Page 92 of A House of Gold
The house is quiet as I navigate to the library. Too quiet. Usually there's a hum of activity, servants moving through halls, the whisper of magic in the walls, the sense of life pulsing through the gold. But this morning, everything feels muted. Tense.
Like the house itself is holding its breath.
I find Croesus in the restricted section of the library, the area Nat told me not to enter without permission. He's standing at a table covered in maps and documents and objects I don't recognize. His hair is loose, uncombed. He's wearing the same clothes from last night, shirt untucked, jacket discarded.
When he hears me approach, he doesn't turn around. Just keeps staring at whatever's on the table.
"Tell me you see it," he says quietly. I decide to disregard asking how the hell he knows what’s on the image. Must be something with his magic.
I move closer, look at what he's examining. It's a map of the house, except the house doesn't have a fixed layout. This map shows golden corridors overlaid with...something else. Silver lines. Threads that weave through the rooms like a spider's web.
"What am I looking at?"
"Surveillance." He finally turns, and his gold eyes are shadowed with something I've never seen in them before. Fear. "Someone has been watching the house. Tracking movements. Mapping comings and goings."
I lean over the table. The silver threads are concentrated in certain areas, my room, the ritual chamber, the vault. Places I've been. Places we've been together.
"How long?"
"At least three weeks. Maybe longer." He picks up one of the objects, a small crystal that pulses with faint light. "I found this in your room this morning. And this..." He holds up another. "In the hallway outside my chambers. And three more throughout the house."
"What are they?"
"Tracking markers. They're keyed to angelic energy." His jaw tightens. "Specifically, to your angelic energy. Your bloodline."
My stomach drops. "Someone's tracking me. Magically." Not gonna lie, sounds fake.
"Not someone. Something." He sets the crystals down, braces his hands on the table. "I've been searching all night. Reading old texts, checking wards, trying to understand what could penetrate my defenses without me noticing. And I found this."
He opens a leather-bound book to a marked page. The text is in Latin, but there are illustrations, figures with too many wings, eyes that burn with holy fire, faces that are beautiful and terrible at once.
"Watchers," he says. "Heaven's surveillance corps. Angels who exist outside the hierarchy you know. They don't Fall. They don't rebel. They just...watch. Monitor. Report back to the divine bureaucracy about everything happening in the mortal realm and the spaces between."
I stare at the illustrations. "I've never heard of them."
"Most haven't. They're a secret Heaven keeps close. The watchers exist to ensure fallen angels don't break the terms of our exile." He closes the book. "We're allowed to exist in this in-between space, to run our houses and make our deals, because Heaven tolerates it out of necessity. But they don't trust us. So they send watchers to make sure we follow the rules."
"What rules?"
"Don't try to return to Heaven. Don't wage war against the divine order. Don't attempt to undo the fall." His voice goes flat.
The words hang in the air like a threat.
"You think the watchers know about my grandmother’s research. About what she was trying to do."
"I think they've known for a while. I think they watched her. I think..." He stops, takes a breath. "I think they're the ones who killed her."
The room tilts. "What?"
"Your grandmother was researching how to break angelic curses. How to undo divine punishment." He looks at me, and there's grief in his eyes now. "Heaven couldn't allow that. So they sent someone to stop her. An archangel, probably. Someone with the authority to execute a human who'd learned too much."
"And now they're watching me." My voice sounds hollow. "Because I'm trying to do the same research."
"Because you're her heir. Her bloodline. And because you're serving all seven houses." He moves around the table toward me. "Most sin eaters work independently. They break contracts here and there, stay under the radar. But you? You're bound to us. All of us, eventually. You're the first sin eater in centuries to have direct access to all seven of us."
I think about the greed absorption. About their curses. About wanting to free him, to free all of them, even if I don't know how yet.
"I don't even know what I’m doing yet," I say honestly. "I only just started.”
