23
Miles
The final challenge is essentially one vast game of tug-o-war, with a net instead of a single rope. The net is strung with a line of flags down the center. The first team to pull those flags into their own end zone wins.
Because there are so many students on each team—nearly seventy in total—the tactics involve shifting manpower to different areas of the net. The teams alternate between abrupt bursts of aggressive power, and long, gritty struggles where the students sweat and strain, the net barely moving at all.
I fucking hate it.
I find the Quartum Bellum tedious and pointless, and I tend to exert the minimum effort required so my teammates don’t notice that I’m barely working at all. That’s hard to do when everybody is dripping in sweat in five minutes flat.
The rough rope burns our hands, scraping the skin off our palms. The sod beneath our feet is soon torn up by dug-in heels, and players are frequently jerked off their feet, dragged along with the net until they’re skinned up and covered in grass stains.
I hoped it would all be over soon, but it quickly becomes apparent that we’re in for the long haul. While the Sophomores and Juniors have bursts of triumph where they manage to drag the net several feet toward their end zone, this progress is immediately undermined by the opposing team hauling it back again.
Leo has the better strategy, as per usual. He uses unexpected shifts in force and direction to literally jerk us off our feet. He moves his players around, relieving those at the highest tension points as soon as they start to flag. Bit by bit, he’s pulling the net closer to his side.
Still, it will be an hour or two until my team realizes they’re beat.
I occupy myself by staring at Zoe.
She’s toiling away like a good little worker bee. Her black hair has come loose from its ponytail, sticking to her face. Her cheeks flushed pink in the sun. In fact, she looks quite similar to when she’s on top of me, riding my cock, which makes said cock wake up inside of my shorts. That thought is the only thing that could make me enjoy this fucking competition. I don’t mind if it drags on, as long as I get to watch Zoe laughing and shouting, using that goddess-like body to its best advantage.
She catches my eye and grins at me, showing a flash of white teeth.
“You could try pushing instead of pulling,” she cries. “We’ll put you out of your misery.”
“You’ll never respect me if I let you win,” I shout back, giving a sharp jerk to the net that yanks her forward.
Zoe just laughs and plants her filthy sneakers in the churned-up dirt, pulling as hard as she can to go absolutely nowhere.
Dean Yenin stands a little to Zoe’s left. He gives an irritated toss of his head, annoyed at our exchange. He, of course, is treating the challenge like the fate of the world depends upon it. He snarls with annoyance whenever Leo shouts an order, but follows the strategy when the benefit is obvious.
Silas Gray isn’t listening as carefully. As Leo yells for them to pull left, he yanks the net in the opposite direction, putting unexpected force on the section held by Dean.
With a sickening jolt, Dean’s arm is ripped sideways. He gives a strangled yell, letting go of the net. His arm hangs at an upsetting angle, the shoulder dislocated from the joint.
“You fucking idiot!” Dean snarls, his face scarlet.
Silas stares at him, impassive and unrepentant.
Leo lets go of the net to come look. He grimaces at the dangling arm.
“You’d better go to the infirmary,” he says.
“You think?” Dean bellows, teeth gritted in pain.
“I can send someone with you—” Leo starts.
“Don’t fucking bother, he yanked my arm out, not my legs,” Dean spits, stalking off across the field with his good arm pinning the loose, swinging limb in place against his body.
“What a shame,” I say to Kasper Markaj. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”
Kasper snorts and takes a fresh grip on the net.
“Come on, you lazy shits!” Simon Fowler bellows to our team. “We’ve got ‘em right where we want ‘em, they’re dropping like flies!”
I sigh.
“He’s no William Wallace, but he’s trying his best.”
24
Cat
Rocco has to die, and I’m the only one who can do it.
It can’t be Zoe or Miles. They’re the obvious suspects.
If they kill Rocco, the Chancellor will find out, or the Princes. Their new life together will be destroyed before it even starts.
In fact, I have to make sure that when Rocco dies, it’s glaringly obvious that Zoe and Miles had nothing to do with it.
Which is why it has to take place during the final challenge of the Quartum Bellum.
Zoe and Miles will be competing in full view of the entire school. No one can accuse them of attacking Rocco.
I, on the other hand, will need a different alibi.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The first step is to bait the trap.
I start by leaving notes in Rocco’s pockets. This is risky, because it involves sneaking into the Octagon Tower and picking the lock to his room.
Lock-picking is one of the very first things you learn at Kingmakers, at least in the Spy division. We covered it our first week. I’ve gotten quite good at it, as delicate, tricky handwork is something I’ve practiced while making jewelry and paper art.
The more difficult part is dodging all the male Heirs that might wonder why I’ve snuck into their tower. Also, overcoming my creeping disgust at touching anything that belongs to Rocco. His clothes have a sickly-sweet smell that reminds me of rotting fruit.
The notes I leave for Rocco are deliberately vague and tantalizing.
Things like:
I know what you did.
I have evidence.
I’ll expose you.
You’ll have to pay to keep me quiet.
I don’t actually expect Rocco to feel threatened by these notes. Quite the contrary: I think they’ll irritate and enrage him, because he won’t understand them. It will drive him mad not knowing who’s doing it, or why.
He may think I’m referring to the story Claire Turgenev told me: the boy he tortured and murdered at his old boarding school. Or perhaps he’ll connect it to one of the hundred other cruel and disgusting acts that must lurk in his mind like un-exhumed bodies.
It doesn’t matter what he thinks—it only matters that I spark his curiosity.
I leave a dozen notes over three days, hidden in the pockets of his trousers, backpack, and between the pages of his textbooks. Then I stop.
The hiatus is important to throw him off balance. To make him even more paranoid. To ensure that he responds when I leave my final note.
Three days before the Quartum Bellum, I sneak out of the Undercroft late at night. I steal stones from the crumbling Bell Tower on the northwest corner of campus, and I carry them up onto the ramparts. Heavy stones, each one five to ten pounds in weight. I hide them under my shirt and take them up one by one until my legs are shaking from dozens of trips up and down the stairs.
Then I search the stables. I look through the piles of broken furniture, moldy books, worn-out chalk-brushes, and old filing boxes.