Both beds are empty.
Panic rising, I run to the bed and yank the blankets back like Hedeon might somehow have flattened himself to the width of a pancake. The bare mattress blazes back at me.
Now my heart is really racing. I have to find him. Right this fucking second. It might already be too late.
I sprint down the stairs of the Octagon Tower, flushed with dread, paranoid that an alarm might start blaring across the empty campus any second. Like a flood of burly grounds crew might come pouring in from every direction.
I’m running for the Keep. I don’t know where Hedeon went, but I have a pretty good idea where the Chancellor should be. His private quarters are on the top floor, next to his office. I know he’s here tonight—I’ve been checking his berth regularly to make sure he hasn’t snuck off the island in his private boat.
I run up the stairs of the Keep, making a swift detour out of the stairwell on the second floor as I hear someone coming down. I’m hoping it might be Hedeon chickening out, or the Chancellor strolling down, safe and sound. Peeking out, I see Professor Lyons instead, slipping out of her white lab coat and folding it over her forearm as she descends the steps. She must have been working late, probably mixing up one of her custom chemical compounds for an upcoming class.
I wait until she passes, then sprint up the remaining flights.
I only slow when I reach the luxurious oriental carpet running toward the Chancellor’s office. My feet pad silently along, the wall-mounted sconces casting distinct pools of light onto the floor, with dark wells between.
I plan to creep up to the Chancellor’s apartments. Until I hear a sudden scuffling and a crashing sound that brings me sprinting through the doors at top speed.
Hedeon and Luther Hugo are grappling in front of Hugo’s immense fireplace, silhouetted against the roaring flames.
Hedeon doesn’t look sick anymore—he looks possessed. His hands are locked on the Chancellor’s shoulders, half his shirt slashed away, baring the gruesome scars running down his right arm to the flickering firelight.
The Chancellor is wearing black brocade pajamas, as if Hedeon dragged him out of his bed. Despite being forty years older than Hedeon at least, the fight is not nearly as uneven as one might expect. Hugo still retains a portion of his once-great strength. Driven by desperation, he grapples with his son, the tendons standing out on his neck, his bared teeth glinting in the black beard.
It won’t matter. Neither skill nor experience will overcome Hedeon’s rage tonight. Not even the dagger on the floor between them—stained with Hedeon’s blood—is going to save the Chancellor. Slowly, inexorably, Hedeon is dragging Hugo toward the open grate, as if he intends to fling him into the fire.
Neither man has noticed me. They’re aware of nothing but each other’s sweating, snarling faces.
I run at Hedeon, grabbing him from behind and trying to drag him away as he did to me when I almost murdered Estas.
“Stop!” I bellow. “You can’t kill him!”
Hugo dives on the knife and snatches it up, wildly swinging it toward his son’s throat.
I block the strike with my forearm, with a deftness that should earn me an instant A in Professor Howell’s class. Seizing the outside of Luther’s hand, I twist his wrist over, forcing him to drop the knife from his boneless fingers.
Luther swings his other elbow around, knocking me across the jaw. I dive at him, taking out his legs and bringing him down to the floor. We grapple with each other, his limbs hard as petrified oak, the strength of his long years baked into the muscle. But age has no stamina—it’s two o’clock in the morning, and Hugo is fighting for his life against two much younger men. He’s flagging.
I pin him down on the carpet, my knee in his back and his arm twisted up behind him.
“Get something to tie him up!” I bellow to Hedeon.
Hedeon has picked up the knife. He’s holding it overhand, his dark blue eyes fixed on his helpless father. His own blood stains the blade, garish evidence of Luther Hugo’s utter disregard for his safety.
“Don’t,” I say, in a warning tone.
I know Hedeon wants to rush forward and plunge that knife into Hugo’s back. Maybe cut his throat for good measure, like Hugo did to Ozzy’s mom.
“He deserves it,” Hedeon says, his voice dull and emotionless. “He left me with those people. Dropped me off like unwanted luggage. Left me to be tortured. Or even to die.”
“I know,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “But you can’t kill him, Hedeon. You’ll be executed.”
“I don’t care,” Hedeon says, his eyes flat and unmoving. “I’ve never felt alive in my whole fucking life.”
“You can’t do this,” I say again, torn between threatening, begging, and trying to reason with him. “I can’t let you.”
“He has to pay,” Hedeon says. “It’s the only thing that kept me going, year after year. Thinking that someday I’d find my parents, and I’d kill them for what they did to me.”
“Don’t you want to know the whole story?” I ask, desperately. “Don’t you want to know what happened?”
“I know what happened!” Hedeon shouts, his anger flaring up again. “I know what he did to her, and I know what he did to me.”
He clenches the knife in his hand, but he doesn’t rush at us. Not yet.
Luther has stopped struggling beneath me. He’s waiting, listening. I’m not stupid enough to loosen my grip—the old viper’s only waiting for his chance to strike.
I haul him up, dragging him to the throne-like chair set behind his desk, and throwing him down on it.
“Don’t fucking move,” I tell him, “or I’ll help Hedeon hack you into pieces and throw you into the fire.”
The threat has no effect on the Hugo’s stoic expression or his dark, glittering eyes, but it seems to placate Hedeon somewhat. He slashes through the curtain ties with his knife, using them to bind the Chancellor to the chair.
Now we stand in a strange inverse of the usual power dynamic in this office: the Chancellor cowed and at the mercy of two students. Or at least, pretending to be cowed.
Hedeon strides over to the corner behind the desk, rips down the photograph of Evalina Markov, and brandishes it in Hugo’s face.
“Who is this?” he demands.
“Evalina Markov,” the Chancellor says, calmly.
“And what was your relationship to her?”
“She was a student here,” Hugo replies.
With one ruthless swipe, Hedeon slashes Hugo’s face from temple to jaw. The Chancellor doesn’t even flinch, only letting out a grunt as blood patters down on the silk thigh of his pajamas, disappearing on the black brocade.
“Answer my questions fully and truthfully, or I’ll cut off your nose next,” Hedeon hisses. “Do you know that’s how Kenneth Gray used to threaten me? He’d pick some little piece of me—a finger, a toe, an earlobe, and say, ‘You don’t need all ten toes to be a soldier. You don’t even need both eyes . . .’ ”
“Kenneth is maudlin,” the Chancellor says, dismissively. “He always was.”
“How did you know the Grays?” Hedeon demands.
Hugo’s upper lip curls in disgust at the idea of being interrogated by two students. But he isn’t stupid enough to keep stonewalling Hedeon. After a moment he says: