Before he could even open his mouth, Noah kicked a box in his direction, “I found this in your attic.” Lysander hadn’t been spending a great deal of time over the past two days in his living room--had even eaten out as much as possible so he could avoid his houseguests--so this was the first time he really got a good look at the mess Noah had made. Clearly, he had taken Lysander’s invitation to raid his attic for more books to heart because Noah’s whole corner of the room was completely taken over by literature, stacks and stacks surrounding him to the point that Lysander worried a little that some of them might topple over and crush Noah.

“Holy crap. I didn’t realize there was so much up there,” he muttered. He had never really bothered to go through the collection, always vowing to do it later and allowing later to never come.

“Yeah, it’s a ton. Your parents had good taste,” Noah responded.

“How’d you know it was theirs?” Lysander didn’t think he had told him, but he didn’t trust his memory too well at the moment.

“You didn’t, but if you look at that box I’m trying to show you, then you’ll see why I came to that conclusion,” Noah said, rolling his eyes.

This obviously wasn’t why he had joined them, but curiosity got the better of him and he stepped further into the room and kneeled by the box. Unfolding the flaps, he dug into it and saw that it was packed full of books of different sizes and shapes, some looking far older and shabbier. Pulling out the first one on top--a leatherbound that was tied closed with a thin strip of soft leather--he opened it and saw on the very first page an inscription that stole his breath.

Merry Christmas, my love! May the pages be always full of happy memories.

Love, Victor and Lysander (your favorite boys)

Flipping through the rest, he saw it was completely packed with, honestly, barely legible handwriting that must belong to his mother. Setting it aside, he pulled out the next and saw the same handwriting filling the pages. “Are these all my mother’s?”

Shrugging, Noah flipped a page in the book he was reading, “I dunno. I assumed after the first one and didn’t want to look any deeper.”

“That’s surprisingly...nice of you, Noah,” Lysander admitted.

“Last time I checked, I wasn’t the devil,” Noah groused, his eyes rolling so far up that they practically disappeared into his skull.

“Right, silly me,” Lysander mumbled before continuing, “Well, thanks anyways. I’ll look at those later. Right now, I wanted to talk to you guys about an idea Miria has for the city.”

At this, Lexi looked up from where she had been dangling a loose thread from one of her blankets for Porcini. “The little princess came up with something?”

“Don’t call her that,” Lysander scolded.

Lexi waved her hand, “Fine, fine. Just tell us!”

“Yeah, please, share with the class,” Noah said as he set his book aside and gave Lysander his full attention.

Having both of them looking over at him made him inexplicably nervous, his palms starting to sweat like he was giving a presentation to a boardroom. “Okay, so, before he...died, Joseph had been toying with this law that would push women from well off families out of the workforce.”

“Sounds sexist and stupid,” Lexi piped up.

“Yeah, no, it definitely was, but Miria was thinking we could change it up, give it a makeover and present it to council as a stopgap solution to the employment crisis, which might give us more time to think of what to do about the other stuff.”

“And did she say how she wanted to change it?” Noah asked. He looked especially young sitting criss-cross applesauce on the floor, but Lysander ignored that.

“She thought we could maybe make an ordinance that would limit the number of working people in families above a certain income threshold,” he explained.

“How would you even control that?” Lexi questioned. Noah now had his chin in his hand, a thoughtful expression making him look actually approachable for the first time in Lysander’s presence.

“I don’t know, maybe something similar to the household registries we have to turn in to Resource Management?”

“It could work, but it would be a difficult sell to council,” Noah chimed in, his nose still scrunched in concentration, “From what I understand of their goals, they don’t seem very willing to actually cater to the interests of the entire population.”

“Hmm, that’s true. Most of them really only wanna do what’s best for the loudest part of the population, which with Anthony Campbell running around silencing dissenters is usually just the same kind of people who sit on the council. Elite types,” Lexi added.

Lysander picked at a hangnail, “She wanted to ask her uncle for help.”

Both Lexi and Noah scoffed, the sound so similar it seemed rehearsed. “I wouldn’t count on Anthony Campbell doing anything out of the goodness of his heart,” Lexi said.

“No, I agree, but it’s not like I can just tell Miria that her uncle is a lunatic,” Lysander stated.

“Why the fuck not? He is a lunatic,” Noah complained.

“Lysander hates including his little girlfriend in anything,” Lexi explained.

Rubbing his forehead, Lysander gave her an exasperated look, “How many times do I have to tell you that she’s not my girlfriend? Also, it’s not like I don’t want Miria involved. I just don’t see the point in turning her against her own family right now. If she does ask him for help, the worst that could happen is that he would tell her no. I doubt he would hurt her. I’m pretty sure he’s still human enough to love his own niece.”

“Hmm, maybe. You know him better than me,” Lexi said with a shrug.

Noah looked disturbed by the turn in the conversation. “Ignoring that for now, another problem with her plan is that the threshold would have to be pretty low for it to make any kind of impact on the workforce.”

“Why?” Lysander asked, his eyebrows pinching in confusion.

“Well, the very upper echelons of society already probably don’t have many members of the family working. Your family notwithstanding, it’s not typical for a family of richie riches to be out there doing the labor of the community. And if they are working, it’s probably highly skilled labor that would require potential years of training.” Even as he explained it, Noah looked annoyed that Lysander required any explanation at all.

“I mean, that’s true. Hmm, so there are some kinks that need ironed. I still don’t think it’s totally worth abandoning though,” Lysander mused aloud.

“Whatever, it’s your project,” Noah said with a shrug.

“Ignore him, he just hates when people don’t follow his suggestions,” Lexi said to Lysander, waving a dismissive hand at her friend.

“Don’t treat me like a petulant child!” Noah argued.

“Then don’t act like one,” she responded quickly. This was clearly an argument they had not infrequently.

Lysander shook his head, unwilling to play mediator between them but not knowing how to break the stalemate otherwise. “Uuuh,” he vocalised instead, contributing absolutely nothing to the conversation.

Both of them turned on him, and Lysander shifted and froze under their attention once more. “You can’t just open your gob and say something so eloquent and not continue,” Lexi teased, her eyes narrowed mischievously, smirk solidly in place.

“Don’t give me that look. I’m still mad at you,” Lysander groused.

“Yeah, yeah, of course you are, tiger,” she said patronizingly.

“Both of you suck and I wish you would leave,” he grumbled into his hands as he covered his face with them.

“Hey, wasn’t your mountain friend supposed to be in on all these chats?” Noah piped up again.

“Aww, you have a crush!” Lexi crowed.

“Absolutely not,” Noah mumbled, glaring over at her before turning back to Lysander.

Considering this, Lysander glanced up at the other man, “Yeah, he said that, but I haven’t heard from him since he left the other day.”

“He said he’d come around tomorrow night. Said it was the earliest he could get away from work,” Lexi said.

“When in the world did he have time to tell you that?”

Raising an eyebrow, she continued, “Around the time you were trying to shove him out the door, I think. You were pretty fucked up nasty tired, so I guess you didn’t notice.”

Knowing Ramon would be here to buffer him against these two was a relief. Even from the brief amount of time he had spent with them, he could tell they had a host of inside jokes and an easy camaraderie that Lysander himself had only with Miria before he had decided to ruin it. Having one person on his side in the group would be comforting. “Cool, well, we can fill him in tomorrow and get his opinion then.”

“If you like,” she responded while twirling the string for Porcini again.

The response told him nothing about how she felt about including Ramon, but he couldn’t really care less if she hated it or not. He figured she didn’t feel much about it at all, though. From what he understood of her character, Lexi had very little that mattered to her. He remembered feeling sorry for her once upon a time, but he shoved the feeling and the memory away. He had to focus and not allow himself to fall back into his old behavior with her. Already he walked a terribly thin line, and he couldn’t afford to put his faith in her again, not without some proof that she wouldn’t cross him at the first sign of trouble.

Resolved in this if nothing else, Lysander walled himself back in his bedroom for the night.

Miria dotted the ‘i’ on her signature and laid her pen aside. Her name swam in and out of focus in front of her and she thought of Lysander and the secret he was keeping from her. She didn’t know exactly what it was, but it was clear to her that he had a lot on his mind. She had known him too long not to recognize that, at least. Sliding open the bottom right drawer on her desk, she rummaged through the folders and pulled free the last one in the stack.

Her father had kept detailed notes of his dealings for every month and stored them in the cabinets around the room arranged by year and month. This folder was a collection of all the loose pieces of paper he had written notes to himself on for the last month of his life. She had already perused it once just to check for anything deeply out of place. As much as she wanted to believe that her father had succumbed to some freak aneurysm, she couldn’t entirely dismiss the idea her uncle had planted of something more sinister. She kept her suspicions and concerns from Lysander, mostly because she was worried he would spiral further away from her. He already seemed one thread snap away from completely unraveling. If she found anything, she would tell him, but not before that. Spreading the pages before her, she glanced over them again, seeing her father’s script describing various conversations amidst his executives and some from his discussions with the other city leaders. There was even a bulleted notation of the first day Jude failed to show up for work. But nothing deeper, nothing that would lead her down a rabbit hole of truth or anything like that.

Only one thing really stood out, and it was from the very beginning of the month during a routine meeting with the other city leaders. In the middle of his shorthand scribe, the writing abruptly stopped and the page ended with a postscript marked by an asterisk and heavily underlined.

* Speak with Lysander first thing in the morning before the boy panics too much

Alone, it made no sense to her, and she had no idea why it was on that particular page. What would Lysander have to do with this meeting specifically? Why would he be panicking? It was strange.

But she couldn’t think what that would have to do with her father’s death. It only made more questions.

Gathering it all back up, she slotted it back into the folder and placed it back into the bottom drawer.

She’d think about it more tomorrow. For now, the siren song of sleep called to her, and she found she had no reason not to listen.