Chapter 18 Caius
They hit the suite before sunrise. Four men in black, one for O and three for me.
Ophelia’s up in an instant, teeth bared, hair tangled from the pillow, but she doesn’t make it far.
By the time she’s pulled off the bed and sat on the chair in the corner, they’ve got my arms pinned and my legs kicked out.
One has a hand clamped around my throat, not squeezing, just keeping me down.
Motherfucker. My father’s men.
She screams my name, tries to launch herself at them, a wild punch smoking the guy standing behind her in the head.
She runs forward, aiming for the guy sitting on my chest. The nearest swings her off with a forearm, the force slamming her against the wall.
She’s feral, but there’s no point in fighting.
The guy she punched pulls her up by the hair and she gets a backhand for the trouble, then a warning hiss.
I’m going to kill every one of these fuckers.
“Shut the fuck up, sweetheart. You want him alive, stay put.”
She doesn’t stop. She doesn’t know how.
“CAIUS!”
Her voice rips through me sharper than their grip, but I don’t waste energy fighting. These aren’t Board stooges or schoolyard bullies. These are Vicious Kings, specifically the ones my father hires for protection. They’ve been waiting for this.
They drag me out in boxers and a t-shirt. No shoes, no time to dress. I hear her, still screaming, still promising hell, even as they shut her inside. Last thing I see is her bare feet on the tile, as one of them tie her to the chair. Last thing I feel is the shame of leaving her.
The hallway’s empty, echoing with our footfalls and her shriek, growing ragged, desperate, as they march me to the service elevator.
The ride down is silent, one guard’s fist in my hair to keep my face at an angle.
I focus on the numbers dropping, counting the seconds, rehearsing the move where I snap his wrist and cave his nose.
But I don’t. I could, but it would only get me tased, or worse.
If I die, she’s alone. If I cooperate, I might buy time.
Basement parking. They throw me in the back of a matte black van. The doors close and the dark is almost total. It’s cold, the steel ribs of the chassis biting through thin cotton.
We drive.
They don’t talk. They don’t even look at me, unless you count the reflection in the rearview. I do. The driver is glassy-eyed, scar on his chin, the kind of man who likes pain but never shows it. The guy riding shotgun has a ring with a sapphire set in a lion’s mouth.
Fifteen minutes out, we leave the main road for a private drive. Trees line both sides, branches skeletal, arching over us like the ribs of a dead god. The tires crunch gravel, then stop.
The road to my house.
The cold hits me hardest as they pull me out.
One on each elbow, feet skidding, ripping on the stones, they move me up marble steps and through a set of French doors the size of a cargo container.
No sound inside but the drip of a faucet and the thud of my heels on stone.
They don’t bother with ceremony or restraint, just haul me up another flight and throw me into the only room with a light on.
It’s his office.
I’ve been here before, but never like this. Never as prisoner, always as his son, which is its own kind of slavery.
Nothing has changed since I left to the Academy.
It’s black walnut and leather, the air thick with expensive scotch and the death of a thousand cigars.
The walls are lined with blades—some ancient, some modern, all gleaming, all positioned at eye-level like they’re watching you back.
There are no books in this study. My father doesn’t need words, just weapons.
He’s behind the desk, posture perfect, hands steepled. The only light is a green-banked lamp throwing sickly arcs across the carpet. The rest is shadow.
He doesn’t look up at first, just taps a finger on the desk, slow and even, like a metronome for his own heartbeat.
The guards drop me in the visitor’s chair and step back, hands folded. They know their place. I look at him, but he lets the silence rot for a full minute before he moves.
“Son.”
His voice is quiet, but the fury behind them is sharp. Never above a murmur, never at a loss for authority.
“Dad.” My own voice sounds childish in this room, but I refuse to sit up straight for him.
He studies me, eyes trailing the bruises on my jaw, the bite mark at my shoulder from Ophelia. He notices everything. He always has.
“I see you’re not dressed. For shame, it’s almost 11. Perhaps giving you the position you have as my heir was a mistake. Judging by the report I received from Abelard, that certainly appears the case. You humiliated the Board.” He says it like a diagnosis, not a judgment. “You humiliated me.”
I don’t respond. He doesn’t want my words, he wants obedience, and I’m fresh out.
“You could have been anything,” he says. “We set you up for legacy. Tradition. Strength. And you choose to piss it all away for a girl.”
He says “girl” like it’s a slur, like it’s a parasite in the bloodline.
I roll my head back, fix my eyes on the chandelier above him. He can’t possibly forget that THEY chose her for me. What the fuck did they expect? “You want to skip to the part where you threaten me, or are we doing the long version?”
He ignores it. He always ignores me.
“There are rules, Caius. Rules that were written in blood, forged over centuries of sacrifice. Every time a Montgomery son fucks up, it takes two generations to repair the damage. You had the fast track, one that I had to kill my own father for. All you had to do was abide by the Law of the Night Hunt and all of this would have been yours.”
He stands, one hand braced on the desk. The lamp casts his face in half-shadow, half-blade. He’s handsome, but only in the way a knife is handsome. All geometry, all killing edge.
“You think the Vicious Kings respect you, after what you pulled? You think the Board will ever let you near a seat? You have no allies now. No future.”
He circles the desk, slow, every step measured. He’s not a big man, but he fills the room.
“You will go back,” he says, “and you will finish the ritual. You will give them what they want, and after the offspring is produced you will never see that girl again.”
I stand. The guards twitch, but don’t move.
“I’m not your puppet.”
He laughs. It’s a low, beautiful sound. “Of course you are. That’s what sons are for. Your brother thought the same, and that’s why he’s buried next to your mother in the wild fields.”
I clench my fists. I want to tell him I’d rather die. I want to tell him I’d burn it all down if I thought it would hurt him. But I’ve learned from him. Sometimes the best move is to wait, to let the other man bleed first.
“Say what you need to say,” I spit, “and let me go.”
He leans in, nose an inch from mine, breath sour with whiskey and contempt.
“You’re going to do what I say because you have no choice.” His voice drops, not quite a whisper. “Because I am your father. Because blood is law. And because I’ve spent twenty-six years breaking you down until there’s nothing left but my own reflection.”
I want to scream at him. Instead, I hold still.
He pulls back, wipes an imaginary fleck from my shirt.
“You mistake fear for tradition,” I say, and watch his jaw go tight.
He slaps me, open hand, hard enough to crack bone.
The sound echoes in the vault of the room, followed by a bright ringing in my skull. Blood fills my mouth, copper and salt, and I let it drip onto the carpet.
He straightens his cuffs, never once raising his voice. “When you come to your senses, you’ll do what’s required.”
He gestures to the guards. They step forward and wait for his order.
I don’t fight. I don’t run. I simply stare at him.
He returns to his desk, the tapping of his finger resuming, now with a fresh, wet rhythm.
“Think about your mother,” he says, eyes never leaving mine. “She wanted a better son than this.”
He turns his attention to paperwork, as if the conversation is over.
But I can feel his eyes, burning through the black. Even now, even after all these years, I want to make him proud.
But I want to make him suffer more.
Blood runs down my chin, warm against the cold.
I don’t wipe it away.
I let it stain the carpet, a mark that will outlast both of us.
The sting from the slap barely fades before the memory hits. It’s not nostalgia. It’s childhood memory.
I’m eight, knees on cold marble, palms flat, forehead pressed to stone.
The air in my lungs is a block of ice. I’m counting the veins in the tile because if I look up, I’ll see the belt and the buckle, and I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.
I count cracks, watch the spread of old blood in the grout, wonder if it’s mine or my brother’s.
The belt whistles through the air. He likes the sound.
Says it’s the only music we’re allowed to enjoy in this house.
I take the first hit, back arched so it’ll catch more flesh, less bone.
The second lands at my hip, the third across my knuckles when I flinch.
The trick is to go limp—not resist, not tense.
If you tense, it cuts deeper, leaves a mark.
He doesn’t want to mark the face, that’s for the outside world. He wants the inside ruined.
His voice is flat, emotionless. “Montgomery men never cry.” Every time I fuck up, he makes me repeat it. “Montgomery men never kneel to anyone but their own blood.” Once, I asked what would happen if we ran out of blood. He hit me in the face for that one.
I learned to keep my mouth shut. I learned to let the pain wash over, then out. I learned that what doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger—it makes you colder. Harder. It makes you crave the moment you can pass it on, even if it means hating yourself for it.
Eventually, he leaves. Always leaves. The sound of him walking away is better than a lullaby.
I’m left in the dark, listening to the silence, memorizing it. One day, I promise myself, I’ll be the silence that comes after.
The memory fades, but the pain of remembering doesn’t.
I have never hated someone the way I hate him. The way I fucking hate everything he stands for. Blood on my tongue, the metallic pop and fizz, adrenaline burning a hole in my gut.
He’s watching for a reaction. Anything. But I give him nothing. He wants me to scream, or break, or spit in his face. Instead, I lick the blood off my lip and smile, just enough to make him want to hit me again.
He doesn’t. That’s not how this game works.
I sit there, unmoving, the lamp casting my shadow big and stupid on the wall. He pretends to read his papers, but his eyes are always on me.
Valence enters at some point, ghosting behind the chair, his hands folded like a funeral director. Abelard’s with him, holding a folder and a little device that looks like a cattle prod.
My father gestures. “Leave us. I didn’t say you could bear witness to how I punish my son.”
They don’t move.
He sighs, deep, disappointed. “I’m not going to kill the boy. He will obey.”
Valence clears his throat. “We could—reset him. Start from the beginning.”
Abelard nods, his grin slicing a line across his face. “We have means. Stronger means than we used on Brandon.”
I don’t flinch. The ‘methods’ they used on Brandon killed him.
But my father had always said my brother was the weaker of the two of us and sometimes a shepherd needed to thin the heard to strengthen the flock.
I know they’ll use drugs, isolation, pain, whatever. The real threat is that it would work.
My father stands, smoothing his tie. “No. Let him stew. Let him see what he has to lose.”
He leans in, eyes level with mine. “If you don’t finish this, you will always be hunted. The girl will be collateral. You understand?”
“Perfectly.”
He freezes, just a beat. Then something cold and perfect in his eyes—pride, maybe, or relief.
“Get him up,” he says. “You have two weeks, Caius. If you do not complete the ritual, you will become a wanted man and we won’t stop until you are wiped from this earth.”
The guards grab me, hands rough, and pull me to my feet. I don’t stumble. I don’t wipe my face. I just turn for the door, shoving past Valence and Abelard. Neither of them speaks, but their eyes track me.
No one follows me out as the door shuts behind me, the low murmur of voices coming under the cracks. In the hall, I let the weight drop. My whole body hums, every cell running on pure spite.
I start walking and keep walking, already dialing for a cab to come pick me up and take me home to her.
Past the taxidermy. Past the eyes in the walls. Past the medieval weapons that will never be used.
At the end of the corridor, out of sight, I let myself stop. One hand to the wall, catching my breath.
And then, for the first time in years, I let myself smile.
Not a big one. Not a happy one.
A real one.
A promise.
They think they broke me.
They have no idea just how well my father trained me to be untouchable.
They also forgot that I have contacts of my own.
Ones who escaped this very hellhole that I’m being confined to.