Page 89 of Kingmakers, Year Four

We might finally be reaching the end.

I tell myself to pull back from Nix again, to step back from the line I crossed, but I can’t. We’re hurtling down this road together, whether she knows it or not.

The Christmas danceis only a few days away.

I ask Nix to go with me.

She says yes, because she was expecting it. We’re dating each other in every way but official.

I can’t stay away from her. The only time I feel peace is with her. That’s the only time the pressure releases. As soon as we’re apart, I’m crushed again under the weight of my own lies.

I haven’t been going to see my mother as much. If she sees my face, she’ll read me like a book.

I have to tell her about the dance, however. She’ll almost surely attend herself. Especially since by this point she knows all the staff and has no fear of running into someone who might recognize her like Sasha Drozdov did.

So I visit her the day before the dance, knowing she’s sure to give me shit for trying to avoid her.

“Who’s that?” she says, pretending to peer through her fake glasses. “I don’t recognize you—have we met before?”

“Ha, ha,” I say, and then quietly, because a library is one of the only places where you can whisper something without looking suspicious, “You told me not to visit too often, remember?”

“I think you’ve just been busy,” she murmurs, pretending to sort a pile of returned books “Doing such a careful job with your assignment.”

I sigh, wondering if there’s any point in denying it.

“Do you not want me to take her to the dance?”

“Oh, I absolutely think you should,” my mother replies. Her voice is at its lowest and most dangerous.

My heart squeezes in my chest.

I’m not saying I’m afraid of my mother, but I also wouldn’t fucking underestimate her.

Cautiously, I ask, “You’re not worried that I’m getting too close to her?”

“Oh, I know you are,” she says softly, setting down the last book and looking up at me at last. Her eyes are dark and gleaming, steady as they’ve ever been. “I know you’re getting too close to her, Ares. And I also want you to know that I don’t care. You can like this girl. You can even fall for her. It doesn’t matter.”

I lick my lips, my heart nearly rigid now. “Why doesn’t it matter?”

“Because in the end, you’ll choose your family,” she says. “You’re my son and I know who you are. You’re loyal.”

“Yes,” I murmur. “I am.”

“Loyalty in blood,” she says with a slight downward tilt of her chin.

“Loyalty in blood,” I agree.

22

Nix

Iwas hoping Ares would want to go to the dance together. It’s one thing to run around the woods just the two of us, and another to dance openly in each other’s arms.

I’m also, for my own amusement, hoping that the battle to take Sabrina Gallo to the dance ends in an actual massacre.

I can hardly walk down a hallway next to her without some hapless male making a hurried and desperate pitch.

Sabrina turns them all down.

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