Chapter 20 #2
I move toward my father, my steps stilted and slow. I still manage to catch him as he collapses to the floor, his weight pulling both of us down to the ground.
MacVeigh stands over us, the bloody knife held limply in his hand, crimson drops splattering the floor.
I hold my father, one hand supporting his head, the other uselessly trying to stem the blood spilling from his chest, as if I can somehow manage to push it all back in, as if I can rewind the clock.
It coats my hand in sticky scarlet and I know the sight will never be erased from my mind, my hand covered in my father’s blood.
“Callum.” My name slips from his mouth, choked and gasping. A trail of scarlet dribbles down his chin.
I tear my gaze from the blood and meet his eyes. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have…I should have…” I press my forehead to his. Part of me is unwilling to believe I’ve let this happen. The other knows I need to make my amends before it’s too late. “I’m so sorry.”
His hand reaches up, grasping for my cheek. “No time for that.” He sucks in a wheezing breath and another line of blood trickles from his lips. “Find a way. Protect Scota. You are the leader the world needs. Find a way.”
My grip on him tightens and tears clog my throat. “I will.”
“I love you, son.”
The tears pour freely down my cheeks as his breaths stutter in his chest. “I love you too.”
I hold him, watching his chest rise and fall. Watching his chest still. Watching as everything I’ve ever known for my whole life is ripped away from me.
A hand grips my shoulder, pulling me to my feet, forcing me to drop my father’s body long before I’m ready to.
“You need to get out of here,” MacVeigh whispers fiercely.
I turn on him, fury flooding every one of my veins.
Deep down, I know there is no one but myself to blame, but in this moment, all I can think about is this man killing my father.
I pull my arm back, the one holding my knife, ready to plunge it into his heart just as he did to my father, and to my future.
My hand falters when a pair of pleading honey eyes flash in my mind.
Cate, and her final plea to me.
I drop my hand after a few seconds, my chest heaving. “I will kill you for what you’ve done.” This isn’t the time, or the place—I manage to convince myself the decision to spare him is mine and mine alone—but the promise is made, and I intend to follow through. Cate will have to understand.
She played her own role in the events of this evening, and she will have to understand that whatever Harold MacVeigh is to her, I cannot let the future of this country rest in his hands.
MacVeigh looks at me with something like sadness in his eyes. “I hope you do. But Lady M will be back soon, and if you are here when she arrives, she will kill you too. Go now, while you still have the chance.”
I don’t wait. I’m outnumbered and neither my brain nor my body is prepared for another fight.
I head toward the balcony doors, knowing it’s the quickest way of escape.
I’m sure there are others still out there who plan on being the one to take my father’s life.
Little do they know, they’re already too late.
“Callum,” MacVeigh calls softly just as I’m about to slip through to the outside.
I pause, not understanding why I care to give this murderer one more second of my time.
“Take care of her. Of Cate. Protect your Bond.”
I don’t acknowledge his request.
I climb over the balcony railings, my body aching, but somehow managing to push through. I dash my way to the stables, taking the reins of the first horse I find and riding away. Leaving my only home, and my only remaining parent behind.
—
I make it to the safe house quickly, without facing any trouble on the road.
Scota is eerily quiet tonight, like the whole province knows of the violence brewing in its castle and wants to be as far away from it as possible when it arrives.
The green hills of my home province give way to the dark and dank streets of Stratford’s lower quarter as I try to prepare myself for what comes next.
How will my people react when they hear the news that Harold MacVeigh is their candidate? Will they be happy to see my family hand over the reins to a nonroyal? Or will they be disappointed in me for abandoning them?
I’m not sure which option feels worse.
I slip my key into the lock of the dingy apartment along the river, knocking out a short and simple code on the door so Dom and Alex know not to attack me the minute I cross the threshold.
I don’t think about how I must look, sweaty and exhausted, my father’s blood staining my shirt, bruises already beginning to bloom.
I’m still attacked as soon as the door opens, Dom flying across the room and into my arms.
“You did it,” she whispers into my ear, taking in the evidence on my clothing, her voice choked with tears. I’m not sure if it’s pride or devastation lacing her words. Probably both.
I set her on the ground and cross to the far side of the room so I don’t have to look at her, to see my own disappointment reflected back at me from the depths of her eyes. “Not quite.”
“Is he…you know?” My sister can’t even bring herself to say the words.
“Yes.” My hands clench into tight fists at my side.
“What happened, Cal?” Alex gives me space, staying near the tiny, filthy kitchen of the flat.
We found this space in an old tenement building during the bleakest months of the Uprising and have kept it ever since, an escape plan and our last resort. I suppose now is the time to be grateful we planned for the worst.
“Father is dead.” The words slice through me like MacVeigh’s knife sliced through his chest.
Dom approaches me, a tentative hand placed on my shoulder. “I know you feel the guilt now, Cal, but you have to remember that it’s what he wanted.”
“I’m not the one who killed him.”
The words hang heavy in the air.
“What do you mean you’re not the one who killed him?”
I turn to face my uncle, thinking it might be easier than looking at my sister. “I mean, I was too late. Harold MacVeigh took his life. He will be the candidate for the Scotan province.”
Alex’s face pales, his blue eyes bright against the starkness of his face. “Harold MacVeigh?”
I nod, watching out of the corner of my eye as Dom sinks into a rickety chair. Her eyes have clouded over, and her shoulders hunch like she can no longer hold herself upright.
I did this. I did this to my sister, to my uncle, to my people.
And for what? A few hours in the arms of a woman who sees me as nothing more than a job. Nothing more than a quick way to earn some coin and advance her position.
I know I should tell them the whole truth, how Lady Caterine cost me the one chance I had to salvage everything. But I can’t make myself say the words. Not yet, anyway. It hurts just to think them; I don’t know how I will ever be able to give them voice.
Alex’s brow furrows as he parses out all the information and its implications. “Why would Harold do that?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. But from what I can gather, I think the real person behind it is his new wife, a Lady M.”
“Does she have some sort of political aspirations?” Alex crosses the room, his fists clenched at his side.
“I don’t think anyone really knows. Cate—Lady Caterine—only knew that she and Harold recently married and apparently her funds helped save the club from closing.
” Her name tastes bitter on my tongue and yet I have the urge to seek her out.
Seek the comfort I know only being in her arms can bring me.
Alex catches my slip on her name, raising a single eyebrow, but he doesn’t mention it. “Lady M doesn’t give us much to go on.” He begins pacing around the small perimeter of the room. “This isn’t the way things were supposed to go,” he mutters under his breath. “Who could have sent her?”
“You think another province is trying to sabotage our candidate? Is there anything in the decree to stop that sort of thing?”
Alex shakes his head. “I don’t think so. But that isn’t what happened here anyway. If Harold is the one who committed the act, then Harold is the candidate. There can’t be any more killing at this point. Unless…” His eyes cloud over.
Dom and I exchange a look.
“Unless what?” I ask when Alex doesn’t bother to finish his sentence.
Alex sighs, running a hand through his already disheveled hair. “There is something I need to tell you both. You’re not going to like it, but I ask that you listen to what I have to say before making any judgments.”
Dom grimaces. “Not a very comforting precursor there, Uncle.”
“I know.” Alex gestures for me to sit.
I lower myself carefully onto one of the wooden crates acting as chairs around the dining table. “Whatever you have to say, say it, Alex.”
“For the past year, I have been working with the Uprising.”
The declaration seems to have weight, clouding the already dank atmosphere.
I fear I must have been hit in the head at some point during the preceding hours, because certainly my uncle did not just say what I think he said. Certainly there is no way he, a man I have relied on for my whole life, just admitted the deepest betrayal like it’s nothing.
Dom recovers her wits first. “Why would you do that?”
Alex leans against the old wooden table, shifting his weight so the whole thing doesn’t collapse under him.
“It became clear to me early on in the Uprising that this revolution was going to be different. The man in charge is too smart, too tactical for it to have been a failure. The reports we were receiving were bleak, and I knew there was a chance the fighting could have gone on for years, costing thousands of lives.”
“So you went behind our backs and gave the enemy our secrets?” My head spins, and I don’t know if it’s the result of my injuries or this news. Either way, I can’t get a handle on what’s being said.
“I did it to protect Scota and to protect you both.”
Dom gestures to my broken body. “It doesn’t appear you did a very good job of that.”
Alex sinks onto a wooden crate across from mine, his elbows resting on his knees, his head hanging down. “I see that. I thought we had things carefully planned. But someone along the way must have betrayed us.”
“You mean someone aside from you?”
Alex meets my gaze for half a second before dropping his eyes again. “The killing of James was rigged. Or it was supposed to be anyway. There were Uprising soldiers stationed at the estate to protect James until you could get to him, Cal.”
“I didn’t see any Uprising soldiers, Uncle.” Though there were a host of bodies littering the hallway outside my father’s suite of rooms. But the other two I encountered certainly weren’t trying to clear the way for me or they wouldn’t have attacked me in the first place.
“Something went very wrong tonight.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Dom mutters.
Alex stands, new determination in his gait. “But we can fix this. I have been working with the Uprising.”
“You did mention that already.” The mere idea of it still churns my gut.
“That means I have a direct line to their leader. I can fix this.” He claps a hand on my shoulder.
I wince, shaking off his touch. I’m not ready for that yet. “How in the bloody hell are you going to fix this? Father is dead at the hands of a madman, and we no longer can trust a word you say.”
Alex’s face falls. “I know it seems like that now, but you will see that I did this for all of us. I don’t know how I’m going to make it right, but the killing period doesn’t officially end for six more days, so we have time. I’ll get a message to August, and we will figure this out.”
Dom shoots me a questioning look. I nod for her to continue. “If you think there is a way to correct this course of action and give Callum a chance to represent Scota, then you should do so. But it won’t make up for what you did, Uncle.”
He nods, his lips pulling down. “I understand. I know how this all must feel right now, but I hope you will come to see the reasons behind my actions, and how my goal was always to secure Callum the leadership position we all know he is meant for.”
I don’t feel meant for much of anything in this moment, and I don’t have the strength to be angry. I also can’t immediately accept his words as truth. It’s been a day full of betrayal, and I can’t even trust my own thoughts in this moment.