Page 31 of Kingmakers, Year Two

He’s watching Rocco the whole time. He doesn’t give a fuck how I react to this.

“Jasper?” Rocco says, offering his other friend to take his turn.

Jasper considers, his face impassive.

“I’m good,” he says at last. He’s still holding my right wrist, but not as tightly as before. I don’t think he’s enjoying this as much as Wade. Not that he’s doing fuck-all to stop it.

“What now?” Wade says, his tongue darting out to moisten his lower lip.

“Now Zoe pays her debt,” Rocco says, looking at me with his head tilted slightly to the side. In the bright sunshine, his blue eyes with their flecks of black look like panes of shattered glass. “The night of our engagement party, your stepmother promised me something, Zoe. Do you know what that was?”

I try to swallow, but my mouth is too dry. The cut at the corner of my eye still burns, and my breasts ache everywhere Wade touched them. I slowly shake my head.

“She agreed that I was free to consummate the marriage…” Rocco’s eyes boring into mine. “Anytime I wanted.”

Through numb lips, I say, “We’re not married yet.”

“Close enough.” Rocco moves to close the gap between us. To seize me and cut off my skirt, I have no doubt.

Jasper releases my wrist, stepping back to give him space. Wade isn’t holding me at all, having let go so he could grope me with both hands.

I have one brief second of freedom.

Rocco swoops down on me like a vampire, teeth bared in his version of a smile.

I act on instinct, without thought or plan.

All I know is that I have to get away from Rocco. I’ll never grovel for him again, I’ll never beg. I’ll never let him touch me.

He says I’ll be a caged bird—well, I’ll fly one last time at least.

In that moment of madness, I fling myself over the ramparts.

5

MILES

I’m making the long and tedious walk from the library back to my dorm when someone says, “Stop!”

That’s strange, because there’s no one around to say “Stop.” There’s no one around me at all. It’s the middle of second period, and all the students are safely ensconced in their classes.

I’m supposed to be annotating a territory contract with Ozzy. We had all our legal textbooks spread out on the table all around us, ready to hunt down every last consideration and clause, until Ozzy realized he forgot the actual fucking document in our dorm.

I volunteered to retrieve it because Ozzy is highly distractible. If I waited for him to do it, I doubt he’d ever return. I’d find him four hours later vaping behind the ice house or lurking around the Solar to chat up some girl.

And now here I am distracted myself by the inexplicable sound of someone saying “Stop.”

After glancing in all directions, there’s nowhere to look but up.

I see a flutter of movement high on the ramparts—something dark that could be a scrap of fabric or the wing of a bird.

But birds don’t say “Stop.”

So I find myself pushing through the orange trees, finding the hidden staircase that leads up through the wall.

I’m nosy as fuck, I always have been.

In my line of work, information is currency. I have to know everything that’s going on around me at all times. What people need. Why they need it. And how I can get it for them.

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