Page 119 of Kingmakers, Year Four

“I’m not Ares. My name is Rafe Petrov. My father is Ivan Petrov. He’s been imprisoned for three and a half years. Tomorrow, I finally bring him home.”

Leo and Hedeon stare at me with near-equal expressions of astonishment.

“Okay . . . that is not what I was expecting you to say,” Leo remarks.

Despite the fact that the night has been a fucking disaster, and I’ve now involved two more people in this mess, I feel the strangest sense of lightness, like my bones have been replaced with helium.

I’m finally telling the truth.

Hedeon frowns.

“Then who the fuck is Ares?” he says.

I tell them everything, starting at the beginning. I speak for almost thirty minutes uninterrupted, pausing only to set Hedeon free from the curtain ties.

When I’m finished, the stunned silence is even longer than before.

Leo breaks it by saying, “I’m coming with you.”

Now I’m the one who can’t speak. I just told Leo that I’ve been lying to him since the day I met him. That his roommate “Ares” doesn’t even exist. And now he wants to leave school to help me assault a near-impregnable compound.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say.

“Why not?”

“Because there’s a very good chance that we’re all going to end up dead.”

Leo shrugs, tucking his hands in the pockets of his sweatshorts.

“Less of a chance if I’m there,” he says.

“I’ll go with you, too,” Hedeon says, quietly.

“Why doyouwant to go?” I say, feeling like the whole world is tilting sideways.

“Well, for one thing, I think Hugo’s gonna try to murder me back if he gets the chance,” Hedeon says.

“Wait, what?” Leo interjects.

“But mostly,” Hedeon continues, ignoring Leo, “I want to get the fuck off this island. I want to do something. And the only thing I planned for the last twenty years was kill my fucking degenerate father. So if I’m not going to do that . . . I’m going to need a new option.”

This is not what I expected, and it’s too much to process all at once.

All I can say is, “Look, I really appreciate it, but?—”

“Don’t bother arguing,” Leo says. “What, are you going to tie both of us up in here? Don’t be stupid. You’re taking us with you, you don’t have a choice.”

As much as I’d like to keep arguing, Leo is right.

28

Nix

Breakfast is an odd affair.

Estas Lomachenko nods to me in the line for pancakes—not exactly friendly, but as if he no longer minds us breathing the same air in the same space.

The bruises on his face are still healing. I don’t think he’s softened towards me because of the beating from Ares—I think, strangely, telling me the full story of what happened between his brother and my father has unburdened his soul. He’s not blaming me for it anymore.

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