Kingmakers, Year Two

Cat

CAT

A fter a long and achingly sweet summer in Chicago, I’m boarding the ship to Kingmakers once more.

The reality of my situation is crashing down on my shoulders.

It was easy to forget how much trouble I’m in when I was whiling away the hours sightseeing with Zoe and Miles, and Miles’s little brother Caleb.

I never imagined I could be treated so well as a guest. The Griffins embraced me like one of their own, even though it’s Zoe who will marry into their family, not me.

They took care of my every need, ferrying me around the city, buying me delicacies and souvenirs, making sure I was never bored, lonely, or lacking for the smallest thing.

I shut out the memory of what I had done at Kingmakers.

I pretended to belong among the Griffins, like Chicago had always been my home.

But now it’s all over.

I returned to my father’s house in Barcelona for one dull week before packing my bags again.

My father was in the best mood I’ve ever seen him. The deal he struck with Miles Griffin has surpassed all his wildest dreams in the sheer volume of money pouring into his account. That was the bargain: Miles’s dark web drug pipeline in exchange for Zoe. Miles has made my father and his associates into very rich men.

As a small sweetener, Miles stipulated that my father refrain from coercing me into any unwanted marriage contracts. My father has upheld his end of the bargain: he left me alone my entire week in Spain, not even demanding that I accompany him and my stepmother Daniela to any of their tedious parties.

Still, it was a long, lonely week after the warmth and bustle of the Griffin household.

I miss Zoe already.

I miss her horribly.

She asked me again if I wanted to come to Los Angeles with her and Miles. I wanted to accept so badly. I feel safe with those two. Zoe is the only person on the planet who truly loves me, who would do anything to protect me.

But I knew I’d only be a third wheel, an anchor dragging them down while they try to build a life together.

I have to return to my own life at Kingmakers. Even if there’s something horrible waiting there for me.

It’s ironic. My father is forbidden to force me into a marriage contract against my will. But I’ve already trapped myself in something far, far worse.

The moment I step foot aboard the ship to Kingmakers, I’m looking around for Dean Yenin.

I remember the last words we spoke to each other as though it were three minutes ago, instead of three months.

“I know what you did . . .

“I saw you . . .

“I won’t tell. 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 . . .”

I almost spilled my secret to Zoe a hundred times. I almost told her what I did.

But in the end, I stuffed the words down again, into the ball of frozen fear that’s been lodged deep in my guts all this time.

This is my burden to bear, not hers.

If I told Zoe the truth, she’d never feel free to go to L.A. with Miles.

She’d be compelled to stay with me, to try to protect me from something she simply can’t prevent.

Dean knows what I did. He could tell the Chancellor at any time. Nothing can stop him from doing that. My only chance is to stay on his good side. To trust in his mercy.

The only problem is that I don’t think he has any goddamned mercy.

I’m trying to please a man who can’t be pleased.

Dean is spiteful. Vengeful. Full of rage.

He could destroy me with a single word, just because I looked at him sideways.

The train of his hatred is long and complicated.

He hates Leo Gallo because of the feud between their families.

He hates Miles and Zoe because Miles is Leo’s cousin.

And he hates me because I’m Zoe’s sister.

But that barely scratches the surface of his fury.

I’ve thought about this long and hard over the summer, wondering how I truly attracted his ire.

The real reason he hates me is that I saw him in a private, unguarded moment.

I saw him sobbing after Ozzy’s mother was executed by the Chancellor. I saw him hunched over, tears streaming down his face, as he gave in to the storm of pain inside him.

And he will never, never, never forgive me for that.

I saw Dean weak and vulnerable. He’ll have me killed before he’ll chance me telling anybody else.

Like a fool, I handed him the perfect leverage over me.

I murdered Rocco Prince, my sister’s intended fiancé.

And Dean knows it.

The Rule of Recompense is the most iron-clad law of Kingmakers: an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, life for a life.

If Dean tells anyone what I did, I’ll be executed, just like Ozzy’s mother. I’ll be forced to kneel before the school so the Chancellor can slit my throat.

This is the situation in which I find myself as I stand on the sunbaked deck of the ship. One wrong move, and Dean will throw me to the wolves. My only chance of survival is to hope and pray that somewhere, deep inside of Dean, there lives a spark of humanity.

Or maybe he’ll just get bored of fucking with me and move on to something else.

I can’t see any other way out.

“!” Perry Saunders cries, throwing her arms around me in a hug. “How was your summer?”

Perry is blonde and bubbly, curly-haired and apple-cheeked. She dresses like an American Girl doll, already wearing the plaid skirt and jaunty academy jacket that forms our school uniform.

My roommate Rakel was likewise crossing the deck to greet me, but as soon as she sees Perry, she makes an abrupt about-face to head in the opposite direction. I grab her by the arm and haul her back, deciding that this year Rakel is going to be social whether she likes it or not.

“Perry, have you met my roommate?” I say, slinging my arm around Rakel’s slim shoulders so she can’t get away.

“No!” Perry chirps. She holds out her hand to shake. “Periwinkle Madeline Saunders, nice to meet you.”

Rakel forces a smile that looks more like a snarl and shakes Perry’s hand with two fingers in a pincher grip. “Just . . . Rakel,” she says.

“I wish the Accountants roomed down in the Undercroft!” Perry says, enviously. “All the other divisions have such cool dorms, and ours is dull as dishwater. It might as well be cubicles in our tower—we don’t even have a view off the cliffs.”

“We don’t have windows at all,” Rakel reminds her in a monotone.

“I know, but at least that’s spooky!” Perry says.

Rakel flashes her dark eyes at me in a way that clearly intimates that she will seek revenge on me later for involving her in this conversation. I smile back at her, knowing that nobody else wants to room with Rakel, so she’s stuck with me.

“Who does your nails?” Perry examines Rakel’s silver-ringed hands. “They look like claws!”

“They grow that way naturally,” Rakel deadpans, while Perry’s eyes go big and round in total belief.

Anna Wilk and Leo Gallo climb the gangplank hand in hand. Anna is one of Zoe’s best friends. She was exceptionally kind to me during my first year at school when I was drowning in terror at the arcane demands of Kingmakers.

“!” she cries, hugging me.

I saw Anna in Chicago over the summer, but she squeezes me like we’ve spent months apart.

“It makes me so sad to see you here without Zoe. Are you gonna come hang out with me and Chay all the time anyway? You have to fill your sister’s spot, or we’ll be miserable.”

“I would love that,” I promise gratefully. I wasn’t sure if Anna and Chay would want me hanging around, now that Zoe decided not to return to school.

“I miss Miles, too,” Leo says glumly. “Trust him to take off right when he was finally turning into a reasonable human.”

Dean Yenin is next to board the ship, flanked by his best friends Bram Van Der Berg and Valon Hoxha. Instinctively, I shrink back behind Leo’s substantial bulk, but it’s pointless. Dean’s sharp eyes alight on me at once. For the first time in memory, I see his face break out into a smile.

His smile is far worse than his scowl. The even white teeth don’t fool me for a second. That’s a grin of pure malice.

Oh my god, I can’t fucking do this.

“What’s he so happy about?” Leo says suspiciously.

“Who knows!” Anna shrugs, careless and unconcerned. “Let’s go find somewhere to sit before the whole ship fills up.”

We make our way toward the bow, where the air is fresher and the sea breeze blows directly into our faces. We’re departing from the port in Dubrovnik, sailing toward the isolated island of Visine Dvorca where Kingmakers’ castle fortress resides.

Once the ship sets out, we won’t return to civilization until the spring.

I’ll be trapped on that island with my tormenter.

Perry peels off from our group to join her Accountant friends. To my pleasure, Rakel actually sticks around. Despite despising me at the beginning of last year, she and I are slowly becoming something like actual friends.

With Zoe gone, I need all the friends I can get.

Perhaps noting a kindred spirit in Anna’s heavy black makeup and torn-up tights, Rakel strikes up a conversation about the concerts she attended over the summer. Anna enthusiastically responds with her own tales of outdoor venues, raging mosh pits, and outrageous prices for shit beer.

“How are you doing?” Leo asks me kindly.

“I’m fine!” I lie.

Has anyone in the history of the world actually been “fine” when they responded that way?

I’m a people-pleaser. Like Zoe, I’ve never felt free to share my burdens with others. Especially not someone as handsome and intimidating as Leo Gallo.

I sink down on a pile of coiled rope, joined by Ares Cirillo, who sits by me in companionable silence, watching the sailors work. I know he owns a little skiff that he sails around his tiny Greek island. He looks quite at home on the ocean, with his turquoise eyes and streaks of sun in his hair.

As the ship pulls out of the harbor, the breeze picks up and a pleasant salt spray blows in our faces. However, the sun beats down on our heads, and soon students are shedding every possible article of clothing, including academy jackets, stockings, and even shirts.

Dean Yenin leans against the ship’s railing, stripping off his white dress shirt. The skin beneath is barely darker than the shirt, rippled with muscle hard-won through countless hours in our school gym. As he turns to lay his shirt over the railing, I see the Siberian tiger crawling up his back. Dean reminds me of a white tiger himself—pale and vicious, composed of lean, hard muscle and the desire to rip flesh from bone.

Bram Van Der Berg is rubbing tanning oil on his swarthy skin, apparently determined to darken himself another shade before reaching the island.

“Give me that,” Dean mutters, swiping the oil from Bram’s hand.

He strides over to me, a smirk already spreading across his face.

“!” he barks, making me jump. “Rub this on my back.”

Anna laughs derisively.

“Get Bram to do it,” she says. “’s busy.”

Dean ignores her, his pale purplish eyes fixed on my face.

“Now,” he says quietly.

I feel myself jumping up from my position on the pile of ropes, snapping to attention before I’ve even formulated a thought.

“Okay,” I murmur, my face flaming pink.

Anna frowns. “You don’t have to listen to him,” she says to me.

Anna and Dean dated briefly in their first year of school, but I know that’s not why she’s defending me. Anna is the sort of feminist who always protects her sisters, whether she knows the man in question or not.

Dean is watching me, his face darkening as I fail to obey his order.

“I really don’t mind,” I stammer, stumbling over my own feet as I hurry across the pitching deck.

Anna, Leo, Ares, and Rakel watch me with identical expressions of confusion while I take the oil from Dean and squirt it into my hands.

“Rub it on my back,” he says. “Slowly. And don’t spill one fucking drop.”

My hands shake and my face burns as more students watch the bizarre performance of me, a shy little nobody, oiling up the back of one of the most vicious boys at school.

Dean’s skin is smooth and sun-warmed, the muscle beneath the flesh iron-hard.

“Rub out those knots,” he orders.

I try to obey, but my small hands are no match for the tough muscle. I can’t sink my fingers in at all.

Dean makes me rub his back and shoulders, then all the way down his arms.

“Now the chest,” he says, smirking.

He turns to face me, looking down into my face while I spread oil across his pectoral muscles. I can’t meet his eyes. I feel utterly humiliated, forced to do this in front of hundreds of watching students. Dean is so much taller than me that I have to stretch up on tiptoe just to reach the top of his shoulders.

Standing in such close proximity to him makes my whole body shake. I feel like a mouse forced to dance around within the confines of a tiger’s claws. I’m trembling, my brain telling me that this is much too close, that I need to flee immediately.

I can smell Dean’s skin beneath the coconut oil. He smells clean and freshly showered, but as the sun beats down on us both, I get a hint of his actual scent, an intense and titillating aroma like the green-tinged fumes of absinthe. It makes me weak and wobbly.

“You can stop,” he says, abruptly dismissing me.

He turns away from me and strides back to his friends, like I don’t even exist.

I feel oddly disappointed. Almost angry.

I rubbed him for twenty minutes. He could have at least said thank you, or good job.

Then that spurt of idiocy fades away, and I’m simply relieved that he let me off so easily.

I return to Anna and the others.

“You don’t have to do what he says!” Anna says indignantly. “I know he’s scary, but he’s not going to do anything to you with us around.”

I know Anna’s intentions are good, but in this particular instance, she’s very wrong.

I do have to do what Dean says.

And the consequences are dire if I refuse.