Chapter Eleven #3
Roze looks up at him, studies him coldly, and then, deadly and slow, he stands to his feet. “Let’s you and I clear a few things up, Belcamp. You do not tell me what to do for several reasons. Firstly, because I am your Prince, whether you like it or not—”
Kole opens his mouth, but Roze raises his hand, wagging a gloved finger at him. “Ah, ah. Remember who you’re speaking to.”
Kole clenches his fists at his sides but stays silent.
“Second, because I am looking out for Viola’s best interests, and she is my fiancée, not yours.”
Why was that distinction necessary? Kole’s face reddens as the wrath between them sizzles.
“And third, because if you do, I’ll destroy you.” He says it plainly, mercilessly, less like a threat and more like a fact.
I put my hand on Kole’s arm. “Just go. Please.”
But Kole doesn’t move. He glares at the Prince, pure spite on his face. “You’re pathetic. Without your money and your title, what are you?”
Roze smiles, a sight so disturbing that a shiver ricochets down my spine. “Something much worse.”
I put myself between them, facing Kole—my back to Roze’s chest. “Go, Kole,” I demand.
He looks perplexed and stricken.
“Please,” I beg.
He obeys, turning on his heel and stalking away with fists still clenched, leaving me standing with Roze.
I’ve never been more furious with Roze, even as the scent of him fills my lungs—winter, spice, and poisoned apples.
I am lightheaded and dizzy and can hardly ignore the feel of him, the warmth of his chest through his button-down shirt.
I shove him away. “Stop threatening people.”
He looks unperturbed. “I’ll threaten people when I need to.”
“Kole did nothing to you.”
“Didn’t he? From the looks of it, he was trying to get between me and my fiancée.”
“I’m not your anything.” My voice is louder than I intend, but I can’t fathom the sheer audacity of this arrogant, arrogant man. “I don’t belong to you. I belong to myself. And you were being an ass.”
He adjusts his gloves with precise movements, not looking me in the eye.
“You need to apologize to him.”
“The only words Belcamp deserves from me are to tell him to kindly fuck off.”
My throat burns with anger. I hold back my shadows. “Kole is my friend, and you’re ruining that.”
“He’s manipulating you,” Roze spits.
My mouth falls open. “Manipulating me?”
A frustrated growl escapes Roze’s throat, and he smooths back his hair, looking away. “Sinclair, listen … ” He frowns, shifting his weight, clearly agitated about something. “You need to watch out for Belcamp.”
I laugh. “This, coming from you? Kole is the most harmless person I know.”
“He’s an opportunist. He’s ambitious, and he doesn’t care who he tramples on along his road to success.”
“What are you talking about?”
Roze steps closer, looking deep into my eyes now. “He spends time with you because you’re smart and accomplished. It makes him look good. But he’s not as clever as you are—I doubt he would pass half his classes without your help.”
I blink. “You’re saying he’s my friend because we study together?”
He gives me a meaningful look. “Men like him discard people as soon as they fail to prove themselves useful. He knows you like him, Sinclair. He’s using it to his advantage.”
I gape at him. “That’s absurd.”
He sighs. “When we started at Vandenberghe, he stuck to me like a tick. He was desperate to become my friend. But I can smell a social climber a mile away. Eventually he gave up on winning me over and moved on. To you. He smells success on you. Be angry at me all you like, but you need to cut Belcamp loose.”
My hands clench into white-knuckled fists, like I’m holding my shadows by the reins. He’s wrong. He’s wrong. I know Kole. He’s a good person. He would never—he defended me against Roze, didn’t he?
He did … as soon as Roze took me away from him. A sick, dark feeling fills me.
“I don’t want to talk about this now,” I say. “Let’s just get through this.”
Roze thinks we should take a look at where the King was found, but I don’t want to—I want to find Professor Borges.
I didn’t see her around the school at all yesterday, and it’s starting to trouble me.
But after a not-so-brief squabble about it, Roze refuses to do anything other than return to the site of the King’s demise.
I’m tired of fighting him, so to the murder scene we go.
Roze leads me to the halls that surround one of the castle’s extravagant ballrooms, where the All Hallows’ Eve masquerade was held, and I’m filled with memories from that night.
Cerise, drunk out of her mind. Me, thinking only of returning to my dorm, where I could curl up with Saint Waffles and a book that I wanted to finish. The music and the madness.
These halls were a world of beauty and grotesquerie, everything dark and dimly lit, all the faces of the revelers hidden behind the gruesome, smiling masks of animals and fiends, outlined in gold and jewels.
But Roze leads me to a far-off hall, where the party would certainly not have ventured. “This is where I found him,” he says darkly. “Slumped on the floor. His skin was already cold as ice. Not a mark on him, except those runes.”
I look around. By all accounts, it’s an ordinary hallway.
There are dozens of others like it in this part of the castle.
The carpet is worn and the polish on the molding has gone dull from lack of upkeep.
Artwork lines the walls—portraits of kings, nobles, and battles.
The only thing at all peculiar about this corridor is that it’s a little darker than some of the others.
There are no windows, and no one has bothered to light the gas lamps.
“Don’t any nobles live on this hall?” I ask. “Why is it empty?”
“These were my father’s personal rooms. He insisted that they be kept dark, and he never allowed anyone to come down this way, not even servants.”
I grimace and walk a few paces into the darkness, scanning the space. “I don’t see anyth—”
My breath catches. My heart stops.
There on the carpet, barely perceptible among the shadows, is a dark, wet spot.
“Sinclair?” Roze asks, watching me.
I take a step backward, and my knees wobble.
“Sinclair?” Roze insists.
The puddle is dark and wine colored. I back up another step, and then the smell hits me—the unmistakable, metallic scent of blood.
The air around the stain shimmers—silver and blue coalesce to form a shadowy shape.
The gray ghost boy sits in the middle of the stain, his face and his hands covered in blood leaching from his pores, oozing from every crevice, running in thick streams down his small arms and legs, matting in his clothing.
And then, the boy speaks. His voice is small, weak, and garbled from straining to speak through the blood that pours over his lips and nose.
Tongues of shadow burst from my fingers, licking around my hands.
Calm.
Control.
The ghost boy opens his mouth and hisses, “Bloody Annie. Bloody Annie. Bloody Annie.”
I choke on the air in my throat. The ghost has never spoken before.
The boy stands, gliding closer as the blood streams down his clothes, his innocent face.
My shadows wrap around my arms like armor.
No, no, no.
I am calm. I am in control.
Distantly, I hear Roze’s voice, but something is keeping him back. I screw my eyes shut. A hand like winter ice touches my chest, piercing my skin, slithering past my rib cage, seizing my heart.
And the last echoes I hear are the name, this time in my own voice, in my own head.
Bloody Annie.
Bloody Annie.
Bloody Annie.