Richer Than God - Amelia Wilde Page 0,42

from the handrail, and I’ll plummet the mile it is to the bottom of the stairs. I can’t get a breath, but I force the tip of my toe over the edge of the final step. My thighs burn with the effort. My arms too. Wind rushes by my ears. That can’t be right. There’s no wind in the stairwell.

It’s an awful thing, to propel myself forward from the railing and hope for the best. A scream catches in my throat, but the wall comes up to meet me, and I plant my hands on it. Big gulps of air. That’s it. Keep breathing.

Somehow, I get through the access door. The floor of the maid’s hallway bows outward, crushing my knees together. I’m a broken puppet. Ha, ha. What a waste of time and money. All this for nothing.

“Brigit?” Alicia’s voice sounds distorted, like she’s talking to me through an underwater cave. She’s so far away. Really, he didn’t have to make this hallway so desperately long. “Are you okay?”

“Okay” echoes through the cavernous hallway for a hundred years before it reaches me. I was heavy before, and now I’m very light. My head will crash on the ceiling if this keeps up.

“My lips are numb.” I try fruitlessly to get my hand to my lips, to make sure they’re still attached to my face.

Alicia looms in closer, suddenly enormous, her worried expression taking up my entire field of vision. “What’s going on?”

I don’t get a chance to answer. The floor cracks apart, rising like a wave, and swallows me whole.

18

Zeus

The knock interrupts me midstroke. It ruins a sheet of my ledger with a dark gash of ink. The pen’s broken. I broke it. Fuck. “Reya, when I said stay out, I meant keep your ass—”

“Zeus.” One look at her and my heart is in my throat. She’s pale, one strap of her dress twisted like she was running. Running from what? No security alerts have been called in. “It’s Brigit.”

I’m out of my seat before I can plan out an appropriate reaction, abandoning the ledger. “What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

I brush past Reya without thinking. “Where is she?”

“Up in her room.” If she wasn’t running before, she is now; she has to in order to keep up with me. Something hard hits the floor behind us—her shoes, I think. “She’s fainted.”

People faint. It happens. It’s happened many times at the whorehouse, due to too much sexual exertion or because a girl gets overwhelmed or for a hundred other reasons. And I never care. It’s a problem that’s easily solved with a glass of water and a light slap to the face. Reya, I know, is underselling it. If Brigit had fainted, no one would have run to my office. “You’re not telling the truth.”

“I’m not a liar,” Reya shoots back. The two of us tumble into the stairwell. “Her roommate said she fainted, and she won’t wake up.”

Won’t wake up. The last time I ran for another person was a long time ago, but I take the stairs three at a time. Reya pants behind me, and her breath fills my ears. What if Brigit isn’t breathing? What. If. She’s. Not. Breathing?

I burst into the attic hall, the space closing in. It’s too small up here, too close, and it makes the fact of her too stark—Brigit, on the floor, arms above her head. Too pale. She’s too pale. Her roommate—Alicia, her name is, a flighty thing who keeps coming back to Olympus—kneels at her side. She scrambles out of my way when she sees me coming. Explaining—her mouth is moving, but the words mean nothing. They’re useless noise.

Two fingers to the side of her neck and all of me freezes. I hold my own breath. This is the only way to know if she’s still alive, to quiet my own thrashing heart. Alicia falls silent.

There’s nothing there.

And then—

A pitiful flutter.

Relief is a heart attack. I gather her into my arms and stand up, blinking Reya and Alicia back into their places. Not here. Brigit is too light in my arms. If I leave her this close to the top of the building, she might float away. It’s fucking absurd, and I know it, but knowing is subsumed in the drive to get down to the floor below this one. It’s safer there. We’ll be safer.

She’ll be safer. Not from me. But from the rest of the world. My thoughts scramble, switching places with each other. She’s so light. Small.