Page 104 of Kingmakers, Year One

I’m gripping my fork so hard that I’ve almost bent it in half.

How in the FUCK does everything Leo touches turn from shit into gold?

“LEO! LEO! LEO!”

He stands up from his seat, giving the crowd a little salute. Then he sinks into a deep bow with his naked ass pointed in the direction of Calvin Caccia’s table. The dining hall erupts in howls of laughter, while Calvin’s face turns an ugly shade of puce.

I shove my plate away from me, furious and disgusted.

I can’t help looking over at Anna again. She’s watching Leo, the tiniest hint of a smile tugging up the corner of her mouth.

Somehow I’m burning with envy. Leo is naked, disgraced, and publicly shamed. And I’m sitting here jealous of him yet again.

18

ANNA

Christmas at Kingmakers is depressing. We aren’t allowed to go home to see our families. We can’t send them gifts, either, though they’re permitted to send one package to us.

I receive mine the week before the holidays. It contains four new novels that I’m sure my mother picked out, because they all have beautiful hardcovers with gold leaf and illustrations.

My father sent me a new charm for the bracelet he gave me six years ago. It’s a tiny golden compass, that actually opens and shuts on its minuscule hinge. I wonder if it’s meant to symbolize me finding my way home again eventually, or if it’s supposed to point me in the direction I should go next.

Cara sent me a packet of pretty stationery so I can keep writing to her, and Whelan drew me a picture of him riding on the back of a dragon, gleefully torching a village below. I hang it up over my bed.

Classes go on as usual, but in an effort to make the holiday festive, the teachers are throwing a party on Christmas Eve—the firstofficialparty of the school year.

We’re supposed to dress up. I tell Dean that I don’t want to go together, not as a couple, but I do agree dance with him.

Zoe Romero promises to attend with us as well. She doesn’t come to the off-the-books student parties, for fear that someone will rat her out to her heavy-handed parents.

Zoe is the third Freshman Heir in our dorm. I’ve been spending more time with her since Leo and I haven’t been on the best terms.

Zoe, Chay, and I have formed an unlikely trio. Chay didn’t like Zoe at first because she thought she was too serious and stuck-up, and Zoe I’m sure was annoyed by the constant parade of friends Chay invites to come hang out in the common room right outside Zoe’s door.

Zoe spends most of her time studying because her parents are strict and demanding, expecting a constant accounting of her grades and requesting that her cousins at the school keep a close eye on her in case she dares to transgress the bounds of the restrictive marriage pact they signed when Zoe was only twelve years old.

Zoe is engaged to one of the Juniors, a German Heir named Rocco Prince. Chay already knew him, because they attended boarding school together. That’s how she and Zoe finally bonded—over their mutual hatred of Rocco.

“He cut off a little kid’s ear in the village outside our school for no fucking reason at all,” Chay says. “Even the teachers were scared of him.”

“I loathe him,” Zoe says quietly.

Her family didn’t want her to attend Kingmakers at all. They only agreed to it because Zoe said she wouldn’t go through with the marriage otherwise. The wedding date is already set for a week after graduation.

Chay and I learn all this when Miles gives me a bottle of Ballantine’s smuggled in from the mainland, and I invite Zoe todrink it with us. She’s safe taking a drink in our room where no one can see her, and she obviously needs it—she’s been looking pale and somber all week.

“Is Rocco ever halfway decent?” I ask Zoe.

“Never,” Zoe says with a shudder. “He’s too smart to do anything out in the open—at least anything that our families would view as crossing the line. But the things I’ve heard . . . the rumors . . . he makes me sick. He’s been staring at me like he wants to peel my skin off since I was a little girl. And he has no sense of humor whatsoever. I’ve never heard him laugh.”

Since Zoe is one of the most serious people I’ve ever met, I can hardly picture someone even more humorless.

“Why are you going through with it, then?” Chay asks. “You’re the Heir, aren’t you? You’ve got other options.”

Zoe says,“My father would kill me if I didn’t. He already hates me for being born a girl. Every time he sets some impossible standard for me, I meet it, thinking I’ll win him over eventually. He only despises me more. Well, he finally thought of a way to make me what he wants—powerless and miserable.”

I ask, “What if you ran away?”

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