Page 8 of Vicious Prince (Violent Kingdom)

Nathan scrubs his palm across his chin, clearly agitated by my news.

“I think I smoked too much,” he says, looking between the joint and me. “You’re saying some really fucked up shit.”

I sigh loudly, taking the joint from him and placing it between my lips again with an air of finality. He might be too stoned, but I’m not stoned enough. Time to balance things out.

“Nobody wears that much eye makeup to a funeral,” Nathan says, watching me layer black crayon under my eyes like I’m about to play Cleopatra in a high school play. “Not even a hooker.”

I open my mouth to correct him, but then I stop. He’s right. I might be incredibly high-class, but at the end of the day, my pimp Daddy did just sell me to Joshua Grayson.

“This hooker does,” I mutter, throwing the eyeliner pencil down onto the bathroom counter and handing him back the joint. “Don’t come to my birthday party high,” I warn Nathan, pointing a finger at his face to really drive it home.

“I gotta go.” I go to kiss him on the cheek, and he stops me.

“Were you serious? Did they really do that to you?”

I nod. “Apparently. On the bright side, I still have a fully functional appendix.”

Why am I not upset? Why aren’t I throwing myself on my bed, kicking and screaming and hugging the sheets to me and weeping until my eyes feel like they’re going to bleed?

“Avery,” Nathan says slowly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Don’t be sorry,” I reply, squeezing his hand for a moment. “You didn’t do anything.”

“I would have done something if I’d known,” he says.

I nod, smiling sadly. “I know you would.”

Nathan frowns. "Are you going to live with him, then?"

I shrug. "No. Yes. I don't know. What am I going to do without you?"

My eyes linger on the door at the other end of the closet. I don't sleep well, have never slept well, so whenever Nathan is around he's usually rudely awoken by me hopping into whichever bed he's crashed out in. He stays on his side and I on mine, but hearing his steady, even breaths as he sleeps stops the worst of my nightmares from seeping in.

And now I'll be sleeping with a strange man I've never even been alone with.

Nathan breaks the silence. "I'll be around, Aves, just like always. It's us against the world, remember?"

I nod, suddenly feeling very small, my shoulders curving forward and down, heavy with my defeat. I knew I'd have to give up Will. I didn't realize I'd be giving up the only person who's kept me sane these past years since Adeline died. "You're my best friend in the world," I say in a small voice. "You're all I have." I sound like a little girl when I say it. Nathan smiles, but there's emotion behind the gesture, a heaviness that feels like grief. He doesn't reply. He just keeps looking sad. If sadness were fire, I think forlornly, our grief would burn this house down, just like the one next door, the one that used to belong to a family just like ours.

* * *

Asense of impending doom threads around my lungs and pulls tight as my driver takes us closer and closer to the dead center of town; the old farmland outside of the city that used to contain vegetables underneath it’s topsoil, not decomposing bodies.

Holy Cross Cemetery is probably the largest and the most grand of the seven cemeteries that are dotted through Colma, the place that houses one and a half million dead people who used to live and work and love in San Francisco City at one time or another. It's also where my mother and my sister are interred, their bodies secure in the Capulet family mausoleum. I visit them every week. My father hates me coming here, and so I probably come here even more just to spite him.

My driver drops me off at the front of the imposing chapel that sits on Holy Cross Cemetery Grounds. When I enter through the large wooden doors, the sounds of a children's choir flood out. They must be practicing, I think. It’s a school day — where did these kids come from? There isn’t a school nearby. The dead don’t need to learn how to read. I stand there for a moment, letting their high-pitched little voices wash over me. The sound is quite beautiful, and at the same time, completely haunting.

It is eerie walking up the long corridor between the church pews as these small children fill the huge room with their voices. They sound like angels. And I all I can think about is death. The death of freedom. The death of hope.

When I get to the confession box, it is empty. A welcome reality. I don't want to wait around for this, and I definitely don't want to confess later, not after what I'm about to do.

Better to get my sins out before I commit more.

I close the little door behind me and open the screen that separates me and the priest. He makes a noise motioning that he is there ready to listen. I take a deep breath, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been one week since my last confession. Since then I have committed mortal sin.”

“Go on.”

"Well," I say. “There are a few."

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