Page 39 of Kingmakers, Year Four

Cat is relentlessly curious and way too fucking good at putting together the pieces of a mystery that no one else would even notice.

I already know she’s suspicious of me, and Miss Robin too. My mother said she knew Cat would be trouble for us the moment she saw her hiding in the library stacks, spying on Rocco Prince.

Everyone is my enemy because I can trust no one.

I can’t risk it.

There’s too much riding on this last year at school.

I can barely focus on my classes. My grades are slipping, not that it matters. The studying was always just an excuse to see my mom, and a useful distraction from the pressure of my situation.

It’s not working anymore.

Every day feels like another cement block laid on my shoulders. I don’t know how much more I can take.

I’m not my mother, and I’m not my father, either. They’re both brilliant, ruthless, and highly skilled. They taught me and trained me, but deep down, I don’t know if I have the strength to take my father’s place, to do what he would do if he were here.

I’m walking down to the village every few days to see if there’s a letter from Freya. She’s on the outside, working with my uncle Dominik. Her job is to make everything seem normal. To help the real Ares keep the dispensaries running, to speak as my mother when calling our allies, even to occasionally post old pictures of me on social media, with sunglasses and tan on the deck of a yacht, as if I’m still engaged in the carefree leisure I enjoyed as a teen.

I can tell the pressure is wearing on Freya, too.

I have our mother here with me, while Freya has only been able to see her over the summers.

I came to school, albeit under another name, while Freya has had to put her life on hold. She has a brilliant head for numbers. She could have come to Kingmakers as an Accountant this year or accepted her scholarship to study Economics at Cambridge.

Instead, she’s been working and waiting, trapped in this awful limbo that holds us all imprisoned like insects in amber.

As distracted as I’ve been, there’s no way to skate through Combat class today. In our first two years, we focused on hand-to-hand combat before moving on to weapons training. This year, we’re learning to fight with a knife.

“Anything can be a weapon,” Professor Howell says, striding across the mats with his usual restless energy, as if his legs are spring-loaded. “You can kill a man with a belt, a fry pan, or even a pen, if that’s what you have around you.”

Marko Moroz killed his former mentor with a pen. Stabbed him right through the eye, or so I’ve heard.

Professor Howell continues: “The likeliest and most effective weapon to find at hand is a knife.”

Howell is short, compact, and deeply tanned, with close-cropped black hair and a silver whistle perpetually dangling around his neck. He rarely employs said whistle, because his voice dwarfs his size, powered by whatever limitless battery lives inside of him.

He’s trained the soldiers of several nation’s armies, his speed and accuracy more than making up for his wiry frame.

He hands out our training knives, which are blunt and flexible, but still hurt like hell if someone gets a good poke on you.

My torso is already dotted with ugly purple bruises from the last time I sparred with Leo. So is his, proving the old adage that “nobody wins in a knife fight.”

Leo grins at me, gripping the handle of his knife overhand like Professor Howell taught us.

“So glad we get to do this again,” he says. “I think it’s good for a friendship if both people know there’s a level of mutually assured destruction in trying to murder each other.”

“I think I could get you,” I say, grinning back at him. “I’d just wait for my opening, which would be you trying to make some dumb joke?—”

Faster than I can blink, Leo swipes his knife toward my belly. I leap backward, the dulled blade still catching and tearing my gym shirt.

“You dick!” I say. “I’ve only got two shirts.”

“Only one shirt now,” Leo chortles, circling around me. “Don’t worry, you can borrow one of?—”

I interrupt him with a quick slash toward his cheek, then a stab downward at his shoulder. Leo twists with eerie speed, narrowly avoiding my knife.

He really does have phenomenal reflexes. You wouldn’t think it on a guy his size, but Leo is the most athletic person I’ve ever met, and it absolutely translates to fighting.

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