“Who’s being unreasonable?” Neve shot back.
“Are you even a man?
You don’t have a single ounce of gentlemanly manners.”
He was tall, with long legs, and he really did walk fast.
She had to break into a jog just to stay beside him as he strode down the long marble hallway past oil paintings and glass cabinets full of porcelain.
“Heh.” Zane didn’t slow down.
“I don’t have time to worry about being a gentleman.
I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean.”
He turned a corner without looking to see whether she was still following.
“All my time goes into working hard enough to stay alive.”
Then, abruptly, he stopped.
Neve nearly walked into his back.
She caught herself just in time and stepped around him, and found him looking down at her with that same flat, unreadable expression.
“So, Miss Sinclair.
Are you sure you want to marry me?”
He said it plainly, as if he were reading out the terms of a contract.
“This is who I am.
I’m not going to go out of my way to make you happy, and I don’t have much money to spend on you.
And I have a lot of pride.”
He folded his arms.
“Once you marry me, you’re my wife.
You don’t get to keep running back to your family for everything.
Whatever I eat, you eat.
Wherever I live, you live.
However I live, you live the same way.”
He paused.
“What’s that old saying?
For richer or for poorer.” One corner of his mouth moved, though it wasn’t quite a smile.
“With me, you should expect the poorer.”
He looked her in the eye.
“I’m not some rich second-generation heir, if that’s what you’re imagining.
The Leighton money and the Leighton name have almost nothing to do with me.
I’m an illegitimate son.
I have no right to inherit a single thing from this family.”
That last part, at least, was the truth.
Every descendant of the Leighton bloodline received a generous monthly allowance.
That was a family rule, and Arthur enforced it.
But children born outside of marriage had no claim at all to the inheritance.
Not the companies, not the properties, not a single share.
Neve felt something twist briefly in her chest.
Illegitimate.
Just like Sylvie.
But she pushed the thought away.
That word didn’t make someone a traitor.
What made someone a traitor was what they chose to do.
And none of the rest of his speech mattered to her anyway.
Money, pride, where they lived, what they ate: none of it would mean anything in three months, when the gray-black rain fell and the world ended.
Only one thing mattered.
“If the world changes,” she said quietly, “and everything falls into chaos, will you protect me?”
That was the real question.
When things got desperate, would he abandon her and Nana to save himself?
“I’m a man,” Zane said.
“Of course I won’t abandon my own woman.”
Neve let out a small breath.
Then he added, “With one exception.”
She looked up.
“If protecting you puts my own life in absolute danger,” he said calmly, “I’ll leave you behind.”
He said it without a flicker of shame.
It was just a fact, stated simply.
If it came down to her life or his, he would choose his.
For a second, Neve just stared at him.
Then she was so angry she almost laughed out loud.
His own life in danger?
In the apocalypse, a person’s life wasn’t in danger once in a while.
It was in danger every single minute of every single day.
There would be zombies at the door and mutants in the walls, and people at your back who would slit your throat for half a can of beans.
By his logic, he’d be abandoning her before breakfast on the first morning.
“You are seriously unbelievable,” she said.
“What a complete jerk.”
She drew back her foot and kicked him square in the shin, hard, right where his grandfather’s cane had landed.
Zane blinked.
Neve turned on her heel and walked away without a backward glance.
Her spine was straight and her steps were even.
She didn’t trust herself to say another word.
If she stayed and kept talking to him, he was going to make her so furious that she’d drop dead of rage before the apocalypse even got the chance to kill her.
Behind her, Zane stood alone in the hallway and looked down at his shin.
Then, slowly, he looked after her.
It had been a very long time since anyone had dared to kick him.
In the study, the two old people had fallen silent.
Margaret had told Arthur everything: the gray-black rain that would fall in less than three months, the dead rising in the streets, the awakened abilities, the drought and the floods that would come after.
She had told it plainly and completely, without dressing any of it up.
Now she sat in the armchair across from his desk, her hands folded in her lap, and waited to see what he would do.
Arthur frowned deeply at the papers on his desk, though he wasn’t really seeing them.
“To be honest with you, Margaret,” he said at last, “I don’t believe it.
Something like this is too far-fetched.”
He shook his head.
“And the government hasn’t released anything.
Not a whisper.
If something like this were coming, I would know.”
He wasn’t boasting.
The Leightons weren’t one of those great families in name only.
Whatever the field or the industry, and whatever the ministry, the Leightons had someone on the inside.
Arthur heard things days before the newspapers did, and sometimes weeks before.
And about this so-called apocalypse, he hadn’t heard a single thing.
Deep down, he simply couldn’t make himself believe it.
Margaret nodded slowly, as if she had expected nothing else.
“I may not have many years left,” she said.
“So today, I’m giving you one more treasure.”
She reached into her handbag and took out a small leather pouch, then set it on the desk in front of him.
“I hope that, for the sake of this, you’ll be willing to protect my granddaughter and keep her safe for the rest of her life.”
Arthur looked at the pouch, then at her.
“This is a storage bag,” Margaret said.
“The kind from the old legends.
Drip a little blood on it, then concentrate and look inside.
You’ll understand.”
She held up a finger before he could reach for it.
“But think carefully first.
If you want to pass it down to the most outstanding young man in your family, let him bind it directly.
Once it recognizes an owner, that can never be changed.”
In truth, she didn’t want Arthur to bind it himself.
He was old, and so was she.
They wouldn’t be the ones fighting in the world that was coming.
She had brought the storage bag for the future head of the Leighton family.
She wanted whoever would one day lead them to hold it in his hand and remember who had given it to him.
And to remember what he owed Neve.
Arthur picked up the pouch and turned it over carefully.
It was made of some kind of soft, supple leather and was no bigger than his palm.
Its surface was covered with strange carved symbols, curling lines and tiny interlocking shapes that didn’t look like any writing he had ever seen.
He bent closer, studying them.
The longer he stared, the more they seemed to move.
The lines shifted and turned, drawing his eye deeper and deeper into the pattern, until the room around him began to tilt…
Arthur jerked his head back sharply.
He was dizzy, genuinely dizzy, with a faint ringing in his ears.
He blinked several times and gripped the edge of the desk until the floor settled beneath him.
He set the pouch down very carefully and looked at it with entirely new eyes.
This tiny little bag really isn’t ordinary.
Without another word, he picked up the phone on his desk and dialed.
“Julian.
Come to my study.
Now, as quickly as you can.”
He hung up and immediately dialed again.
“Bring me a small knife,” he told the butler.
“Sterilized.
Right away.”