Page 37 of Kingmakers, Year Four

Only Estas seems entrenched in his grudge against me. He mutters insults at me in the hallways and glowers at me everywhere I go.

I don’t care as much anymore—I believe my dad, not some random fucking idiot who thinks hoop earrings are a fashion statement. As long as Estas keeps his hands to himself, I’m just gonna ignore him.

At the same time, I pluck up the courage to join Sabrina for lunch again. While Bram Van Der Berg slouches at the far end of the table, seething and silent, only consenting to speak with Dean Yenin and Cat Romero, I still manage to have a reasonably pleasant conversation with Sabrina, Cara Wilk, Hedeon Gray, and Ares.

Well, it’s mostly Ares and me talking—Sabrina gets pulled into conversation with a couple of extremely friendly German boys at the next table over.

Cara is writing something in her notebook, her head bent over her pen and her dark hair pooled on the edge of the page. Her script is too cramped to read, but it looks like she’s working on a story.

Hedeon is glaring across the dining hall at a table containing several beefy Seniors, including one with the face and proportions of a silverback gorilla.

Hedeon has his hand pressed against his side. He’s slumped in the same direction, breathing shallowly.

“What’s wrong with you?” I ask him. “You look like your ribs are broken.”

I’ve seen it before—several times in my father’s men, and I broke my own ribs once, the same day I ruined my dad’s favorite horse when the both of us took a tumble off a ridge ten miles from home. That was a fucking miserable hike back to the house, and not just because of the ribs—I knew my father would be furious that he’d have to shoot the horse.

“They might be,” Hedeon admits, wincing.

Cara glances up from her page, pen pressed against her lower lip. Her brows draw together in sympathy as she looks at the mottled purple and yellow bruises running down the side of Hedeon’s face.

“Why’s he always fighting with you?” Ares asks Hedeon, jerking his head in the direction of the silverback gorilla.

“He’s angry that I’m the Heir,” Hedeon says.

“That’s your brother?” I ask, finally understanding.

“In a manner of speaking,” Hedeon replies, as if it pains him to say it.

“That’s Silas Gray,” Ares explains to me. “The Grays adopted Silas and Hedeon at the same time. They’re almost the same age. So the Grays had to pick one son for Heir, and one to be his lieutenant.”

Cara absorbs this silently, pen still pressed to her lip and soft hazel eyes watching Hedeon’s face.

“How did they choose?” I ask.

For a minute, I don’t think Hedeon will answer. He’s obviously in pain, and never in the best of moods to begin with. I quickly learned that unlike the rest of the students, Hedeon’s foul mood and rude rebuffs have nothing to do with me—it’s how he behaves to everyone.

Still, he likes to associate with Sabrina’s group, probably because none of them pester him with annoying questions like the one I just asked.

To my surprise, he takes another shallow breath and says, through gritted teeth, “They pitted us against one another. From the time we were small. They forced us to compete, over and over and over again. All kinds of challenges. When we would lose, they’d punish us. I often lost. Silas was always bigger than me, and stronger.”

Ares looks startled by Hedeon’s answer. I’m guessing this is new information for him, too. Cara’s pale pink lips have opened in dismay, the pen dropping to the table.

“The competitions were brutal,” Hedeon says. “The punishments for losing even worse. They whipped us. Burned us. Cut us. Made us hold our hands in buckets of ice water until we cried. We were only four when it started. And it went on for . . .” He sighs. “Until we came to Kingmakers.”

The dark shadows under Hedeon’s blue eyes make them look large in his face, like he’s a small boy still, forced to compete against an opponent he knows he can’t beat, with the specter of torture always in front of him.

Now I see the scars crawling up the back of his neck, beneath the collar of his white dress shirt. I see the marks on his forearms where his sleeves are rolled up: round, shiny scars from cigarette burns. Long white cuts from the blade of a knife.

My mouth is too dry to speak.

When I look at Ares, his face is frozen in shock and horror, his tan all but bleached away.

“Kenneth Gray wanted Silas to be Heir,” Hedeon says, his eyes still fixed on his brother’s hulking form. “Silas was faster, stronger, more brutal. I was smarter, but it didn’t matter. The tests were never designed for intelligence. Margaret Gray . . . she favored me. Not in the way you would think, not with kindness. I think only to oppose her husband. She drove me on again and again and again, demanding that I win, ordering me to prove myself. Her punishments were worse than his. Because she was angry when I lost.”

I notice he calls his adoptive parents by their first names, never calling them “mother” or “father.”

Cara holds her hands pressed tight against her mouth. A tear leaks from the corner of her wide eyes, slipping down her cheek.

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