Page 27 of Good Losers (Lochkelvin Academy)

“The right thing tae dae,” Finlay acknowledges. “The wrang way tae go about it. I wasused, sassenach. Iletmyselfbe used. I thought I was helpin’. But I could never have foreseen this… thisfracturin’. This betrayal. At every angle, we’ve a’ betrayed each other. It’s something we set oot as chiefs never tae dae, no’ let politics interfere, and noo…” He releases a long breath. “So aye, I would go back in time. I’d dae the research and get the knowledge but I wouldnae write it doon for mass distribution.”

“So if you saw the dossier today…”

Finlay gives me a suspicious look. “D’ye know somethin’? Did Benji mention somethin’ tae ye?”

I shake my head. “No. Of course not. I’m just saying, hypothetically, you would destroy that document.”

His green eyes narrow on me and I feel my breath coming out funny. “Aye.” He pauses. “I mean, probably. How?”

“No reason,” I say quickly.

I decide then that I can never, ever bring up the existence of that dossier to Finlay again. If he knew it was lying, curled, in the Death Room, only a few hallways away from him…

He’d go ballistic.

His sense of the world would be ruined.

But I… I have an in.

I could destroy it single-handedly myself, cast it into the fires when Oscar Munro’s back is turned.

At the same time, however, it wouldn’t just be the document I’d be destroying.

It’d be Rory.

Oscar Munro himself.

Plots and plans that I know I’m not fully privy to. Plots and plans that have been lain out like carpets, like tapestries in the sky.

I don’t know why I’m considering protecting Rory or his dad. They’re a family of contemptible jerks, elite pricks locked in solitude in a divinely luxurious manor.

But I sense their depths, their shared brokenhearted grief. The manor is full of it, laden with sorrow and woe. It calls to me, chasms of pain that resonate in my very soul, so widely split that they’ll only ever be mended by time dumping its healing sand all over it. And even then the foundations will be soft and weak, a struggle to cross from one end of the chasm to the other.

Ask me how I know.

And Rory… Rory is a boy of hot, stolen kisses who watches nesting eagles in secret. Maybe I don’t know him half as well as the voice ranting and raving in my mind thinks she does.

“You should talk to Luke,” I say, chalking it up as my goal for tonight. Subterfuge? Apparently so. I’m a double agent now, and I’d do anything to bring a smile to Finlay’s face. “I think you should fence each other.”

And so that’s what happens.

Finlay storms around the manor, hunting for Luke. Between cupped hands, he trumpets, “Lucas Milton, please take tae the piste. The fight is on!”

Luke’s head pokes out from the door to the extensive library, his expression irritable. He’s holding, of all things, a Bible in his hands. “Are you being serious? Because I will slice you in half, I guarantee it.”

Finlay says nothing, just turns on his heel and makes for the hall downstairs. I give Luke a small, helpless shrug, and Luke sighs. He places the Bible back on the shelf and follows Finlay, apparently fully aware of the rules of the piste.

“Feeling pious?” I ask, giving him a small smile.

He doesn’t return the gesture. “I need answers,” he mutters grimly. “I need to move closer to divinity. I need to be granted divine wisdom.”

“I see,” I lie, perplexed by the turn our conversation has taken.

But the idea of it, of divine wisdom, is more important than I ever realized. In its own strange way, it comes to dominate the fencing match.

Luke is immaculate in his crisp white kit, a breathtaking contrast to his skin, his silver foil almost as lethal as his glare. He’s a man on a mission and that mission is to destroy. Finlay is as haphazard as always, though this time he chooses to tie his long hair into a short bun, and the sight of him, with strands cascading artlessly down the sides of his face, is enough to make my belly flutter.

They take to the piste, their weapons in front of their bodies. And without ceremony, without Rory’s careful instructions, they lunge.

---