Sunset ^beta

Chapter Text

With each step down the dark staircase Gideon’s mouth formed a desperate plea, a silent prayer, that none of her least favorite former coworkers were on that night. No Cryptkeeper’s Cryptkeeper Crux. No Ianthe Tridentarius. And most importantly, absolutely no sign of the Cryptkeeper herself, Harrowhark Nonagesimus.

Hell, if Gideon was really lucky, maybe Harrow didn’t even reside in the Tomb anymore. It’d been years. It’d been—eighteen months on the floor at the Erebos before Gideon got in at the Mithraeum, then another eight months. That was over two years since the last time Gideon saw Harrow. Maybe Harrow had taken her alchemy elsewhere, maybe she didn’t even live in the city anymore. Maybe Harrow was on the other side of the world. Maybe—

Gideon wasn’t lucky. If any of Gideon’s prayers and pleas were heard, they were heard by the Tomb and the Tomb alone. The Tomb spat them all back into a gooey heap at her feet.

Absolutely nothing had changed.

There, behind the dark wood of the bar, was Ianthe, looking tall and sickly, like a ghost that haunted this cursed pit, and beside her, Harrowhark Nonagesimus mixing a drink, her mouth turned down in a concentrated little frown. She looked exactly the same, all angles tightly wrapped in her own personal uniform of black: black trousers, pressed black shirt, black vest and a little black tie. She was wearing dark glasses—Gideon knew for a fact she didn’t need them—pushed up over her dark eyes. Her crow-black hair curled around her studded ears. Gideon looked at Harrow and she was thrown back behind that bar, the Tomb was shut forever, and Gideon would never escape again.

She should have worn a damn hoodie. She should have worn a hat and some shades. A hat, hoodie and shades were casual. They fit the dress code and anyway, Corona already knew how she looked underneath. Gideon should have refused to enter this place, should have insisted that they go somewhere else instead, but Corona was already dragging her toward the bar and it was hard not to follow where Corona led.

Ianthe looked up and her lip curled at their approach. She set down the glass she was holding and pressed the palms of her hands against the edge of the bar.

“Gideon Nav,” Ianthe said in a tone that completely gave the game away, assured Gideon she’d been nearly vibrating in anticipation of this moment all night. “I warned Harry to make sure she changed the locks after you left.”

Ianthe tilted her head toward Harrow as she spoke and Gideon couldn’t help but follow the arrow of the gesture with her eyes. She failed in her attempt to glance toward Harrow without actually looking at Harrow, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because regardless of how loudly Ianthe announced Gideon’s name—it was loud enough—Harrow did not turn to look. Her shoulders didn’t even tense in recognition.

Maybe Harrow had forgotten about her completely. Maybe she’d slipped down those stairs one day and knocked her head, effectively eliminating all thoughts and memories of Gideon Nav.

Good. Small blessings.

Gideon turned back toward Ianthe, feeling slightly bolstered by the failure of Ianthe’s obvious grab for Harrow’s attention. Still, Ianthe looked smug, like she was proud to be tucked behind a bar with Harrow, like she pitied Gideon for leaving and considered herself special for holding onto the shitty things that Gideon tossed aside.

Ianthe, now that she was standing in front of Gideon as a reference, looked like a watered down counterfeit copy of Corona, sad and smeared, every bit of her just slightly dripping. Ianthe kept her eyes on Gideon as Corona leaned across the bar to press her cheek to her sister’s. She tried to hold Gideon’s attention, but Ianthe’s spell was easily broken by the strain of Corona’s arms pressed to the dark wood of the bar, by the press of her breasts against the fabric of her shirt. Gideon relaxed and leaned in, rested her arm against the bar and returned her attention to her date instead of the Tomb’s bargain basement brand substitute.

“Tridentarius,” Gideon said, finally, without bothering to look at her again. “How’s the dark treating you?”

“Better than the sun is treating you, from the look of things,” Ianthe returned. “You’ve aged, Gonad.”

Gideon snorted. Gonad. She hadn’t heard that one in years. She’d never been sure if it was better or worse than the other nicknames she’d been christened with during her time in the Tomb. Gideon resisted the urge to look down the bar toward Harrow again—it was easier now that she’d leaned up against the wood, with her back turned toward the side of the bar where Harrow was busy mixing drinks. She kept her eyes firmly on Corona instead. It was a better view.

Ianthe wasn’t finished. “I say aged, but that brings to mind fine wine, doesn’t it. You’re more along the lines of shriveled up old fruit.”

“Ianthe,” Corona admonished. “If I knew you were going to be so callous toward my date, I wouldn’t have come.”

“It’s fine,” Gideon said, automatically. “We go way back.” She made the conscious decision not to mention any of her own nicknames for Ianthe, which—okay, so they were mostly just the classics, the occasional uninspired-yet-extremely-accurate ‘bitch’. Once she pulled out “Pathetic Lestat-looking knock-off,” but honestly, putting effort into nicknames for Ianthe was more than Ianthe deserved, which was why Gideon almost always stuck with ‘Tridentarius.’ She never liked the way Ianthe’s first name felt on her tongue.

“You see, Gollum says it’s fine,” Ianthe agreed, always ready to make everything worse. “Oh, all right. Here, I’ve prepared my customer service smile.” She held up her hand to showcase a truly upsetting smile. “What can I get you?”

Corona ordered a Garnet Crow. Gideon, who didn’t want Ianthe’s fingers near anything she intended to drink, ordered a bottle of beer with no glass.

“I wouldn’t have guessed this was your kind of place,” Gideon admitted, once they were safely tucked away in the back corner booth, drinks in hand. Gideon looked at Corona and she saw bright warmth and desert heat. At the very least, someplace with windows.

“Well, you’re right,” Corona admitted. She pressed the tips of her fingers to the edge of her glass—coupe glass, a bit of smoked coffee bean added to the chestnut colored drink for a potion-y effect—and continued: “Even a few years ago, it wouldn’t have been, but it’s nice to relax somewhere where I won’t be noticed. No one comes to The Locked Tomb expecting to mingle with Ida’s off-duty showgirls. And you can’t argue that cozying up with a date in a dark corner booth does have its appeal.”

“Hm,” Gideon said, suddenly flustered. The thing was, if Gideon managed to keep her brain online in the face of Corona’s flirting—the thing was, Corona wasn’t the first or only person to pinpoint the The Locked Tomb as a dark hideaway where everything and everyone went unnoticed. Corona had to know, even without the family connection, that this spot was frequented by the Mithraeum’s Fists, the Mithraeum’s Gestures.

Corona leaned forward, one elbow on the table and her chin propped on the back of her hand. “I could say the same about you, hidden away down here in the dark. It seems you’ve found your calling now though. I’ve heard the talk. You must man the most popular table in the entire Mithraeum. Don’t be modest.”

Gideon laughed. “I doubt that.”

Corona tilted her head, narrowed her eyes. “Liar. I know how it is. You’re swarmed by women of all ages just dying to play a hand you’ve dealt. Blackjack, sure, they love that; but they’ll play poker if that’s where you’re stationed, just to get close. They don’t even care about the money, not while they’re sitting there, watching you.” Corona paused to study Gideon, and then added: “When it comes down to it, we’re very similar, aren’t we?”

Gideon choked on her beer and coughed into the crook of her arm. “Hot?” she asked, and her voice was strained, higher than she liked, fucking embarassing.

Corona smiled. “Performers. Showgirls.”

“Oh.” Gideon took another sip of her beer in an attempt to ease the itch in her throat. She glanced past Corona toward the bar. Harrow was there, head down as she rubbed a slice of orange along the edge of a glass. She didn’t look up. Gideon cleared her throat. “You’re right.”

Corona’s smile was worth everything. “I know.”

Gideon set down her beer bottle and leaned in. “I do this thing where I push my sleeves up to my elbows and flex my forearm as I deal and then I—well, it’s hard to explain, but it drives them crazy.”

“Show me.”

Gideon pushed up her sleeves, her face set and serious as she mimed shuffling the deck of cards. She started with the wash, spreading the invisible cards across the table with a splayed hand, then picking them up again and squaring the deck. Next, she riffled the deck twice. The process was set by the Mithraeum, but this step, Gideon knew, gave the table time to admire the movement of the hands, the agility of the fingers. She boxed the invisible deck, riffled the cards again. Finally she cut the deck and began dealing to the imaginary crowd, her eyes catching Corona’s as she threw down the cards.

Corona watched, rapt, and then, just when Gideon thought this might turn out to be the best night of her life, Corona’s eyes shifted away from Gideon, toward the stairs. Her face went slightly slack, a little red.

Gideon expected the shift in focus meant a Fist had arrived in the Tomb, but when she managed to turn and get a look, she didn’t recognize the woman she found there at all. The woman was shorter than Gideon (taller than Harrow), brown skin, braided hair, and a tailored jacket that would never pass Dulcie and Cam’s casualwear examination. By the time Gideon turned back, Corona had recovered, her focus returned. She reached out to touch the back of Gideon’s hand, and Gideon felt the touch sizzle all the way up her arm, across her shoulder and down her chest.

“It’s the veins,” Corona concluded. She traced her finger up Gideon’s right arm. “This one here is especially lovely.”

Gideon swallowed. “What is it with women and arm veins anyway?”

“Strength, I suppose. It’s rugged, masculine, and combined with the rest of you it’s just, well. You’ve already admitted you know it’s irresistible.”

Gideon exhaled hard, out through her nose like an agitated horse. Incredibly irresistible of her, no doubt. She would know. Across the room and behind the bar, someone dropped a glass and Gideon ignored it. Broken glassware wasn’t her problem here anymore. Anyway, Corona’s hand was still on her arm. Corona squeezed it again, gently, like she had on their walk from the Mithraeum.

“Gideon Nav. Blessed with those John Gaius eyes and those biceps...they’re eleven out of ten.”

Everything froze for one scalding hot second and the sound of the bar melted away. It became nothing but a rush of static in Gideon’s ears. And then she broke. Gideon laughed, loud and abrupt, as she leaned back against the worn cushions of the booth and deflected: “Fuck you!”

Corona’s eyes went wide and bright. “I’m serious!” She stopped and then she slumped back against her own side of the bench. Her violet eyes—they had to be colored contacts, right? Were Ianthe’s eyes that crazy purple?—flickered over toward the bar again. “Oh, I’m trying too hard, aren’t I? I’m coming on too strong.”

“No,” Gideon said, though maybe she was. It didn’t matter. Gideon liked too strong. She understood intensity. She didn’t understand what ‘John Gaius eyes’ meant—the dude owned the Mithraeum and half the city, so she guessed it meant rich? Still—“I mean, you really don’t have to try at all. You’re—well, you’re you.”

“I’m sorry, I—” Corona glanced away again.

“A friend?” Gideon asked, unable to help herself. She understood the gravity of the bar; she’d felt it since they arrived.

“No,” Corona said a little too quickly. Then: “Sort of a friend. I haven’t seen Judith in years and now she’s here. Of all places, Jude’s here, and Ianthe must have...”

“Go on,” Gideon said with a tilt of her head. She wasn’t even upset at the implication that Ianthe might have tried to sabotage their date. Gideon was sitting there surrounded by the past too. It fit; it made sense. It was the godforsaken Tomb. “I’ll be here.”

Corona bit her lip. She looked from Gideon toward the woman at the bar and back again. Finally, she made her decision. She nodded and slid off the bench. When she reached out for Gideon’s hand. Gideon let her have it. She wasn’t sure what she expected—maybe Corona intended to pull Gideon up from the bench and lead her over toward the bar as well. That wasn’t it. Instead Corona leaned in and pressed her soft mouth to Gideon’s knuckles like she was a prince in a fairytale and Gideon was the princess seated on her—wait, no, Gideon could do better than that. Corona pressed her lips to Gideon’s knuckles like she was the sorceress in this book that Gideon once read and Gideon was an accomplished warrior being honored for battles fought and won.

“You’re a star, you know that?”

Gideon didn’t know that and wasn’t sure what to say to it, but it didn’t matter. Corona was already gone. She seemed to blink out of existence for a second—or maybe Gideon blacked out at the press of soft lips to her hand?—and then she appeared again, standing tall beside the woman named Judith, her fingers tapping carefully against Judith’s jacket-clad shoulder.

Gideon settled back, brought one knee up on the bench and stretched an arm out along the back. She sipped her beer and watched Judith pull Corona into a hug. Judith didn’t stand from her stool, not fully, so her cheek ended up pressed against the swell of Corona’s breasts. It was hard to look away after that, but Gideon did. She took in the decor of the place instead, the same shadowy old portraits of people no one knew, and the one portrait of people they sort of knew—Harrow’s late parents—placed right beside the stairs. Gideon took in the dim lighting and the dark wood of the booths and the tall bar tables set around the center of the floor. The walls that weren’t plastered with anonymous old desert folks were lined with cabinets where regulars could purchase a personal bottle of whiskey or gin. The bottles were illuminated by the low amber glow of some fancy lights Crux definitely didn’t choose himself. Gideon’s eyes slid from the cabinets toward the bar, and—

She froze, a deer in headlights.

Bottomless soul-sucking black hole headlights. Harrow’s big, black, lightless eyes staring right back at Gideon.

Gideon wasn’t sure what to do. It was too late to run, to spook and bolt on spindly deer legs. It was what she wanted, she thought—to stand up and leave, but she couldn’t just walk out. There was no way in hell Gideon was giving Harrowhark Nonagesimus the satisfaction of watching Gideon Nav turn tail and run stumbling up the stairs. Gideon really hated to run.

She tried to swallow, but her throat didn’t seem to work. She felt like she couldn’t breathe, like Harrow had sucked all the air from the room and Gideon was going to suffocate and die tucked away in the darkest corner booth. Harrow’s eyes were hard and shiny, obsidian, and her mouth was pinched, tight and sharp. She looked exactly the fucking same, like not even a single day had passed. Same hateful mouth, same awful glare. That glare bore into Gideon now, sizing Gideon up and picking her apart. Gideon’s heart was doing fucked up things, like it was trying to race up a hill and wasn’t going to make it, like it was about to just give up and stop entirely at any moment, collapsing onto the pavement with a pitiful gasp.

Gideon resisted the urge to pound a fist against her chest, to punch her heart back into submission. That wouldn’t do. She was a performer, right? A fucking showgirl, and now was showtime. Corona was right, and that—it actually helped. Gideon straightened her back, squared her shoulders. She was just about to twist her mouth into formation, about to present the very best go-to-hell face she had in her carefully curated arsenal of go-to-hell and fuck-you faces, when Harrow blinked and turned away.

Harrow made it seem like nothing, like Gideon was insignificant, miniscule. Like maybe Harrow didn’t even recognize her, really had fallen down the stairs and knocked the years of Gideon Nav from her head. Harrow’d just been staring into space contemplating the proportion of ingredients in one of the cocktails she kept locked up in her brain vault. Or if she did recognize Gideon—she obviously did. Gideon wasn’t so lucky that Harrow could have fallen down the stairs—it didn’t matter, because Harrow was entirely unaffected.

Fuck. Okay, whatever. Harrow could pretend all she wanted. The fact was, Harrow had looked away first. In the rules of staring contests, that meant that Gideon had won, despite appearances, and despite the fact that winning felt a lot like being completely fucked up over seeing the Cryptkeeper for the first time in two years.

At the other end of the bar, Gideon’s gorgeous date was smiling down at her sort-of friend with her hip cocked and her eyes bright. Gideon watched as Corona reached out to set a hand on Judith’s arm. She recognized the move, but she felt gratified that Corona’s eyebrows stayed at their current elevation, that her fingers didn’t come back for a confirmatory squeeze.

Gideon downed the rest of her beer. Corona’s glass was nearly empty and no longer spewing potion-y smoke.

Gideon wasn’t really the jealous sort, but she realized in that moment she felt a little jealous of Corona. They’d both been unexpectedly shoved into the path of the walking, talking past, and Corona faced hers head on. Gideon, in contrast, was tucked away in a dark booth patting herself on the back for winning a probably imaginary staring contest.

“Fuck,” Gideon said to no one, to the bar she hated and the people she’d hoped she’d never see again. She stood and grabbed her empty beer bottle. Was she really going to do this? Was she really going to face Harrow head on?

Her feet were moving, carrying her toward the bar, and her heart hadn’t given up yet. It appeared that the answer was yes.

Gideon stopped short at the sight of a smudged ink figure lurking in front of the notice board. The figure was on the short side, slight, and dressed head to toe in black despite the heat. Gideon would recognize the set of those narrow shoulders anywhere.

It was unmistakably Harrow, and Gideon realized three things in a rush:

1) This was only the second time Gideon had ever seen Harrow outside of The Locked Tomb.

2) It was the first time she’d ever seen Harrow in daylight (that she remembered. They apparently got married during daylight hours, but it wasn’t like Gideon could remember the sight of Harrow’s skin as it began to blister and burn beneath the light of the sun).

And 3) that was her awful little wife standing over there. Gideon’s wife, out in the afternoon heat and covered head-to-toe in black, while Gideon stood in the parking lot in a tank and board shorts, her keys held loose in one hand.

For one insane second, Gideon considered sauntering up to Harrow, positioning herself by Harrow’s side with her hands crossed over her chest and one knee slightly bent. She wondered what Harrow might notice first: Gideon’s sandaled feet? Her exposed knees, the pale hairs shining in the sun? Gideon would smile down at Harrow, shrug one shoulder, maybe open with a truly awful “Hey, wifey.” Harrow’s lips would purse and she would sneer. She’s probably tear Gideon into pieces right then and there, leave her strewn across the parking lot for the vultures to pick clean.

Didn’t matter, because Gideon, it turned out, couldn’t move.

She stood there, frozen in the parking lot of the Mithras Market, the sun hot on her exposed shoulders. She stood there and she watched while Harrow Nonagesimus, her fucking wife, perused some ads like that was a totally normal thing for Harrow to do. Eventually Harrow pulled a phone number tab off of a homemade sign. She didn’t linger once her business there was done. She looked over her shoulder as though worried she might be caught acting like an ordinary human being, and then she rushed away, her short legs moving quickly, efficiently.

Harrow’s movement broke Gideon’s paralysis. Gideon dove and nearly lost a flip-flop as she ducked down behind a row of cars. She waited, crouched there, until Harrow passed. Harrow didn’t see or sense Gideon. She kept moving across the lot toward the road, probably toward the bus stop. Gideon waited until Harrow made it to the sidewalk and then she cursed and stood up.

Fuck, that was dumb. She wasn’t committing any crimes. It was Gideon’s night to cook and she was there to pick up ingredients for a salad. She was allowed to live in the world. She couldn’t be expected to predict the places Harrow might appear. And anyway, the world above the Tomb—the world lit by real actual sunlight—that was Gideon’s and had been for two entire blissful years. Harrow lurked down below, down in the dark and the cold, a creature of the shadows. But now—now apparently Harrow emerged, just thought she could materialize places outside the Tomb and in total daylight. Gideon could be living her life as normal, doing exactly what she was told to do, and Harrow might just show up out of nowhere, like something out of a horror film.

Gideon resumed her walk toward the store that housed the ingredients she needed to make a super gourmet dinner of grilled chicken and caesar salad. She was really hoping to just dump the salad from a bag right into a bowl and call it a day

She made it across the parking lot and up onto the sidewalk. She walked past the notice board without looking at a single one of the posted signs. The automatic doors slid open to welcome her and a rush of cool air smacked Gideon in the face.

Gideon cursed and turned back, nearly knocking into an older man who narrowed his eyes, but allowed Gideon to pass. She shifted two steps to the side until she was standing in front of the notice board. There were several ads there. Ads for movers, housekeepers, dog walkers, afternoon tutors. They were all clustered together, and almost all of them had at least one tab missing. It was impossible to guess which number Harrow had plucked up.

Was she moving? Skipping town and ditching Gideon forever? That seemed unlikely. It wasn’t Harrow’s style. Harrow would never abandon the Tomb, for one thing, and Gideon had never been that lucky.

She probably didn’t need an afternoon tutor considering she was already a cocktail wizard and set for life, and also she was twenty-eight years old—not that that meant she wasn’t in school, but even if she was in school, there was no way Harrow was ever going to admit she needed help with anything ever. Afternoon math tutor was out of the running. That left housekeepers and dog walkers, and dammit, none of this mattered to Gideon! Who the fuck cared if Harrow was a slob and wanted to hire someone to take care of her mess? Gideon did not need to care about this. Gideon didn’t need to care about Harrow at all. She’d made it two years—two whole years!—of Harrow-free life, and now—

Her phone buzzed. Gideon spun around to face the parking lot, certain she was going to find Harrow out there glaring back, but it was all bright blue sky and sunshine, no storm clouds in sight, no tiny voids or angry gremlins ready to come at her with claws and teeth. No smoke or smell of burnt flesh. Gideon pulled her phone from the pocket of her shorts and looked down at her screen. She sucked in a breath at the name she saw there.

Smokin’ Hot Coronabeth.

**

I’ve made a huge mistake, Gideon typed. She cursed and shook her head, jabbed her finger on the back arrow: delete, delete, delete.

She’d tried. She’d really tried.

Gideon tried to pretend nothing had changed for a week. Most of a week. Five days. She took off the ring and shoved it into her bedside drawer. She went about the normal routine of her life. She went to the gym, walked Abigail and Magnus’s dogs, shared dinners with Camilla and Palamedes and Dulcinea when their schedules aligned. She went to work and came home. She played along with the regulars, smiled and laughed. When they flirted, she flirted back, just a little. Just enough to keep them loyal. Except that now when she did it, Corona’s words echoed back—showgirls—and she felt the phantom press of a ring on her finger and Harrow’s hands hot on her neck.

And then she saw Harrow in daylight and Coronabeth Tridentarius sent another text. It read: Can’t stop thinking about those arms. Hope you’re still thinking too. 🙏 Let’s reschedule?

Gideon sort of expected she’d never hear from Corona again. She sort of expected their next encounter in the employee lot at the Mithraeum to be super awkward and embarrassing, all hey, remember that date that fizzled just as it was getting good? But here she was, still thinking about Gideon’s arms apparently, and if it wasn’t for everything else that happened that night, this would have been up there with the best texts Gideon had ever received in her life. Gideon would still be thinking about Corona too.

She wasn’t thinking about Corona though, at least not much. All of her thoughts were Harrow, her entire body just a tortured anguished scream of “Harrow!!!” over and over and over again. Rescheduling their date hardly crossed Gideon’s mind, and she stared at the words on the screen for a long time, unsure how to respond. She typed I’ve made a huge mistake, a second time and then deleted it a second time, tried I’m a married woman now and then deleted that too. She didn’t add that she’d just returned home from spying on her wife at the grocery store. That was too much even for Gideon. Instead she tried: Sure, name the time and the place, I’ll be there with bells on. She stared at that for a super long time, before she finally muttered, “Stupid. I must be insane,” and left Corona’s text unanswered. Gideon stewed for another hour and then she traversed the hall and knocked on the door to Dulcinea’s room.

“What would Dulcinea do?” she asked by way of greeting. She pushed her phone into Dulcie’s hand and then waited as Dulcie read the message.

“Can’t stop thinking about those arms,” Dulcie repeated with a flutter of very blue eyes.

“Yeah,” Gideon shrugged. Under any other set of circumstances—eleven out of ten.

“It sounds very promising,” Dulcinea said, carefully. She paused, and when Gideon didn’t jump in, just pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes, Dulcie amended: “It sounds very promising except…”

Gideon groaned. She sat heavily down on the bed and ignored the cat’s glare, and then fell back and stared up at the ceiling. “Except I just saw Harrow outside Mithras—don’t do that bright-eyed surprised thing, it was weird and from a distance. We didn’t talk, but I feel... married. I don’t know. Like, I’m taken. Off the market. Something.”

“So tell her that,” Dulcinea suggested, carefully skirting the Harrow news. It was logical advice, probably, but Gideon wasn’t finished.

“It’s like I’m in limbo. Back in The Locked Tomb’s perpetual purgatory.” She paused. “Is that what you would do? You’d tell her that?”

Dulcinea considered the question. “It depends.”

Gideon waited, and when Dulcinea didn’t continue right away she waved a hand, desperate for Dulcie to go on. “It depends on what?”

“Well, if it were me—and it would never be me, for the record. And, of course, it would never be Pal or Cam either. This seems a very singular Gideon Nav sort of experience. I want you to know I love that—it would depend on where I planned to go with it all next.”

Gideon had no idea what the hell that was supposed to mean. She was still stuck and a little offended over ‘singular Gideon Nav sort of experience’.

“For instance, if I really did not want to be married to the little beast, I would have spoken to a lawyer days ago instead of doing what she told me to do and floating in limbo for a week. If I was, perhaps, curious, because after all, I did choose to marry her and there must have been a reason, I’d tell the gorgeous dancer the truth and I’d take my chances in Locked Tomb limbo. Why did you marry her anyway? You still haven’t said.”

Gideon turned so that she was facedown on the bed. She groaned into the blankets. It wasn’t even a contest. Harrowhark Nonagesimus or Coronabeth Tridentarius. One was an evil conniving cave troll, the Cryptkeeper, and the other was Coronabeth.

The thing was—the thing was, it was the evil conniving cave troll she couldn’t stop thinking about. Why did she marry her?

“I need a lawyer,” Gideon concluded.

“Oh!” Dulcinea looked genuinely surprised, which made it all worse. “Well, if that’s what you’ve decided then you’re in luck. We have just the lawyer for you.”

**

The lawyer turned out to be Pal’s mother. She was exactly how Gideon imagined the mother of Palamedes Sextus might be, except hot, like really fucking hot. Like take all of Palamedes and rearrange him so he fits together correctly hot. Angular, but the angles all point in the right direction hot. Like Gideon was never going to let Palamedes hear the end of it hot. Like—

“Okay,” Cam cut in, because Gideon needed support and Palamedes worked during the day like a normal human, and Dulcie had a life or appointments or something, so the short straw went to Cam. “You made your point.”

“You all knew this,” Gideon accused, knee bouncing. “You were keeping it from me.”

“Yeah,” Cam agreed. “We kept it from you because the last thing Pal wanted was Gideon Nav dating his mother. Now you’re married, so…” Cam shrugged and set a hand on Gideon’s knee to still her. “You’re shaking the whole room.”

“Like the textbook definition of MILF,” Gideon continued in wonder. “A MILF and a LILF? Lawyer I’d like to—”

Camilla interrupted Gideon with a pained groan. “I wish he was here to suffer through this in my place.”

Pal’s mother—Juno Zeta, what a name!—explained the difference between uncontested divorce and contested divorce. When Gideon said she wasn’t sure which way this would go, Juno Zeta just nodded and went over the steps involved with each. The uncontested divorce process began with one party—that was Gideon—drafting the divorce documents. Then she and Harrow were supposed to review them together and agree to all of the terms. They’d been married for like a week. It wasn’t like they had a life and kids to split up. Gideon’s terms were simple; she just wanted it undone, so she could continue with her life as if it had never happened and maybe ask Coronabeth (or Juno Zeta) on a date again. Once Harrow agreed, a judge would review and approve. No real court stuff needed, total cost less than two thousand dollars. Expensive, sure, but it sounded relatively painless.

If the divorce was contested, then the process got more complicated. Gideon filed her papers and then she and Harrow had to try to negotiate a settlement (of what, Gideon had absolutely no idea). Then they went through the motions and a CMC, which stood for something or other. Juno Zeta fiddled with her glasses at that point and Gideon totally missed what she’d said. Cam would have to fill her in later. She was pretty sure she got the important stuff. With a contested divorce they went to court, they gathered and provided documents. There were witnesses involved and an actual trial and the judge decided the terms of the divorce.

There was also the annulment option. It sounded easier than a divorce. A little too easy. It made Gideon suspicious, like there was a loophole. Like they weren’t actually drunk enough or something, and they’d find out at the last minute that an annulment wouldn’t fly.

Pal’s mom, hottest divorce lawyer ever, recommended trying the annulment first. Gideon thought the uncontested route made more sense. Juno Zeta gave Gideon a form to fill out, in which Gideon was expected to know all kinds of things about Harrow like Harrow’s address and Harrow’s monthly income and Harrow’s freakin’ assets. There was a big note about how they lived in a community property state and therefore what was Gideon’s was Harrow’s and what was Harrow’s was Gideon’s, which was whatever. Gideon didn’t have anything anyway and she didn’t need anything of Harrow’s. Harrow had the Tomb, sort of, and the Tomb was the very last thing Gideon wanted in this world.

“Fill out what you can,” Juno suggested. “If it’s uncontested, your wife can fill out the rest. If you both agree to the terms, a judge reviews, we wrap it all up, and you’re single once more.”

Great. Gideon’s wife would fill out the rest, they would return the papers to Pal’s Hot Mom, and Gideon would wake up from this nightmare. All she needed to do was talk to Harrow.