Page 5 of Reign

His tongue darts out, sliding across his lower lip. In the hue of dawn, his blond hair has become a glimmering sterling, his skin in an alabaster cast, as if his soul is floating just outside the edges of his body. “I didn’t know the whole time. I found out a few weeks ago.”

My shoulders curve over my knees. “How could you keep something like that from me?”

“Because I had a deep desire to keep you from getting hurt. Or worse.”

I ignore his gruff tone. “I deserved to know.”

“Callie, your lineage is a weapon. One that’s been hidden for almost two hundred years. The Nobles hid the survival of Rose’s baby for their advantage—so they could choose the new queen of the Virtues and regain control over them, and they did.” Chase casts his gaze to the ceiling, his fingers tangling in his hair. “It’s been nothing but push and pull with these societies. Who’s the strongest. Who’s the smartest. Who has the most influence. Theodore Briar convinced his brother—the first Noble King, Thorne Briar, to choose a Harrington woman to become the new Virtue queen after Rose died, and squirreled away his own daughter. Why do you think that is?”

“Theodore didn’t want his daughter, his secret baby with Rose, to inherit the Virtues.”

“Exactly. The Virtues were already poisoned at that point, even at their origin. Without Rose to guide them, competition with the Nobles flourished. In protecting his daughter, Theodore didn’t anticipate that once the Harringtons took control, it turned into a covert war of who could become more powerful and gain more allies as they grew in size and influence.”

“Did the Harringtons have Rose killed so they could take her spot?”

“I don’t know. Her death was ruled a suicide.”

“Yes, the story is that she killed herself because she was desperate for a child and she couldn’t have one. But she did have one. After what Sabine’s—after how she—” I swallow. Collect myself. “I wouldn’t put it past the Harringtons, even the two-hundred-year-old ones, to commit murder.”

“You could be right. Hell, everything I’ve studied and memorized in the Nobles’ rulebook could be nothing but lies. The Nobles overlooked the Virtues, convinced that women would never come into the kind of power they possessed. They didn’t consider the Virtues’ drive for success and the motivation that can provide—needing to claw themselves to the top. The Nobles didn’t have that type of drive. We were men of privilege, of high-class riches, meaning we never had to consider what it was like to prove ourselves over and over again. I’m coming to understand that in an effort to manage that kind of desperation, the Noble successors never told the Virtue Queen about Rose’s surviving lineage. If they did…”

It takes a moment to sort through everything Chase explains. “In hiding Rose’s surviving bloodline, the Nobles maintained the power to choose the queens, instead of leaving it up to the Virtues. What I don’t get is, why continue to hide it? The Virtues were under a new rule. Since these societies are following the rules of the monarch, a hundred years later, it’s not like the power of Rose’s bloodline could derail that kind of history.”

“Actually, it can. Secret societies are sworn to their rules and oaths. Especially the original law. Think about the US Constitution. It’s like that. We strictly follow the will of the founders. Including Rose’s will, which was to have her heirs be the first in line to rule the Virtues.”

I mull this over. “By that reasoning, if baby Delilah Briar ever realized her history, she could replace the queen immediately.”

“Worse.” Chase searches my eyes. “Think about that baby’s blood, Callie. Really think about it.”

I pinpoint the sparks, the brightness of comprehension he wills in my direction.

It hits me. I gasp. “That baby had both Noble and Virtue blood. Theodore and Rose. She came from two of the founders.” I rub my fingers against my lips, tearing at the chapped skin. “What does the rulebook say about a member who descends from both a Noble and a Virtue?”

A faint, proud smile pulls at Chase’s lips, but he tamps it down. “Congrats. You discovered our problem. If you recall, Thorne never had children with Rose. They were all stillborn or miscarriages. He had kids with his next wives, but that bloodline is diluted. Thorne never thought past his own lineage, so he never wrote anything in our rulebooks about founder blood on both sides—meaning, if the original Noble King and the first Virtue Queen had a child. He had no idea his brother, the next king in line, was having an affair with Rose, or of the baby that came out of it. So, nothing was ever written about it. When Thorne died, he believed his inheritance died with him. Theodore became King for a time—solidifying this baby’s inheritance of the societies.”

“Why would he do that? He didn’t want his daughter to ever know about the Nobles and Virtues.”

Chase cedes my point. “After Rose died, Theodore passed Delilah’s real birth certificate on to the second-highest official of the Nobles, a friend and confidant. Theodore knew if Thorne ever found out, the baby would be killed. For her safety, the baby was smuggled out and given to a middle-class family with a forged birth certificate. From then on, the original birth certificate was passed down to only one living Noble at a time—no more. My grandfather was the last one to legitimately receive the information. Then, my father found out. And instead of keeping it safe, he decided to use it to his advantage. He wasn’t about to let a Rose Briar descendent languish until someone smarter and more cutthroat got the same idea he did. So he told Sabine. They traced Delilah’s heirs. And they brought you here, Callie, under the guise of recruiting you.”

“I can’t—I need a minute.” I shuffle to the foot of my bed, my feet hitting the floor as I fold my arms around myself. “If what you’re saying is … Chase, was my mother killed so I could come here?”

The sparks in Chase’s eyes die out. “Would your mother have allowed you to come here otherwise?”

“No.” Even as the denial leaves my lips, the truth wraps around my neck with a stranglehold. “It’s not true! My mom wasn’t killed over some fake laws concocted by a small-town secret society!”

“Callie,” Chase says, his lips barely moving with my name. “Come back. Sit with me.”

I stand and whirl to face him instead. “My world—my everything—was taken away because of some godforsaken rule Sabine decided to break? Why? Mom escaped. She didn’t want to be a fucking Virtue queen!” My palm slams into my chest. “I don’t want to be Queen! She could’ve left us alone. We would’ve lived our lives in New York and I’d’ve never figured out their existence!”

Or yours, the dark trenches of my mind whisper. I never would’ve met you.

“Sabine and my father couldn’t take that chance. Your mom knew of her inheritance somehow. Sabine couldn’t let that kind of fatal flaw to linger in the air around her.”

“She took everything from me,” I hiss through clenched teeth. “And because that wasn’t enough, she took Ivy, too.”

“Good. Get mad, Callie, because that’s the only way we can move forward and leave this fucking bedroom. My father and Sabine wanted to watch you, on their turf, to see if you were malleable enough for them to admit your heritage and rule through you. If they had you on their side, what did it matter that you had the ability to be the ultimate ruler of both the Nobles and Virtues?”

“This is so crazy,” I whisper, digging my fingers into my hair. “We’re talking of kingdoms and thrones and who has the right to rule, but we’re in the twenty-first century! At a high school! And I’m the one who’s told she has a screw lose for thinking my stepdad killed my mom?”

---