Page 133 of Kingmakers, Year Two

Which means there’s a killer on campus. Someone who hated Rocco as much as I did.

“Maybe it was Dax,” Simon says. “He was pretty fucking pissed about that week in the cell. Not to mention Rocco smashing up their room.”

“Keep going, Horatio,” I laugh. “You’ve got a whole lot of theories.”

Simon smirks, unbothered by the sarcasm. “It’s not hard to come up with a list of people who hated Rocco Prince.”

That’s true. But I do find the timing suspicious.

Inconveniently suspicious.

I’m hauled into the Chancellor’s office immediately.

He sits behind his scarred, ancient desk, his hands folded in front of him. I pretend to look around his office for the first time, like I wasn’t just in here a couple of weeks prior. His silver keys are right back on the hook where I returned them.

“Nice setup,” I say to Luther Hugo, nodding toward his array of photographs. “Is that the British Prime Minister shaking your hand?”

Hugo ignores me. He watches me with those graphite eyes, under black brows speckled with silver. Professor Penmark stands on his left and Professor Graves on his right. Not my two biggest fans, unfortunately.

“Were you involved in the death of Rocco Prince?” Hugo asks, bluntly.

“I think it was mostly the rocks that did it,” I say. “And a little bit the fall.”

“Now would be a good time to lose the insolence,” Hugo says, in the kind of voice that feels like a set of incisors closing around the base of your neck. “Unless you want to spend another week in a cell, you’ll answer my questions fully and honestly.”

“I get why you’d think it was me,” I tell him, looking him in the eye. “But if you haven’t heard, I already worked out a deal with Zoe’s father, and the Princes as well. Rocco wasn’t a problem for me anymore. Not to mention, I was competing in theQuartum Bellumwhile Rocco took his swan dive.”

“You expect us to believe that?” Professor Penmark snaps, his bony white hands twitching. He seems irritated by this relatively civil line of questioning. I bet he wishes he had me strapped down to a table with the full array of his nasty implements laid out so he could “persuade” me to cooperate.

“I don’t think you operate off ‘belief’ here,” I say. “Let’s look at the facts: there’s no evidence I killed Rocco. Because I didn’t.”

“Then who did?” Professor Graves demands, in his usual pompous way. “Enlighten us.”

“Half the school hated him,” I say, shrugging. “Or maybe he did it himself. He was kind of a pouty little bitch, after all.”

Luther Hugo hasn’t taken his eyes off my face, not for a second.

His black, glinting eyes are like uncut gems, pressed deep into the sockets.

“Truth is your only chance for mercy,” he says, quietly.

An absolute lie. There is no chance for mercy.

“The truth shall set you free,” I tell him, not allowing a hint of nervousness to show. “I never touched him, and I don’t know who did.”

That statement is ninety-nine percent accurate.

The one percent is the caveat I’d never share with the Chancellor, or the professors.

I don’t know who killed Rocco. . .but I have one wild, improbable suspicion.

Tediously,I have to repeat my conversation with the Chancellor that evening when Dieter Prince phones me.

He doesn’t sound like a man who just lost his son.

He sounds like a man who suffered a minor irritation on par with an unexpected tax bill, or the loss of his favorite golf clubs.

“Were you involved in Rocco’s death?” He demands, the moment I pick up the phone.

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