Page 137 of Kingmakers, Year Two

I have my sketchbook out, unpacked, and I’m trying to draw a picture of a girl sitting on the rim of the well in the commons—the well next to the dining hall that provides the coldest and most delicious water on the island.

I love that moss-stained well. Yet in my drawing, it looks sinister and dark, like a blank eye leading down into the center of the earth.

I hear a scrape of metal in the lock. I think it’s Rakel turning her key. She must have forgotten something in her dresser.

Instead, the door sweeps open and Dean Yenin steps inside.

His broad shoulders fill the doorframe, his head only an inch below the lintel. His fair skin and hair look white as ash in the dim light. As always, his person is flawlessly neat—trousers pressed, shirt crisp and snowy white, hands clean as marble. The only color on him is those violet-blue eyes, beautiful in a way that only deadly things can be.

I haven’t taken a breath since he stepped into my room.

I’m frozen in place on the bed, my pencil tumbling numbly from my fingers. It rolls away from me across the floor. Neither of us looks to see where it lands.

Reaching behind him, Dean closes the door with a softsnick.

That motion, more than anything, tells me his intentions aren’t good.

He walks toward me, slow and deliberate.

I stand to meet him. Even at my fullest height, the top of my head lands far below his chin. I’m looking at his chest, where the hard slabs of muscle strain the buttons of his shirt. I have to tilt my head all the way back to look him in the face.

Dean has a terrible beauty up close. He’s the sort of monster where it could kill you to look at him.

Gracefully, he stoops to pick up my sketch pad. He examines the drawing, dark lashes swooping down as he looks at every part of it.

“This reminds me of Timoclea,” he says. “Do you know it?”

His words are a cold frost that sweeps through my body, freezing the blood in my veins, stopping my heart.

The Baroque artist Elisabetta Sirani painted a scene recounted by Plutarch in his biography of Alexander the Great.

When Alexander’s forces seized the city of Thebes, a Thracian captain raped Timoclea. After the assault, he demanded if she knew of any hidden money. Telling him she did, Timoclea led him into her garden, where she promised gold could be found inside her well. As he bent over to look, she pushed him in, and threw stones down upon his head until he was dead.

I look in Dean’s eyes, and I see that he holds my life in his hands.

With awful tenderness, he strokes his finger down my cheek.

“I know what you did,” he says.

I can’t speak. I can’t even blink. All I can do is tremble.

“I saw the strangest thing as I walked to the infirmary. You. Climbing in a window.”

I shake my head, silent, horrified.

“Yes,” Dean assures me, his eyes fixed on mine. “I saw you. You lured him up on that wall. And you pushed him over.”

He knows. He knows. He knows.

“Alexander pardoned Timoclea,” Dean says. “But no one will pardon you.”

My tongue is ice in my mouth, but I have to speak.

“Please . . .” I whisper.

“You want me to keep your secret?” Dean asks, his voice as soft as a caress.

I nod. I would fall on my knees before him to beg, if I were capable of moving.

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