Ratroach flies off into the night.

  Jasper sms the window shut while cursing himself. Not even all that commotion seemed to wake Adamus.

  Jasper’s mind is now running wild with fear that the man he pulled from the garbage may, indeed, be covered in garbage.

  This is really Emperor Gelmidas’s son? Jasper thinks to himself as he flops down in a chair at the edge of his room.

  He’s an asshole.

  Jasper doesn’t get much sleep that night, but Adamus does.

  In fact, he sleeps so far into the morning that the tavern is already bustling with patrons anxious to break their fast with mead and buttered bread by the time that he awakes in a cold sweat. Adamus stumbles out of the bed and tightens the cloth that he’s wrapped around his arms.

  The beast has been retively quiet since Rome, but it is still scratching at Adamus. Scratching at his mind. “You wanna talk?” He asks it.

  It doesn’t respond. It doesn’t even shift within his skin.

  “Fine.” Adamus huffs and stretches to look about the room he’s found himself in.

  The space is decorated in flowers of all shapes and sizes, none of them draw Adamus’s attention, but the old poster on the wall does. Adamus slowly walks toward it. His eyes hold on the three individuals depicted in the illustration until shifting onto just a single one.

  “Heh.” Adamus smiles. “Look at you, Davon. Leader of the warbound… You all look so young.”

  Adamus turns away from the poster as the door opens.

  Jasper snatches the bnket and bedsheets, limply holding them up in disgust. “I’m gonna burn these.” He mutters before gncing at Adamus.

  “I drew you a bath. Take the second set of stairs, the one not lit by candles; you won’t be seen if you go that way.” Jasper leaves the door open and takes the bnket and bedsheets outside to be burned.

  Adamus scratches his neck and catches a whiff of his foul body odor. “I probably should take that bath.” He mutters to himself before going on his way to do just that.

  Jasper tosses a torch atop his bedsheets.

  He lets out a sigh as the fabric burns within the firepit despite the snow surrounding it. He takes a seat and scowls at the Republic Officers walking past.

  They won’t bother him. None of these Reds are used to the cold. Some hate it almost as much as Jasper does. Most of the Officers probably wish that they could sit by that fire with him, but there’s work to be done.

  Jasper remembers what Officer Crovon said about searching for a dumpster-diving fugitive. Jasper has no doubt that the fugitive in question is Adamus Atheneum, whether the Republic knows it or not.

  He has to be very careful with his next move now. If only Adamus had just told him about what happened in Rome st night. That would have made everything so simple.

  Now Jasper will have to wait to squeeze the information out of Adamus, and hopefully do so before today’s meeting.

  I’m pying a very dangerous game now. Jasper thinks as his bedsheets crumble into dust before him.

  “Hey.” Jasper turns to the faint, cautious voice.

  “Hey.” He says to Leo before turning back to the fire. The orange fmes reflect in his gsses.

  Leo takes a seat in the snow beside him. He watches the bze with Jasper. The only noise between the pair is the lingering crackle of fire until Leo speaks.

  “You took an early break?”

  “I was cold,” Jasper states as he adjusts his gsses.

  Leo leans back against the Tavern wall. “So was I.”

  Jasper lets himself smirk at Leo’s comment. “Couldn’t wait until ter today, huh?”

  Leo shrugs. “I don’t want to wait at all.”

  Jasper ughs. “Flirting isn’t going to get you anywhere.”

  “Then what will?” Leo huffs.

  Jasper stands and snatches a bucket of water. “Nothing.” He pours the water onto the fmes, extinguishing them. “I have a lot on my mind, Leonidas. Love isn’t something I have time for right now.” The water freezes in the firepit.

  The water is nearly freezing in the wooden tub Adamus lies in.

  His skin chills in it. The beast crawls within him. It likes being clean, but it doesn’t like the cold.

  Adamus heaves out an icy breath. “Talk to me.” He spreads out his fingers, holding them out in the water. The st time a bde burst from his arm was when…

  When he killed…

  I love you.

  The words still haunt him.

  That person… Smith colpsed right in front of him after she died. After Adamus killed her. She had to die, right? She killed his Father.

  That woman… The Scorched Archer. Nadeden. She was not his Mother.

  Adamus refuses to accept it. Even if the burns on his back say otherwise. That woman was a monster, and he isn’t.

  Right?

  He contorts his hands into fists. The beast shifts under Adamus’s pressure.

  It swirls within him as he shuts his eyes. A light drifts in a sea of dark.

  Adamus moves toward it, although his body remains in the tub of freezing water. That light is the same one he saw in Rome. What is it? What does it want from him?

  “One.” The word echoes in Adamus’s mind.

  He opens his eyes and grumbles. “Yeah, that’s really fucking helpful…” He steps out of the tub.

  His toned, yet tense, strained, and somewhat malnourished muscles are soaked in frigid water. He shivers as he dries himself and tugs on the wet bands of cloth around his arms. The beast is contained for now. Adamus knows that much. What he doesn’t know is everything else about it. His Father taught him to always know your enemy, and right now, Adamus feels like he doesn’t know anything.

  Jasper knocks on the bathroom door.

  “You dressed?”

  Adamus slips on the pair of boots as well as the pants and tunic that were left for him beside the tub. “I am now.”

  Jasper opens the door and hands Adamus a rge fur coat with an even rger hood. “Hide your face.”

  He does as told. He follows Jasper out of the bathroom and into the snow. Jasper gnces out into the street of white. There are only a few people out today, but a certain amount of caution still needs to be exercised. He turns back to Adamus.

  “You ready to talk?” Jasper asks, uneager to indulge in any of the antics Adamus put him through st night.

  “I am. You want to know what happened in Rome, right?”

  Jasper nods. Adamus clutches the fur hood concealing his face. “Assassins were sent to kill my Father. I stopped all of them, but I got the st one too te. My Father was dead by the time I made it to the Division pza.”

  Jasper winces at the incredibly underwhelming revetion. “That’s it?”

  “What do you mean, that’s it?” Adamus scoffs. “I told you what you wanted to know, didn’t I?”

  “So, my sister died because of some assassins?” Jasper shakes his head in frustration. “Do you at least know who sent them? It was Vanessa Soryu, right?”

  Adamus shrugs. “Probably.”

  “The fuck do you mean, probably?”

  “I mean, I’m not sure!” Adamus throws up his hands. “My Father and I suspected that she was plotting something, but then the Scorched Archer showed up out of nowhere.”

  Jasper smacks his face into his palm. This isn’t going the way he thought it would, but he honestly isn’t even sure what he expected. At least the news Adamus has given him is better than nothing.

  “So the Scorched Archer was in Rome?” Jasper asks through the palm draped over his aggravated face.

  “She always will be.” Adamus hangs his head. “I killed her.”

  “Well, she doesn’t matter,” Jasper groans. “Even if she was the one who killed your Father, the point still stands that Vanessa is the one who gained the most from Rome’s destruction.” He takes a defiant stance that Adamus has to resist rolling his eyes at. “We have to expose her and fight back against the threat of-”

  “I’m hungry.” Jasper scowls at Adamus’s interruption.

  “Do you not care about any of this? The Division is in shambles! The Republic is choking us and-”

  “And I’m hungry.” Adamus wanders off into the street. “I’ve been eating nothing but scraps for a full month. I need to get some decent food in me before I wither away.”

  Jasper runs after him. “Wait!”

  He reaches for Adamus’s arm only to remember the odd reaction he had to that gesture st night. He decides to simply toss himself in front of Adamus rather than risk another incident like that. “If anyone sees you, you’re dead.”

  Adamus chuckles, “Many have tried to kill me.” He steps past Jasper with a confident bravado, “I doubt that some wide-eyed Republic officer is going to be the one to do me in.”

  “What about me?” Jasper asks. “If they see you with me, then-”

  Adamus raises an eyebrow. “So just let me go then. Why do you want to get yourself hurt?”

  Jasper makes a fist. He’s growing sick of Adamus’s ignorance. Doesn’t he have any idea how important he is? He’s inherited the Division crown! He should be Emperor! Jasper shouts it. “You should be Emperor!” He fumes. “You should be Emperor, but you’re a complete idiot!”

  The cry draws the attention of a group of Officers down the street.

  They stomp through the snow and rush into the alley to the source of the commotion.

  Both of the Officers hold their spears at the ready.

  The stone tips point directly at Leo’s neck. He raises his hands in surrender. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

  The officers gnce at each other before turning back to Leo. “Were you the one who screamed?”

  “No. That was me,” Jasper states as he wipes snow from his bck robes. “We were arguing.”

  The answer seems to satisfy the Officers for now. The men lower their spears and slowly return to the street. They keep their eyes on Jasper and Leo until they are out of view.

  Both Jasper and Leo breathe a sigh of relief at their departure. The fur lump kneeling on the side of the Tavern wall rises and shakes off the snow that’s gathered on its back.

  “Are they gone?” The lump turns to reveal itself as Adamus.

  “Yeah,” Jasper mutters as Leo’s jaw drops. “You’re Adamus Atheneum…”

  Adamus smirks. “Indeed.”

  “Marry me.”

  “What?”

  Jasper snatches Leo’s arm. “Leonidas, I’ve never been more grateful for you being here, but heed my words, this man is terrible.”

  “And sadly attracted exclusively to women,” Adamus grins as he folds his arms.

  Leo wrests himself from Jasper’s grasp. “It doesn’t matter how awful he is. Don’t you know what this means? We need to take him to the meeting with us.”

  Leo’s comment captures Adamus’s curiosity. “Meeting?”

  Jasper shoots him down. “You’re not going.” He shoots down Leo next. “He’s not going. He’s useless. He says that the Republic had nothing to do with Rome’s destruction.”

  Adamus unfolds his arms. His impromptu restraints for the beast are still wet from his bath. “Well, I didn’t exactly say that the Republic was completely free of guilt.”

  Leo smiles at Adamus’s mumbled words. “See Jasper,” He says. “It doesn’t even matter if the Republic was responsible for it or not. The point is that Adamus is here now. He’s a figurehead. We can use him to help reestablish the Division. This is what we’ve been waiting for.”

  He takes Jasper’s hand and looks him in the eyes.

  Jasper hates to admit it, but Leo is right.

  So far, Adamus has been nothing but an annoyance to him, but his importance can’t be denied. Adamus Atheneum has inherited the crown of a fallen empire. The very empire that half the people in this vilge had fought for.

  The empire that Jasper’s father died for.

  That Valerie died for.

  Jasper adjusts his gsses and sighs, “Fine. We’ll take him to the meeting. Marqus will know what to do.”

  “Will he have food?” Adamus asks. “I’m still hungry, y’know.”