Chaos Tryst Read Free Page B

trail of the heirloom-stealing vixen who’d broken into their home this night.
    “Maks. Maksim,” Dmitri continued, “please, brother, you must check to see that my toes are where they should be. I need them for balance.”
    Dmitri suddenly sat up, clapped his hands over his ears and said, “I hear banjos. Do you not hear them? There is a bluegrass band playing in my head,” then promptly curled back into a ball and groaned.
    That was it. They had no choice. Konstantin began laughing uncontrollably and Maks snorted, rubbing his eyes to conceal his amusement.
    “Damn you, Mitya.” Maks walked over and leaned to slap his brother on the back. “We need to hunt the thief now. There is no time for such nonsensical nonsense.”
    Konstantin laughed harder.
    “Plus, the vixen barely bumped you. It cannot be so bad as this.” Maks indicated his brother’s fetal position with a sweeping hand. “We must go now.”
    “You go, Maks. I will attend to the babe on the floor. Perhaps take him to a healer,” Konstantin said.
    “Surely you are making the joke. I cannot go after this creature alone. Did you not sense the chaos magick within her? Did you not see what happened to that accursed stained glass?” Maks resumed his pacing.
    Konstantin had to have gone mad, likely another consequence of Maks’s chaos magick blending with the vixen’s. If he went after the thief alone there would be destruction. He did not doubt.
    Chaos magick was an unpredictably destructive force in the Faebled world. It made things go wrong in spectacular ways. Maks held his own chaos in check most of the time, but something in the thief’s magick called to his own and he had been unable to hold back. He considered himself a liability at the best of times but in proximity to the thief he was an unexploded grenade, pin pulled and ready to lower the boom.
    Such was the way of things among the storied folk. He was not a babe to cry over hardship. Nor bear jealousy toward his brothers. He merely wished his nature fell more in line with theirs. They were born of order as their father had been. Maks’s mother imbued him alone with her gift for entropy and his brothers continued to pretend their mother’s predilection hadn’t sealed their parents’ fate.
    Maks glanced behind him at the vigilant statues in the foyer. The marble faces of his parents remained unaffected by their middle son’s turmoil.
    Dmitri looked to the statues, as well, but his gaze also slid to the remnants of the stained glass. He would soon start droning at Maks on how chaos was the tool of the tricksters and tricksters destroyed and remade the world so it would not stagnate and fall into decay.
    “I have told you how badly you misinterpret your powers,” Dmitri said from the floor, hands still clasped over his jewels. “They are good.”
    Clockwork. Maks shook his head. “So says the man who sets things in their proper order.”
    Dmitri held high ranking in a faction of Faebles equivalent to the CIA with FBI tendencies. He worked for the A2O, the Agents of Order, and did the job well.
    Maks revered his elder brother in the classical sense—the way such fraternal bonds were written in fiction. He’d bet light actually shone in his eyes when he looked at Dmitri, but his ego shrugged off the emotion. Embarrassing.
    “I agree with Mitya.” Konstantin chimed in.
    “So says the man who foresees things as they should be.”
    Konstantin didn’t get a say. As an Oracle of Order he couldn’t comprehend the affliction of chaos. Their youngest brother foresaw the best ways to maintain the as-it-should-be in the Faeble world and organized the A2O into action, protecting the outcome. If you slapped him Konstantin would bruise in an orderly fashion.
    Most storied folk were unaware of the identities of Oracles of Order, yet the station was as beloved as the Pope or Dalai Lama. Maks’s affection for the cub trumped all. He did not begrudge either sibling their order. He wanted a piece