Chapter 849: House Hunting In Valoria City [II / Bonus - ]

Chapter 849: House Hunting In Valoria City [II / Bonus Chapter]

Standing dead center in the middle of the courtyard garden, in a perfectly raked bed of white gravel surrounded by delicate little maples, was a twelve-foot-tall marble statue.

It was a hyper-realistic and extremely detailed carving of a completely naked man holding a remarkably large and remarkably angry badger up by its hind legs.

The man’s face was frozen in an open-mouthed grimace of terror while the badger’s face was a masterpiece of bottomless bloodlust.

Silas stood on the patio with his mouth slightly open.

Harper froze mid-step as her glasses slid halfway down her nose as her brain tried and failed to make sense of what it was looking at.

Miss Corva stared at the statue with a pained apologetic expression.

“The previous owner,” she said in a strained fragile whisper, “was an avant-garde sculptor from the western provinces… The statue is legally classified as a protected cultural landmark under the neighborhood charter… It cannot be removed, covered, altered or relocated for the next forty-five years without a catastrophic tax penalty.”

Silas slowly turned his head to look at Harper while Harper slowly turned her head to look at Silas.

On Silas’s shoulder, Nitocris stood straight up with her tail puffed out like a bottle brush and her ears flat against her skull, staring at the marble badger in pure shock.

“What in the nine hells is THAT?” she screeched, her claws digging into Silas’s shoulder. “Why is the old man naked? Why is he attacking a woodland creature? Is this a sacred fertility idol of your barbarian ancestors, Nyaa~?”

“I… I honestly don’t know, Nito,” Silas whispered, completely mesmerized by the insane detail carved into the badger’s teeth. “I really don’t know…”

Harper pressed a trembling hand over her mouth as her shoulders began to shake.

A tiny snort escaped through her fingers, then another, and then she broke completely and doubled over in helpless, ringing laughter that echoed across the whole garden.

“Oh gods…!” she gasped, tears leaking out from under her glasses as she clutched Silas’s arm to stay upright. “The badger! Look at its little marble toes, Silas! Look at the rage in its eyes!”

Silas couldn’t hold it in either. A big booming laugh burst out of his chest, and he wrapped an arm around her waist to keep her from toppling into the gravel.

“Imagine Martha walking out here with her morning tea,” he wheezed. “She’d drop the cup and call an exorcist! Lia’s friends would never visit again! Penelope would try to fight the badger with a stick!”

“And the badger would win!” Nitocris yowled, thoroughly traumatized. “Take me away from this cursed garden, Silas Graves! My royal eyes are burning, Nyaa~!”

“Penelope would win,” Harper wheezed, wiping her eyes. “Penelope always wins… She’d win and then she’d make it apologize.”

Her sister was quite talented even though she refused to show it.

Miss Corva let out a long understanding sigh and pulled out her tablet.

“I’ll cross this one off the list, shall I?”

“Please,” Harper choked out, leaning against Silas’s chest and still trembling with giggles. “…Before the badger claims my soul.”

They didn’t stop laughing until they were back in the car.

Even Nitocris was making a strange, suspicious wheezing sound on the dashboard.

Every time one of them calmed down, the other one would whisper “the toes,” and it would start all over again.

By midafternoon, house hunting had thoroughly drained their patience, their stamina and their dignity.

“I need sugar,” Harper announced as they pulled into a parking spot on a busy commercial street lined with cafes and boutiques. “I need an ungodly amount of ice cream, or my brain is going to melt into black sand right here on the pavement… I never knew house hunting in this city was so hard.”

“No argument from me,” Silas said, and his stomach rumbled loudly in agreement.

’At this point, maybe I should have called Ev…’ Silas thought, she would have gotten it done quickly but did he regret not calling her? Not in the slightest.

The ice cream shop was a charming little place with a striped awning and a sunny outdoor patio overlooking a public fountain.

Harper’s office had sent the house-hunting itinerary to all three agents, so Harrison, Madame Odile and Miss Corva had all followed along to the last stop on the list, and now they stood awkwardly on the curb with their portfolios tucked under their arms, looking thoroughly bewildered.

“Well? Don’t just stand on the sidewalk looking sad,” Harper called over her shoulder, waving them toward the tables. “…Sit down! House Whitmore covers combat stress rations, and surviving that badger legally counts as combat so order whatever you want!”

The three agents looked at each other, blinked, and immediately scrambled for the nearest shaded table with grateful smiles.

Five minutes later, Silas carried a huge freshly made waffle bowl out to a small wrought-iron table under a trellis of golden wisteria.

It was a masterpiece.

…It held three big scoops of rich vanilla bean ice cream, drizzled in warm salted caramel and piled with crushed candied pecans, dark chocolate shavings and two long sugar wafers standing upright like tiny swords.

He set it in the middle of the table and dropped into the chair across from Harper.

Nitocris immediately hopped down from his shoulder onto the edge of the table.

She sat up perfectly straight with her paws tucked together, her violet eyes tracking the melting caramel with razor-sharp, predatory focus.

Harper picked up a long silver spoon and scooped up a generous mound of vanilla dripping with caramel, however she didn’t put it in her own mouth.

She leaned across the little table, her eyes crinkling behind her glasses, with a soft pretty smile on her lips.

“Say ’ah,’ hubby~” she purred.

Silas looked at the spoon hovering in front of his nose, then up at her glowing flushed face and he didn’t hesitate.

Silas leaned forward and let her feed him and the ice cream was incredible.

It was smooth and rich, with the warmth of the vanilla cutting perfectly through the bitter buttery snap of the caramel.

“Damn,” he said, his eyes lighting up. “That’s ridiculously good.”

“Right?” Harper beamed, pulling the spoon back.

Before she could take a bite for herself, a black paw shot forward with blinding speed.

SWIPE!

Nitocris’s head darted in, and her pink tongue scooped a huge dollop of melting cream right off the tip of the sugar wafer.

SLURP!

“Mmm!” Her violet eyes went wide with pure, divine ecstasy. “Now this is a proper tribute! The cold is shocking! But the sweetness is magnificent! Even better than the one in Iunu, Nyaa~!”

Harper went still for half a second at the name then she smiled, a small real smile, and her eyes softened.

“You remember that,” she said quietly.

“I remember all of it,” the cat said, without looking up from the bowl. “You bought me two scoops… On a day when you had every reason to hate me, you bought me two scoops, Nyaa~”

Harper didn’t answer… She just reached over and scratched the cat gently behind the ears, and Nitocris, for once, didn’t complain about it then Harper swatted the cat’s tail with her napkin.

“Hey. Thief,” she said, sniffling a little and grinning. “That’s our ice cream, you greedy empress.”

“A Per-aa takes her royal share of all offerings,” Nitocris said proudly, licking her whiskers clean. “You should be honored that my divine tongue blessed your frozen paste, Nyaa~”

Silas chuckled and picked up the second spoon.

He scooped up a bite covered in candied pecans and held it out across the table toward Harper’s lips.

“Here,” he said softly. “Before the empress collects another tax…”

Harper’s eyes widened slightly.

She looked at the spoon in his hand, then at the warm easy affection in his dark blue eyes, and a familiar delicious flutter uncurled in the middle of her chest.

She parted her lips and leaned forward to take it.

The sweetness bloomed across her tongue, but she barely tasted it as all her attention was pinned to the steady line of his hand, the way the breeze ruffled his dark hair, and the small comfortable smile resting on his face.

…They sat under the wisteria and shared the whole bowl bite by bite with the banter flowing easily back and forth, while Nitocris patrolled the edge of the dish and stole drips of melted cream whenever they weren’t looking.

Across the patio, the three agents were happily devouring their own sundaes, chatting about property taxes and the badger, completely relaxed.

Silas leaned back in his chair, watching yellow leaves drift down from the trellis onto the cobblestones.

Harper rested her chin on her palm and watched him.

Harper stirred the melting ice cream with her spoon, then glanced up at him.

“You know what my first thought was when you called?” she asked.

“…That you’d finally get to spend money on me?”

“Pretty much,” she admitted with a laugh. “I was going to wire a fortune out of my trust fund and drop the biggest mansion in the city in your lap… That’s how my family handles everything. If you got a problem, throw money at it until it goes away.”

’Or kill it until the source of the problem dies… It can be used inter-changeably.’ Harper thought.

Silas raised an eyebrow.

“Still, we’re here eating ice cream with three real estate agents.”

“True… we are,” Harper agreed.

She was quiet for a second, tracing the edge of her spoon with her thumb.

“This was more fun… Getting kicked out of the gold house… The badger… You hitting your head on that beam…” Her lips curved. “I’m glad you called me as your go-to contact when you came back but I’m going to see this thing through and get you that place!”

Silas looked at her across the little table for a long moment, long enough that her cheeks started to turn pink then he reached over, took the spoon out of her hand and set it down, and laced his fingers through hers.

“You will be,” he said. “And you’ll be there when we move in, too and probably every weekend after that, since you’re going to pick a bedroom and pretend it’s for guests…”

“I am not going to pretend anything. You think I’ll move in with yo—”

Harper opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again, because he was right and they both knew it.

’Ah, he knows me a bit too much… So cute~’

He’d called her his billionaire girlfriend on the phone like it was nothing, like it had always been true and sitting here with his hand wrapped around hers in the sunlight, she was starting to believe it really was.

’We’ll need to make it official and then go all the way to marriage…’ Harper thought, for what reason…?

Well Harper Graves sounded like a nice name for her.

She squeezed his fingers and didn’t let go, and for a while neither of them said anything at all.

They just sat there under the wisteria with the fountain splashing behind them and the ice cream slowly melting between them.

On the edge of the table, Nitocris looked at their joined hands, let out a long exasperated sigh and scooped another clawful of caramel out of the bowl.

“Disgusting,” she muttered happily through a mouthful of sugar. “Utterly sickening, Nyaa~”

Harper lifted her head, wiped her eyes, and her smile turned suddenly mischievous.

“Okay,” she said, standing up and pulling him with her. “I’ve got one last place I want you to see…”

Twenty minutes later, the car was climbing.

Harper took them up a private road that wound higher and higher into the hills above the city, through switchbacks lined with old silver birches and scarlet maples.

The traffic thinned out and then disappeared, the houses disappeared too, replaced by long stretches of tall stone walls draped in ivy, and every so often, a pair of gates set back from the road with guards in tailored gray uniforms standing beside them.

“Harper,” Silas said slowly, watching a guard nod respectfully at her car as they passed. “Where are we…?”

“Celestine Heights,” she said.

He turned to stare at her.

Even he knew that name… Everybody in Valoria City knew that name. It was the richest and most exclusive neighborhood in the entire city, perched on the highest ridge and guarded like a fortress.

Houses up here didn’t go on the open market at all… People inherited them, or traded them in quiet deals behind closed doors.

“And here’s the best part,” Harper said, practically vibrating with excitement. “Valoria Academy is just down the other side of this ridge. There’s a private walking path through the trees… It’s an eight-minute walk to the front gate, Silas. Lia could walk to school every morning under the maples without Martha having to get into traffic.”

Silas didn’t say anything… They passed through a tall crystal security arch at the top of the ridge as it scanned the car with a soft chime and let them through.

At the very end of the highest road, they pulled up before a pair of enormous gates of dark star-forged iron, twenty feet tall and wrought with patterns of flowing water.

There was no intercom, and no guard stepped out to ask who they were.

The gates simply swung open on their own.

WHUMMM!

Harper drove through and up a long, winding drive through a private forest of towering evergreens then the trees fell away, and the car crested the top of the hill.

The whole city spread out below them, glittering in the afternoon sun and sitting at the center of the plateau was the house.

…Silas looked up at the mansion and forgot how to breathe.