Chapter 2
Lake sat up straight the second West appeared in the kitchen. “How is he?”
West was moving a bit slower than usual, the injury on his side still healing, but he’d managed to carry a tray of tea upstairs to Lake’s room, where Nix and his cousin were currently holed up.
They’d rescued Briant and convinced him to come to the Roost to wait while they went to help Nix.
His cousin had been shaken from his altercation with Juri, enough so that he’d only put up a little resistance, giving in and following them silently.
He hadn’t told them anything important other than confirming Juri had kidnapped him.
Lake wondered if Nix had gotten around to telling his cousin that Juri was now dead.
They’d only been back for a few hours, not returning until the sun was already cresting over the mountains.
Nix had insisted on staying at Juri’s until he’d gotten all of the answers he could, though he’d yet to tell them anything more about what he’d learned aside from that one conversation they’d had in the middle of his investigation.
About poisoned tea and his cousin’s potential innocence.
Lake sent a sidelong look at Yejun, but his friend had yet to comment about that weighted possibility, and he sure as shit wasn’t going to be the first one to bring it up again.
“Not good.” West set the empty tray on the counter and heaved a sigh. “I think this was the last straw. I think…I think this may have finally broken him.”
“Bullshit,” Yejun disagreed. “He’s stronger than that.”
“He just watched a guy he’d considered a close friend vomit blood and basically die in his arms,” West snapped. “That’s enough to shake anybody. Hell, remember how you were when you found me unconscious?”
“That’s different.”
“He’s right,” Lake interrupted before they could argue any further. He understood Yejun was merely coping, but pretending away Nix’s pain wasn’t going to get them anywhere. “This was too much for him.”
“How many betrayals does this make?” West said. “And in the span of such a short time, too.” He cursed and ran a hand over his shaved head. “If we’re not careful with our approach, I’m afraid we might lose him. Which means no cursing Juri’s name or rubbing salt in the wound.”
“Why are you staring at me?” Yejun scowled and crossed his arms, leaning back against the sink after neither of them replied. “Fine, yeah, I get it. I’ll rein it in.”
“We’re just as pissed off as you are,” Lake told him. “But Nix doesn’t need our anger right now.”
“I said I got it. I can be a supportive boyfriend, have a little faith.”
It wasn’t that Lake didn’t know that; it was just…things were still rocky between Yejun and Nix. They’d patched things up and were on the right track, but that didn’t mean they were on solid ground just yet. What if this whole thing with Juri set them back again?
Nix had been the one to say it first, but he’d been right when he’d claimed they were stronger together. They needed a united front if they were going to make it through this.
“My dad isn’t going to take this lying down,” West warned then, seemingly reading Lake’s mind.
Before Juri had gotten sick, they’d been in the process of exposing his underhanded deeds to the rest of the Order. They’d gotten enough in to plant a seed of doubt, but a dead club member might overshadow even Demitrious’s dirty laundry.
“We only managed to turn two members against him,” Yejun said. “Do you think that’ll be enough?”
“Club Essential is going to be in mourning. Juri may have been a traitor, but his family have been members for generations.” Lake pursed his lips. “Not to mention the paternity test results he shared.”
He still wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
About Juri Ferd potentially being a secret half-brother of his he’d never known about.
There’d always been the chance, of course.
Always a fear in the back of his mind that eventually one of his parents' bastard children could come out of the woodworks and try to stake a claim on what was his, he’d just never imagined it like this.
Lake wanted answers, but that would have to wait as well.
“Demons Passing begins tomorrow,” Yejun began, only for West to lift his multi-slate and tap the screen, reminding him how they’d spent the entire night and what time it really was. “Well shit. It’s today. Guess our celebrations are off the table. Do you think the rest of the school will bother?”
“Dew didn’t get anything,” West stated. “And he threw himself off a building in the middle of campus.”
“But he wasn’t Essential.”
“They’ll take a day for mourning,” Lake figured. “Maybe two, given the Ferds standing. The family hasn’t been faring well amongst the rest of the members, though. I doubt their son will get more.”
West let out a low whistle. “Guess that answers that.” At their questioning looks, he shrugged. “We really are shitheads. If Nix is right, and all Juri was trying to do was gather dirt on us? Can you really blame him?”
“I’d do worse if someone turned the entire school against one of you,” Yejun admitted, and it seemed to be a real struggle for him to do so.
All of their multi-slates chimed at the same time, and they paused to check the message from the school.
Sure enough, it was announcing the death of Juri and informing the students that the festivities would be postponed by a single day.
They were allowed to head home for the holiday but reminded that official festivities would start tomorrow with the traditional production of His Dark Night put on by the university’s ballet.
“Well, we all suck and we’re going straight to hell,” West stated.
“Tell us something we don’t know.” Yejun dropped his arm and blew out a breath. “Think Nix checked his messages?”
“Probably.” Lake wished otherwise, but knowing Nix, even as spaced out as he was, he still had his multi-slate on him. Maybe Briant had taken it away from him and ordered him to get some rest. Doubtful, but that was the type of shit older cousins did for their younger family members, right?
He almost laughed.
If Beck had ever tried a stunt like that, Lake would have decked him.
“What do we do?” West pulled him from his thoughts. “Are we still going to stick to the plan?”
“You’re seriously thinking about partying right now?” Yejun scowled.
“What? Like you weren’t looking forward to it every bit as much as I have. Not the ballet part. Obviously. Unless Nix wanted to go. Shit. Do you think he wanted to go to that?”
Demons Passing was the largest holiday on the planet, celebrated by practically everyone.
At its root, it was a marker for incoming warmer weather, with smaller festivities planned leading up to the last day, where the gates of hell supposedly opened and the damned were allowed to roam freely for a single night.
Their ancestors used it to explain away the sudden heatwaves that came with summer—lingering warmth from the opening—and the holiday used to be taken seriously.
Now, many of the fun traditions were still implemented, though like with everything else on Tulniri, it’d been turned into an excuse for debauchery and play.
Everyone dressed up and donned masks, meant to trick the spirits into thinking they were one of them, so they’d be left alone.
Yejun had spent months working on masks for the four of them, meaning it was safe to assume West was correct in his assumption that their friend wouldn’t want to skip out on the final party, despite his comment.
What made it even bigger of an event was the fact that Demons Passing was one of the few things put on in collaboration between Foxglove and Club Essential. The massive, campus-wide party was a tradition in its own right.
A few months ago, Demons Passing meant something more than another day to get shitfaced and wave around their wealth and status. Back then, it’d been the date set for them by the Order, the timeframe given to root out the hacker those uppity pricks had believed tried to sneak into their systems.
There’d never really been a hacker, at least, not one trying to break into the club.
It’d been a front, a made-up story to buy themselves some time while they’d hunted down whoever was responsible for trying to attack them.
They hadn’t gotten very far in their search, admittedly, before Nix had come along.
Prior to their Songbird’s arrival, all they’d known for certain was that Branwen, who’d they’d called Iris, had repeatedly used a sedative on Yejun and had poisoned West. She hadn’t been the mastermind behind it, but they’d been unable to get her to spill on who was pulling her strings.
She’d convinced Yejun she didn’t know, but then Nix had arrived looking for a secret lover of Branwen’s who’d supposedly hurt her.
He’d come all this way just for revenge on her behalf, but what he’d uncovered during his investigation had left him shaken, the foundation of their relationship put to the test.
It was harder to forgive the dead. They weren’t here to offer explanations or excuses. Weren’t available to talk things out or apologize.
Branwen had purposefully tricked her cousin into coming here to fight for her after she’d given up. As far as Lake knew, she’d never even tried fighting for herself. If she had, she would have confessed and given them a name. But she never had.
And now they were being told that the very foundation they’d believed in this entire time might be a lie?
If she hadn’t poisoned West, who had?
Did it even matter?
Did it change things?
At the end of the day, weren’t they still searching for the same hidden figure, no matter what her level of involvement had been?
“We need Nix to explain things.” But he didn’t seem like he was in the right state of mind for that, and Lake didn’t want to push him, no matter how important this was.
It couldn’t wait, but it was going to have to. They all owed their Fourth that much.
“Juri was blackmailing Nixie into speaking out against you to the Order,” West said, piecing together what they’d gathered at the meeting. “As soon as we told him Briant was safe, he flipped on Juri.”
There hadn’t been a single moment where Lake had doubted Nix’s loyalty, so that hadn’t been surprising at all.
“If Nix had known about Juri’s lineage sooner, he would have told us,” Yejun added. “Which means he must have told him about it when the two of them met at the dorms.”
Nix had made plans with Juri earlier yesterday, promising to call Yejun when he was ready to head home. He’d never made the call, but Lake had been busy at waif practice and hadn’t been aware until later.
When Demitrious had shown up, waving a photo of Nix and Juri kissing in his face, like some prepubescent teen crying out I told you so.
“Why the kiss?” West asked.
“He needed something to get the Order to meet so last-minute,” Lake surmised. “That’s also why he sent it to Demitrious.”
“Everyone knows that bastard hates that you’ve chosen a no-name person as your future Royal Consort,” Yejun said.
“He was never going to get to choose for me.” No matter how strongly Demitrious had believed otherwise. Hell, the bastard had already begun making promises to others about a merger between Lake and their sons. Trying to sell him off like cattle. “As soon as I’m emperor, he’s done for.”
“Yeah,” West drawled, “we’re going to have to consider doing that a lot sooner. Now that he knows we’ve got all this dirt on him, and that we’re willing to spill it, he won’t let us off the hook that easily.”
“He’s right,” Yejun agreed. “There’s no point in playing house with him anymore; that ship has sailed.”
They were only doing it because they needed his backing to ensure he didn’t try to turn the Order against them, but now…
“We don’t need him anymore.” Lake had broken the trust the Order had in Demitrious.
Even if they’d only managed to turn two members against him, Demitrious had lost his foothold.
“Hendrix is still on the run. With that video of him shooting West, he’s no longer in the line of succession. Juri is dead…That leaves me and Beck.”
“Beck won’t try for it,” West said. “He doesn’t want it.”
“We can’t be sure of anything anymore. Take a look at Nix’s experiences as of late.”
“Anyone can turn on anyone,” he agreed, “but not us.”
“How do you figure?”
“Because we’re not just anyone.”
“Beck isn’t exactly one of us,” Yejun stated. “I mean, sure, we all grew up together, and he’s closer to us than anyone else. But he’s still an outsider at the end of the day. We would have made him our fourth if that were anything other than true.”
They would have. They would have made a group of four, and Nix would have been read in as their fifth instead.
Relationships like that weren’t strictly romantic on Tulniri.
Becoming a group was about power and protection, and they were closer to a pack than anything.
But Lake had always been wary around his cousin, no matter how many times Beck had sworn to him he wasn’t after the crown.
His dad, Hendrix, had wanted it, and that had painted Beck guilty by association in Lake’s mind.
West and Yejun had always been closer to him than Lake had ever been. While he’d warmed up to him some, Lake still had no intention of changing that.
“From here on out,” he decided, “we trust no one but each other. Agreed?”
“Agreed.” Yejun turned to West pointedly.
“Yeah, whatever. I’ll keep my distance for the time being.” West tipped his head back and stared up at the ceiling, clearly distracted. “What do you think Briant is telling him?”
Lake didn’t know, but he hoped it would be useful.
Not just in helping them discover who was behind all of this, but also for Nix.
Nix couldn’t afford to dwell on his feelings over Juri for long. At the end of the day, he’d already made his choice.
Being one of them came with responsibilities that couldn’t be shirked, no matter the circumstances.