Kingmakers, Year Two

27. Cat

27

CAT

T he week after Rocco’s death is a fog of constant paranoia, where I’m certain that any moment I’ll feel hands closing around my arms and I’ll be jerked out of my seat, dragged off to the Prison Tower by the Chancellor’s minions.

Even when I’m lying sleepless in my narrow bed down in the sunless cave of the Undercroft, I expect to hear the door broken down at any moment.

But it never happens.

No one comes to arrest me.

No one even speaks to me.

Miles is interrogated by the Chancellor. That, too, sets my guts churning all over again, terrified that they’ll chain him up and I’ll have to admit that it was me, not him, who murdered Rocco Prince.

But after a week of incessant gossip and rumor, where students and teachers alike seem to talk of nothing else, the storm fades away as quickly as it blew in. The Princes send a lieutenant to retrieve the body. And everyone else seems to forget that Rocco ever existed.

Dax and Jasper attend class as usual, faces impassive, as if they didn’t just lose two of their supposed best friends.

There’s no consequence or punishment for anyone.

“They don’t want to admit that they can’t find the murderer,” Chay says, over lunch. “They just want the whole thing to disappear.”

“Maybe Rocco really did kill himself,” Ares says.

“I doubt it,” Zoe shakes her head.

“It’s only blowing over because the Princes don’t care,” Miles says. “He’s their Heir—but they didn’t love him. How could they?”

“Still . . .” Zoe says. “Their only child . . .”

“They might have made a bigger fuss a year ago,” Miles says. “Dieter Prince is distracted. ”

“He’s a sociopath like Rocco,” Zoe says, coldly. “He doesn’t feel anything.”

“That’s a good thing,” Miles tells her, gently. “Otherwise this might have been a bigger problem. As it stands . . . we’re lucky.”

He casts a quick glance in my direction.

Twice now I’ve seen Miles looking at me as if he might suspect my secret.

In the past, I would have given the truth away immediately.

But now I have the ultimate poker face.

I’m numb inside, hollow and emotionless.

I killed someone.

I’m a murderer.

I know Rocco was awful. I know he wanted to hurt my sister. I know he had to die.

And yet . . . I feel so fucking guilty.

I can’t crush it down.

I can’t make it stop.

For all the things that terrified me about my plan—the possibility that Rocco would torture or kill me, the chance that I’d be caught and executed, or just the fact that it might not work at all , that I’d fail and Rocco would still be walking around free to seek revenge upon my sister . . .

The one thing I never considered is how awful I might feel afterward.

I’ve done something irrevocable.

Whatever happens for the rest of my life . . . I’m different now. I’m no longer innocent. No longer good.

I can never take this back.

And I wouldn’t take it back—that’s the maddest part of all. I don’t regret it. My sister is safe and happy. It’s what I wanted.

But even that fact only serves to prove that I truly am an evil person.

I know myself in a way I never did before.

I killed without hesitation. And I’d do it again.

Thank god the school year is over. I muddled through my final exams, distracted and foggy-headed. Yet I passed them all, retaining enough of the hard-won information I learned this year.

Now I’ve allowed Miles and Zoe to convince me to accompany them to Chicago, at least for a couple of weeks. I’m going to see America for the very first time .

I can’t feel any emotion as pleasant as excitement. But I will be relieved to be away from this campus, where I won’t have to pass that stretch of wall where I committed the ultimate crime.

I hope a long summer will dull the pain, and I’ll be able to return here in the fall, pretending that nothing happened.

It helps that no one wants to talk about Rocco Prince. By September, they may truly have forgotten him entirely.

The wagons have come to take away our bags, and to ferry us down to the harbor. All the students take the same ship back to Dubrovnik, so I’ll be with Zoe this time. We’re going to fly directly to Chicago.

I’m nervous to meet the Griffin family, but I know Miles will make us comfortable, and that Zoe can’t fail to charm them with her intelligence and beauty. I’ll be her quiet shadow as always, safe at her side.

The Undercroft is nearly deserted, most everyone having carried up their luggage early this morning, then spent the rest of the remaining time laughing, talking, and wrestling in the summer sunshine.

I’m lingering down here because I want to be alone. I want to sit in the cool, dry darkness a little longer .

I have my sketchbook out, unpacked, and I’m trying to draw a picture of a girl sitting on the rim of the well in the commons—the well next to the dining hall that provides the coldest and most delicious water on the island.

I love that moss-stained well. Yet in my drawing, it looks sinister and dark, like a blank eye leading down into the center of the earth.

I hear a scrape of metal in the lock. I think it’s Rakel turning her key. She must have forgotten something in her dresser.

Instead, the door sweeps open and Dean Yenin steps inside.

His broad shoulders fill the doorframe, his head only an inch below the lintel. His fair skin and hair look white as ash in the dim light. As always, his person is flawlessly neat—trousers pressed, shirt crisp and snowy white, hands clean as marble. The only color on him is those violet-blue eyes, beautiful in a way that only deadly things can be.

I haven’t taken a breath since he stepped into my room.

I’m frozen in place on the bed, my pencil tumbling numbly from my fingers. It rolls away from me across the floor. Neither of us looks to see where it lands.

Reaching behind him, Dean closes the door with a soft snick .

That motion, more than anything, tells me his intentions aren’t good .

He walks toward me, slow and deliberate.

I stand to meet him. Even at my fullest height, the top of my head lands far below his chin. I’m looking at his chest, where the hard slabs of muscle strain the buttons of his shirt. I have to tilt my head all the way back to look him in the face.

Dean has a terrible beauty up close. He’s the sort of monster where it could kill you to look at him.

Gracefully, he stoops to pick up my sketch pad. He examines the drawing, dark lashes swooping down as he looks at every part of it.

“This reminds me of Timoclea,” he says. “Do you know it?”

His words are a cold frost that sweeps through my body, freezing the blood in my veins, stopping my heart.

The Baroque artist Elisabetta Sirani painted a scene recounted by Plutarch in his biography of Alexander the Great.

When Alexander’s forces seized the city of Thebes, a Thracian captain raped Timoclea. After the assault, he demanded if she knew of any hidden money. Telling him she did, Timoclea led him into her garden, where she promised gold could be found inside her well. As he bent over to look, she pushed him in, and threw stones down upon his head until he was dead .

I look in Dean’s eyes, and I see that he holds my life in his hands.

With awful tenderness, he strokes his finger down my cheek.

“I know what you did,” he says.

I can’t speak. I can’t even blink. All I can do is tremble.

“I saw the strangest thing as I walked to the infirmary. You. Climbing in a window.”

I shake my head, silent, horrified.

“Yes,” Dean assures me, his eyes fixed on mine. “I saw you. You lured him up on that wall. And you pushed him over.”

He knows. He knows. He knows.

“Alexander pardoned Timoclea,” Dean says. “But no one will pardon you.”

My tongue is ice in my mouth, but I have to speak.

“Please . . .” I whisper.

“You want me to keep your secret?” Dean asks, his voice as soft as a caress.

I nod. I would fall on my knees before him to beg, if I were capable of moving .

“I won’t tell,” Dean promises. “But understand this . . . I own you now. When we come back to school, you’re mine. My servant. My slave. For as long as I want you.”

Dean cups my chin in his hand, pressing his thumb against my lips. Sealing me to silence.

Then he leaves me there, plunged into dread deeper than any I’ve ever known.