Page 79 of Vicious Knight

probably going on the trip. This is perfect."

In a normal world it would be perfect, and she'd be right. Aiden was hot, but while whatever is happening between Thorne and me is happening I can't date anybody.

I'm not even looking to date. I've said that to her a few times and explained that I wanted to get used to living in Boston and settling at Raventhorn before I did any kind of dating, serious or otherwise.

"Just promise me you'll think about it. He clearly liked you. He said he was single. And did you see the way he looked at you? Come on, Ivy, think about it."

I sigh. "Fine. Sure, I will." I'm only saying that to keep her quiet.

"Yay! This week is going to be great. You have this coffee meeting with Aiden, my dad is coming to visit, and then we have the trip."

"Yeah, it's going to be good.”

“You should join my dad and I for dinner tomorrow night. I'd love to introduce you."

"Sure. That would be great." I should be able to work something around seeing Thorne.

"Cool. I'll warn you now, though, he'll talk your ears off about work and the stuff he does with the Knights' database."

I laugh. "That’s fine. I don't even know what that is."

She sucks in a breath and stares back at me as if I just said something utterly ridiculous. "How can you not know what that is?"

"My stepdad never spoke about anything like that at home."

"Well, it's like the Knight's bible. It also has a listing of every single Knight who takes the Oath."

"Wow, there must be hundreds."

"Thousands," she corrects me. "And you can search for anyone you want by name, country, age. They even have it fine-tuned so you can search for specific physical attributes, like a mole on their face."

As the words fall from her lips something clicks in my mind and my insides go still. Those last words pierce through me and suddenly I think of the man with the scar.

He'd be in the database. If I could check, would I find him?

My God, if I found him, would that mean I could find some way of helping my father?

That man has been mentioned before, and maybe others have checked, but no one believed my father.

But if I looked I'd be able to identify him. I’d have a name to put to his horrible face.

It wasn't even the scar that made him horrible. It was the evil in his eyes.

"How do we access the Knights' database?"

Isabelle laughs. "We can't. You have to be a Knight or like my father. He’s part of the system's maintenance team."

Damn it. My spirits sink faster than they rose.

"They have a hard copy of the files in the archives department in Raventhorn Hall,” Isabelle explains. “But only Alexander Ivanov and his Knights' council have access to that. Sorry."

I try to hide my disappointment. "That's okay. I guess I got excited because there's so much I still don't know."

"There's a ton of stuff I don't know either, but maybe we don't need to know it."

"Yeah, maybe."

Now that this possibility is in my mind it's stuck there. There must be a way for me to search the database. All these months of worrying about coming here, maybe this was just the thing that could help me and help my father.

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