Page 15 of Kingmakers, Year Three

4

CAT

Idon’t know how in the fuck I’m going to survive two more years at Kingmakers with Dean, if he couldn’t wait until we got to the island to start harassing me.

I don’t understand why he even wants to.

I mean, I know I embarrassed him, catching him in an unguarded moment. But at the end of the day, he’s one of the most skilled and feared students at the school, while I’m a fucking nobody. If he weren’t keeping an eye out for me, he probably never would have noticed me again for the rest of our lives.

I’ve never done anything dramatic or surprising in my whole damn life. Except the one thing Dean happened to see.

God, what a comedy of errors. The fucking luck I have . ..

Why, why, why did it have to be Dean who saw me? If it were anybody else, they wouldn’t have thought two things about it.

Only Dean already had a grudge against me.

Only Dean is conniving enough to put the pieces together.

This man has been living in my head rent-free all summer long, when I should have been enjoying my first trip to America—two uninterrupted, blissful months in which the Griffins were overwhelmingly kind to me, including Caleb Griffin, Miles’ little brother, who was so friendly and attentive that Zoe thought he had a puppy-love crush.

I don’t think that was the case. Like Miles, Caleb just likes to prove himself. In this case he wanted to prove what a good host he could be.

Still, we’re friends now, and I’m glad Caleb will be coming to Kingmakers next year.

I shouldn’t have been fretting over Dean the whole summer, yet I could hardly think of anything else. He popped into my head a hundred times a day. He haunted my nightmares.

But my worst dreams featured Rocco Prince.

I’ll never forget the look of pure hatred on his face as the noose tightened around his wrist, jerking him forward. I’ll never forget the way his knife sliced down at me, missing my face by millimeters, before he was jerked over the parapet.

And then the long, strangled howl as he tumbled down . . .

And the birds. The fucking birds.

As we returned from theQuartum Bellum,I saw that flock of gulls wheeling and circling over where Rocco had fallen, screeching like they were screaming my guilt to everyone around. Tattling on me.

They dove down to the rocks, squabbling and fighting as they tore his body apart. Then they rose up in the air again, their beaks stained with blood.

I can hardly hear the sound of a gull without vomiting all over again. Their cry is a constant reminder of what I did. An accusation and a threat. Proof that what I thought could be hidden was instead immediately discovered in a way I never would have guessed.

I rip a comb through my damp curls, trying to clear my head.

I’m in the shared bathroom of the Undercroft, the air full of steam from the students taking their early morning showers.

I found Dean crying in a bathroom very much like this.

Why was he so upset that day?

Why did the death of Ozzy’s mother strike him so hard?

I don’t understand Dean Yenin. I don’t understand why he’s so full of rage and bitterness.

God my head is a jumble of thoughts, none of them pleasant.

Rakel comes to stand at the mirror next to mine, her short, choppy hair already drying, and a towel wrapped around her body. Her face looks blank without her makeup, as if she hasn’t put on her personality for the day.

“What’s wrong?” she asks me.

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