Kingmakers, Year Two

21. Cat

21

CAT

W hen I don’t see Zoe at breakfast, I worry that something awful happened to her again.

Instead, she comes bursting into my room down in the Undercroft while I’m stuffing my backpack with books.

She rarely comes to visit my dorm—nobody who isn’t a Spy likes to come to the Undercroft. They find it creepy, and to be fair, the Spies are less than welcoming.

We’re the only division where the male and female students share the same floor. While I’ve gotten to know some of the older students like Shannon Kelly and Isabel Dixon, I hate visiting the bathrooms at the far end of the tunnel, because it means I also have to pass the doors of some of the absolutely terrif ying residents like Jasper Webb and my own asshole cousin Martin Romero.

Their rooms are caves, and I have a sneaking fear that if I don’t run past their door fast enough, they might reach out a tentacle-like arm and drag me inside.

For all these reasons, it’s usually me that visits Zoe in the bright, clean Solar.

Today I’m simply relieved to see her at all, especially since I can tell at a glance that her face is beaming with excitement.

“He did it!” She cries, her voice choked with emotion. “Miles did it!”

“Did what?” I say, blankly.

“He convinced the Princes to dissolve the marriage contract.”

I stare at her, open-mouthed, not able to process what I’m hearing.

“How . . . are you sure?”

I want to celebrate with my sister, but I’m afraid this can’t possibly be true. I don’t want her hopes dashed as quickly as they rose.

Zoe lowers her voice, though we’re alone in my room. Rakel already left for class .

“He snuck out last night with Ares. They went to Dubrovnik and Miles made a new deal with the Princes and our father.”

Zoe sounds feverish. I haven’t seen her this happy in . . . maybe forever.

“Does Rocco know?” I whisper.

“Not yet. But he will.”

Zoe is triumphant. She can’t wait for Rocco to hear that his schemes have been ripped out from under him.

I, on the other hand, feel a new level of dread.

Rocco isn’t going to take this well. Not at all.

I don’t want to say that to Zoe, however. I don’t want to eat away at her joy in this moment.

So I just throw my arms around her and hug her hard.

“I’m so, so happy for you Zo,” I say. “You deserve this.”

She hugs me back even harder, her slim frame shaking with excitement. “The deal is for you too, Cat. Our father won’t make a contract for you. He’s not allowed to. You won’t have to marry anyone you don’t like.”

I let out a long sigh. That was a future horror I had never even considered, because it scared me too much.

“Miles did that? For me?” I say .

“Yes,” Zoe pulls back to look at me, smoothing a few wild curls back from my face. They immediately spring forward again, disobedient as ever. “He knows how much I love you.”

I’ve never imagined a free future for myself. It’s overwhelming. I don’t know where to begin making plans. I feel like I’m standing in front of a buffet with a thousand dishes.

What would I do, if I could truly do anything in the world?

Would I go to Pintamonas?

That’s what I planned, before I came here.

But I don’t know if I want that anymore. My progress at Kingmakers has been hard-won. I started at the bottom of my class, the weakest, the least competent. Slowly over the school year, I’ve grown. I’ve learned things. Discovered reserves of strength and ingenuity I never knew I possessed. Bit by bit my grades have improved, so I’m no longer failing. I might even find myself at the middle of the pack.

Who knows where I could be in another year? Or two or three?

I once pictured myself on graduation day, as strong and confident as a Senior like Saul Turner.

That no longer seems like an impossible fantasy.

“I’ll have to thank Miles,” I say to Zoe. “Though I don’t know how you can ever thank someone for something like that. ”

“I know,” Zoe says. “I just can’t believe it.”

But she can. She absolutely believes it.

It takes me calling home to my father to be fully convinced. I phone him on Sunday, which is the day we’re permitted to use the old-fashioned bank of telephones in the ground floor of the Keep.

I never call my father, usually. He communicates via letters that I detest opening.

However, today he seems to be expecting my call.

“Hello, Catalina.”

He never calls me Cat. He never has.

“Hello, father.”

“I assume your sister told you the news.”

“She said you made a new deal with the Princes. A more advantageous arrangement.”

I’m trying to flatter him. I know my father’s pride. If he senses any hint of triumph in Zoe or me, he’ll be furious.

“I don’t expect you girls to understand the complexity of my business. But yes, you could say it is infinitely more advantageous,” he says, with pompous magnanimity.

“I—I’m very happy for you, father. ”

“It’s an embarrassment for your sister to be cast off by her fiancé. She better hope the American is serious about pursuing her. I doubt anyone else will be interested after the way she’s behaved.”

“I think he’s very serious about her,” I say, quietly.

My father responds with a disgusted sniff.

“I hope you’ll never behave in such a whorish way, Catalina. I raised you to understand what a wife owes to her husband. A woman’s value is easily diluted. Like a bottle of wine, once the cork is popped?—”

“I understand, father,” I say, quickly.

I’m seething with anger, my hand shaking around the receiver. How dare he talk about Zoe that way, when he’s never felt love or devotion in his life. He’s a hypocrite, a reptile, a slimy fucking?—

“See that you do understand,” he says, shortly, hanging up the phone.

I slam the receiver down in return, wishing I’d had the courage to do it before him.

I hate him. I hate him so much.

I loathe the idea of going home this summer. I wish the school year would never end, a sentiment I never thought I’d feel, but now I embrace it wholeheartedly .

I prefer Kingmakers. I can say that now. For all its faults, for all the ways it terrifies me, at least this place is honest in its intentions. No one pretends to love me here, pretends to have my best interests at heart, while poisoning me from the inside out.

My father doesn’t know anything about who I am, not really.

I am a fucking Spy.

Luther Hugo made no mistake when he chose my division. He looked at my school transcripts. He noticed what my father never bothered to see. Nascent skills. Embryonic expertise.

I’ve been building those skills all year.

Now it’s time to put them into practice.

I’m tired of terror, tired of waiting for men to attack so I can fumble in reaction.

It’s time to face my last fear at this place.

Time to go hunting for Rocco Prince.

One of the few classes I enjoyed at Kingmakers, right from the beginning, is Stealth and Infiltration. In that class it’s an advantage to be small and insignificant, easy to overlook. Even Professor Burrows is a short and trim man, with a quiet, carefu lly cultivated British accent, and a plain, unremarkable face. The only thing memorable about him is his strangely tiny, baby-like teeth, that only reveal themselves on the rare occasion when he smirks at his own joke.

Professor Burrows has been teaching us how to stalk our quarry without being noticed.

“The first step is research,” he tells us. “You should have a good idea of where your subject is going before they ever leave the house. If your intent is to follow them to an unknown locale, keep your distance, monitor their position via indirect sources such as window reflections, and be prepared to alter your appearance en route . Caps, sunglasses, and reversible jackets can be of use.”

When I start following Rocco Prince on campus, I try to make use of all Professor Burrow’s tips. I borrow one of Rakel’s beanies to cover my hair, and I slip in and out of my academy jacket. I hide behind stacks of textbooks in the library and beefy Enforcers in the dining hall. I remember the Professor’s directive not to follow behind the subject at all times, but rather to walk on parallel or diagonal pathways, to sometimes overtake and sometimes pause out of sight.

Rocco is a predator with finely-honed instincts. If I even look at him too long, his head jerks up and his cold blue eyes sweep around, searching for the source of that prickling along the back of his neck, that sixth-sense that he’s being observed .

But he doesn’t see me. Because I’ve learned how to hide behind pillars and in the shadow of stairwells, how to sit perfectly still without flinching, my face turned down to a book, even while his gaze passes over me.

Everyone knows when Rocco learns of the dissolution of his engagement, because he destroys the dorm room he shares with Dax Volker. He smashes up the furniture, rips the mattresses apart, even throws a chair through his own window. For that little tantrum, his family is fined and he’s forced to suffer the humiliation of working on the grounds crew for two weeks.

I expect him to retaliate against Miles and Zoe immediately, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t so much as speak to Zoe, which she sees as a good sign.

“I know he’s pissed, but he has to abide by his parents’ decision,” Zoe says to me.

Zoe looks lovelier than I’ve ever seen: her skin glowing, her hair dark and lustrous, her eyes bright as spring clover. She’s still wearing her favorite trousers, but her blouse is partly unbuttoned and the sleeves rolled up. A belt cinches her slim waist, showing her figure in a way she never would have done before.

She’s secure for the first time in her life, safe as if Miles’ arms are wrapped around her, even when he’s not actually in the room .

I don’t want to puncture that safety, not for a second. But I’m frightened for her, and I can’t seem to shake it.

“I just . . . don’t believe he’ll let you go so easy,” I say to Zoe.

“Fuck him,” Zoe says, tossing her head imperiously. “There’s no contract anymore. If he tries to hurt me at school, he’ll be punished. Outside of school, I’m staying with Miles. You can come with us too, Cat. Come to Chicago this summer. Father won’t care—he’ll be drowning in cash from this deal. Miles says it’s already running, it’s already working.”

She’s high on triumph, blissful and full of plans.

I’m afraid that Miles is the same.

They can’t see what I see.

They’re not watching Rocco as he gets paler and more venomous by the day. He’s a snake that’s starving, and that only makes him more dangerous.

“I think he’s losing his friends, too,” Zoe says. “Jasper was pissed about that week in a prison cell, and from what I hear Dax is none too happy that Rocco fucked up their room.”

I have noticed that Rocco’s friends don’t seem particularly happy in his company. Jasper barely speaks, and Dax is sulky and easily irritated. Some of the hangers-on disappeared entirely after what happened to Wade Dyer. Rocco snaps at anyone who remains, until his group of a dozen minions dwindles to three or four.

Still, I follow him as the school year draws to a close, until there’s only a few weeks left. Because I don’t trust that he’ll let us board that ship without one final confrontation.

A week before the final challenge of the Quartum Bellum, I study in the library. Much as I usually enjoy this place, I’m longing to be outdoors where the orange blossoms are in full bloom, the sun shining, the grass fragrant. The weather is fully warm now. Nobody wears sweaters or jackets anymore, or even stockings. The girls lay out on the lawn with their skirts pulled up to get some color on their legs. The boys hang around tossing footballs and baseballs, pretending not to watch.

I’d like to be down there, but I’m close to achieving actual decent grades, as long as I can stick the landing on my final exams. So I’m one of the only people inside the tower, resisting the siren call of early summer.

Or at least, that’s the case until I hear several sets of footsteps coming up the ramp.

Instinctively, I slip out of my seat and hide between the bookshelves .

The footsteps are heavy and male. The lowered voices have an edge of malice all too familiar to me.

“Did you see her laying out on the grass with her head in his lap? Fucking flaunting herself.”

Rocco’s hissing fury makes my flesh go cold and clammy. I stay exactly where I am, wedged in the tiny space only feet away from the boys.

“Well, he paid enough for her. Let him have her. I would have kept the cash, personally.”

I hear Dax Volker’s ugly laugh.

I expect them to keep walking up the ramp, but they appear to have stopped. There’s a scuffing of chairs and a thud of books being thrown down as they toss their belongings onto a table close to the one I was using.

“She thinks she won. She thinks she can prance around with him, laughing in my face.”

“She did win. It’s done. Give it up.”

I’m not as familiar with that voice since I’ve barely heard him speak, but I’m quite sure the low, disdainful comment came from Jasper Webb. I’m certain of it when it’s immediately accompanied by the sharp pops of Jasper cracking his knuckles in rapid sequence .

“That’s what you’d do, isn’t it?” Rocco hisses. “You’d give up. Like when Dean Yenin beat your fucking ass to the canvas.”

“He didn’t have to fight that mobile mountain first,” Jasper bites back. “What the fuck do you know about it, anyway—you weren’t down in that ring. You don’t even box.”

“I’ll put my knife up against your bony fists any time,” Rocco snarls.

“Knock it off,” Dax says, simultaneously bored and irritated. “I’m sick of you two sniping at each other. I’m sick of this school and this whole fucking year. Can’t wait to spend my summer in Ibiza, fucking coked-out bikini bitches.”

Rocco is silent for a minute, but his mind obviously keeps returning to Zoe, like a hamster in a wheel.

“It isn’t over,” he says.

I hear the exasperated sighs of the other two, clearly at their breaking point with this topic.

“Yeah, what the fuck are you gonna do about it?” Dax says, openly hostile now.

“Whatever it is, you can leave me out of it,” Jasper adds. “I don’t fancy another run-in with the Chancellor. Unlike you two, I don’t have some sweet mommy who wants to get her throat cut on my behalf.”

“I doubt mine would offer,” Rocco says, quietly .

It’s the first time I’ve heard him admit something that could be construed as vulnerable. But he doesn’t say it with any sadness. He’s only stating a fact. He’s calculated to what uses he could put his mother, and self-sacrifice simply isn’t on that list. He doesn’t care whether she loves him or not.

“What, then?” Dax says, with an air of wanting to get this over with. “What’s your plan?”

“My plan is to wait,” Rocco says, in his gentlest voice. “I’ll wait two years, three years, four . . . I’ll wait until after we graduate, and after they’re married. Maybe I’ll wait until she’s pregnant.” He laughs softly, enjoying that idea. “Eight months pregnant, about to welcome their first child. Then I’ll find her. I’ll knock on her door. And the moment she opens it, unsuspecting, unaware, I’ll take another beaker of that acid and I’ll throw it right in her face. Burn her, blind her, fuck her up. Let’s see how much he wants her then, when she’s a fucking monster.”

Dax and Jasper are silent, not even able to muster a chuckle as the depravity of this plan lays over their table like an icy mist.

“You think you’ll still care in four years?” Jasper says, trying to hide his disgust.

“I’d wait fifty years to do it,” Rocco replies. “But I won’t have to. Happiness is an anesthetic. They’ll get comfortable much sooner than that. They’ll believe I’ve given up because that’s what t hey want to believe. I’ll never forget. I’ll never forgive. Not until I get what I want.”

My stomach heaves, abruptly and without warning. I have to clap my hand over my mouth, like I did in the Grand Hall the day Ozzy’s mother was killed.

However much I’ve changed this year, that vomit reflex is the one thing I can’t control.

Perhaps Rocco hears the slap of my hand. He seems to tense up, demanding sharply, “Whose bag is that?”

I can just see my backpack hanging over the corner of my abandoned chair. I forgot to grab it when I hid between the bookshelves.

My instinct is to flee, but Rocco can’t see me. He can’t know that I heard.

“I dunno,” Dax says. “It’s been there the whole time. Probably someone forgot it.”

“Pick it up,” Rocco barks. “Look through it. See who it belongs to.”

Dax’s chair scrapes across the carpet as he stands, planning to do as Rocco ordered.

Now I’m in a panic, knowing that my name is written inside several of my textbooks. If Dax looks through them, he’ll tell Rocco, and Rocco will fucking know I’m somewhere close by. He’l l know it isn’t a coincidence.

I’m about to burst out of my hiding place like a grouse flushed from ground, when I hear a light voice saying, “Did someone forget that? I’ll take it.”

Ms. Robin’s oversized cardigan and mane of frizzy red hair sweeps into view as she snatches up the bag, right before Dax’s big hand can close around it.

“Thank you, boys,” she says, already striding away.

“Did she hear any of that?” Rocco says in a low tone, after she’s gone.

“No,” Dax says. “And who cares—she’s a fuckin’ space cadet. You ever seen her drooling all over those crumbly rat-shit scrolls? Thinks she’s a fuckin’ medieval monk, or a nun or some shit.” He gives another of those awful laughs. “Dresses like a nun, too. I’d still bend her over the desk. I like a redhead. So does our boy Jasper, don’t ya Jasper?”

“No,” Jasper says, coolly. “I’m not interested in fucking the librarian.”

All this seems to have distracted Rocco enough that he forgets about the mystery backpack.

“Let’s go,” Dax says. “I don’t feel like studying.”

“When do you ever,” Rocco says, waspishly .

“It’s almost dinner, and unlike you two I actually like to eat.”

“If you call the pig-slop they serve at this place eating.”

Not waiting for Rocco to agree with anything like grace, Dax gathers up his books. Rocco and Jasper follow.

I stay exactly where I am, legs too weak to support me even if I was brave enough to move.

I heard every word that Rocco said. And just like Dax and Jasper, I know he wasn’t joking.

Rocco will get his revenge on my sister. He’ll wait as long as he has to. Neither time nor distance will erase his hatred. He’s a danger to her for as long as he lives.

This problem has only one solution.

I don’t want to admit it. I don’t want to allow the thought in my mind. But I know it, as surely as I can see the sun rising in the morning and the moon in the sky at night.

The only way for Zoe to be safe . . . is for Rocco to die.