Series: Cobalt Empire Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 234
Estimated words: 226965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1135(@200wpm)___ 908(@250wpm)___ 757(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 226965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1135(@200wpm)___ 908(@250wpm)___ 757(@300wpm)
“We can do this, Paul Atreides,” I whisper back, straightening the index cards in my hand. “Just imagine they’re all idiots and we’re the only smart ones.”
He chokes on a laugh. “That’s such a Cobalt trick.” Xander is shying from the obsessive eyes and the phones raised at him. “I’d do anything to get through this, even pretend I’m a genius for ten minutes.” He has another stack of flashcards. “You ready?”
I nod him on.
He twists the mic toward us. “This thing work—?”
The gasps and squeals have the professor shushing half the lecture hall. This is the first time they’ve heard Xander Hale speak in person.
“That’d be a yes,” he mutters, backing away from the mic like it’s a bomb.
I step forward and take a shallow breath, the mic crackling. The auditorium falls hushed, and I dip forward to speak. And then my voice cages in my lungs for an unbearable moment. I’ve practiced this opening line a thousand times with Xander. It’s Latin from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Before I even say a thing, the words plunge into the depth of me. I look around, and the auditorium is empty in my mind. I just see Ben in the middle row. I see his lips crawling up into a radiant smile. I see his baby blue eyes glittering with the same effervescence.
I see Eternal Spring that will last through the ages.
“Omnia mutantur, nihil interit,” I say quietly into the mic. “Everything changes, nothing perishes.”
56
HARRIET FISHER
We didn’t exactly bomb the presentation, but it definitely did not go as planned. The uproar and commotion each time Xander spoke caused the professor to stop us. Girls wept. They were physically trembling as if Xander was talking solely to them. Some went into shock.
I’ve never seen anything like it up close.
Our professor either took pity on us or didn’t have the time for us to present privately without the mayhem—because he just gave us an automatic one hundred.
Xander keeps apologizing as we walk to the dining hall for lunch. Easton is also with us.
I tell him the truth. I couldn’t be happier that we only had to be up there for five minutes tops. No way would I complain about an easy A. Especially in a humanities course. There are enough hard-earned ones in my schedule.
On our trek across the chilly campus, leaves falling, I’m distracted by Donnelly. Xander’s bodyguard speaks into his mic more often now that Ben is MIA. He’s on comms seemingly all the time, and whenever he catches me staring, he’ll shake his head at me like, no new news.
No Ben.
My phone buzzes, and I check the text.
Tom
I sent the packet to you. Let me know what else you need. I can email you what I think the proposed tour schedule would be.
Harriet
Def send that.
I told Tom if I were to seriously consider his offer then he needed to seriously give me all the information. Contracts, people I’d be working with—producers, managers, whoever. I want details.
He’s surprisingly followed through in epic fashion. For a chaos-maker, he is incredibly detail-oriented and organized.
Tom
Will do, Harry.
My phone vibrates again. This time a phone call from an unknown number. I stop abruptly, wind nipping my face.
Xander turns back around. “You okay?”
“Uh, yeah, someone’s calling me. It’s an unknown number.”
Xander looks to Donnelly, who wears just as much confusion as me.
I wrack my brain for who it could be. “It might be spam.”
“What if it’s Ben?” Xander says, more hopefully.
“Or maybe it’s Guy Abernathy,” Easton says, popping his coat collar as more cold air blows through the wind tunnel in the quad. “We still don’t know who’s made the Honors House.” Easton is in the top five, still in contention like me. With the semester ending, they should be whittling five down to one. It’s nuts they’ve even taken this long to choose a new member.
It’s likely the House is split on who to pick. Maybe they’ve finally decided, and it’s not me.
I prepare for a rejection, since that seems more likely than Ben calling. And I answer on the last ring.
“Harriet Fisher?” It’s a very unfamiliar, deep male voice.
Not Guy.
Not Ben.
“Yes?”
“Hi, I’m Gordon Brown. Ben Cobalt’s estate attorney. If I could have a moment of your time, I need you to come down to my office and sign some paperwork.”
Idon’t understand.
I don’t understand.
I don’t fucking understand. I’ve said it three times to Gordon, and he’s tried to explain it to me in three different ways. I could blame bad cell reception if we weren’t having this conversation in person.
I left campus and told Xander I’d fill him in later. Now I’m currently sitting in this lawyer dude’s stately office in Midtown, a pen, documents, and legal pad laid out on the desk before me.
“Let me just say it back to make sure I have this correct,” I tell him, my hands hovering over the cherry oak desk. “Ben Pirrip Cobalt, your client, made me, Harriet Stevie Fisher, the sole beneficiary of an irrevocable trust that contains…this…amount of money.” I tap the legal pad with a number written down.