Chapter 4
Chapter Four
I stared between Kingston and Landon, not completely surprised that the question of my goddamn virginity had reared its ugly head again but irked nonetheless.
“Wait…”
My mind turned, and pieces fell into place. Kingston telling me you’ll see every time I asked why me popped into my head. I didn’t want the answer, but I’d taken up the annoying new lease on life where I faced hard truths instead of avoiding them.
So, I had to ask. “Is that why you picked me?”
Thankfully, Kingston shook his head. “No. I know that’s what everyone assumed, and that’s because Drake D’Arthur has made no secret that he’d prefer I take a virgin bride. He said if I chose one before my twenty-fourth birthday, he’d grant that betrothal over the winner of The Quest.”
My nose wrinkled, but the disgust in Kingston’s voice eased the flash of nausea I experienced over his father’s preferences .
It didn’t surprise me that Camelot Court, or the head of it, at least, placed a high value on a woman’s virginity. Not after reading the by-laws. But this?
There was absolutely nothing wrong with someone choosing to stay a virgin, or being one when they got married.
But some creepy old guy fantasizing about that for his son’s future wife? So much so that he made offers to tempt his son toward that option?
I shuddered, repulsed by this man I’d never even met. I masked it with a scoff, but I couldn’t hide my disdain over it. As if a woman’s value decreased somehow, once she had sex with someone else.
I needed kerosene and a match.
The only saving grace was that all three of my broody assholes didn’t share Camelot Society’s views on women.
Or what decided their worth.
A thought that reminded me Max hadn’t been let in on mine and Landon’s little secret yet, either. But Kingston distracted me before I could figure out how I’d approach the conversation without bloodshed between my two Knights.
“Quinn, I picked you for reasons I still can’t share with you.
” He shot me a look of apology. “Not yet, at least. But I want to share them with you. You being a virgin meant maybe it left the option open for you to invoke the statute, if it came down to it. But that’s still not why I picked you, and I always believed you’d win The Quest without doing that.
And your prior experiences wouldn’t have mattered in the end.
You could’ve slept with everyone inside Camelot Court, if that was what you’d wanted, and Drake D’Arthur couldn’t have done a thing about it because I wouldn’t choose anyone else. ”
Before I could react to that last part, Landon growled, raising Kingston’s brow.
I rolled my eyes, smirking at my White Knight. “Oh, calm down, caveman. The three of you are a big enough handful.”
Landon made a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat, and I took that as his agreement to tone down the alpha energy before turning back to Kingston. He beamed at me, and the sparkle in his eyes sent a zing of electricity through me.
He’d lit up over my use of the word three .
My confirmation that this hadn’t taken him off the table.
“Quinn, I didn’t know, until we met at the Maiden Selection, if that prize for winning The Quest was something either of us would want…or choose to even consider as a possibility. It wasn’t until that night…”
Kingston cleared his throat and smiled at the memory, and I assumed he was remembering how I’d let him rub my thigh like the horny bitch I turned out to be.
But he surprised me again. “When you showed me the bottom of your shoes. That was when I realized I’d been right about you. But also, when I felt it.”
“Felt what?”
“Something I hadn’t felt in a very long time.”
He covered our joined hands with his free one, a tremor running through it. The lines of worry on his face deepened, and he looked between me and Landon. Maybe for a sign that this would be okay.
I squeezed his hand, letting him know that, for now at least, I could live with that answer and wait for the rest. “Once you felt that, why not tell me, then? Knowing what Landon and I would have to do.”
“I’m not sure I should be telling you this right now. But, for a few reasons, I didn’t think I needed to. Once I realized it might be a possibility for you two, I still wanted to find another way around it. I just…ran out of time.”
He glanced at Landon again, and Vivian’s voice during my attack filled my head, as Kingston rubbed at his chest.
“I had to make a choice. Between telling you, telling Landon everything and interfering that way, or letting the chips fall where they may. Even though that meant—” He forced a smile. “Even though it meant I could be taken off the board, and that my plans might fail, I…”
Landon’s head popped up, the grief on his face piercing through me. “You wanted her to have a choice?”
Kingston nodded. “If I took it away, then I’d be no better than him.
But it took time to figure out how—” His features tightened.
“And in the end, I’m not sure I turned out to be any better, anyway.
I made a move I hoped might keep our options open a little longer.
A move that kept you safe, but one that also hurt you—far more than I ever intended—while buying me more time to figure a way out of the mess I created. ”
He didn’t look at either of us when he spoke, dropping his eyes to his lap as he brought up the Knights’ Quorum and how he’d asked Landon to say no. That move drew suspicion of his interest away from me and locked me into The Quest, but it created a world of other problems at the same time.
Something else bothered him, too, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.
“Why now?” I asked, drawing his eyes up. “If this secret was one you thought you had to keep, and there’s a risk in sharing it, why tell me now?”
“Because you were right about me that day on the lawn. I do make a habit of asking for trust, but I rarely give it in return. Knowing I was right about you and trusting you with a secret that could destroy everything I’m trying to do?
” He shook his head. “They weren’t one and the same. It’s not…easy for me.”
When he put it like that, I understood his hesitance.
It wasn’t like I’d walked in broadcasting my car accident, but I still had a lot to learn about Kingston.
Understanding why it was so difficult for him to trust, and why these secrets needed to be protected so fiercely, I hoped would come in time.
“If this gets out, then my father might show up here. If we’re out of time, I need you to know what’s coming.”
Kingston tensed and his eyes hardened, as if the thought instantly put his body on guard. Landon stiffened, too, and stepped closer to me.
His shift in position softened Kingston’s steely gaze.“I need to trust you.” He held my gaze as steadfastly as he gripped my hand. “And more importantly, you deserve it.”
At that, I winced.
I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I still hated the idea of responding to Kingston’s first big show of trust by crushing his hopes and dreams for us all.
Unfortunately, though, if one of the other Ladies might come in and invoke the statute, I didn’t have another choice.
As soon as my eyes met Landon’s, he knew it. He opened his mouth to speak. To tell Kingston what we’d done.
How we’d made our choice that night.
And that, by the time we got to the Knights’ Quorum, it had already been too late.
“Kingston, I?—”
But before Landon got the truth out, Kingston’s phone beeped. A message alerted him a car had entered the estate.
He pulled up a camera and tensed. “I have to go downstairs, but I promise, we’ll talk through more of this later.
I want to make sure you have all the information I can give you before the others arrive.
” Kingston stood and faced Landon. “If you’re going out, go now, please. The sooner you’re back…”
“I won’t be long. Then I won’t leave her.”
Kingston glanced in my direction once more before he stared at Landon. Landon nodded, as if they’d been communicating silently, and Kingston left the room.
Landon watched him go with a heart-wrenching expression on his face. After the door shut, he turned to me. “I need to tell him.”
Nodding, I turned everything over in my head. Especially what passed between them before Kingston left.
That was the first time I’d felt like an outsider to their bond—what they’d shared long before I came here—despite knowing it existed and nothing else being said. I hadn’t witnessed much of the roles they filled for each other, before now.
My interactions with them together had been limited to one mind-blowing but tension-filled dance and a few moments surrounded by other Knights and Maidens.
And I didn’t know them as best friends.
After hearing them speak about each other, I’d figured their dynamic was more than just a King and his Knight, but it was different to see it. While Kingston had discussed his father with me, Landon stood beside him the way a trusted hand might.
And it was more than that, too.
Most of what Kingston said felt meant for both of us.
With the Knights’ Quorum, he hadn’t looked at either of us when he spoke about the pain that decision caused, but Kingston knew that choice had hurt us both.
Had he also done it to keep Landon safe?
I twisted my hands in my lap, the unknown threat of Drake D’Arthur looming like an axe over our heads. When I lifted mine, Landon was putting on his clothes.
“Landon, why haven’t you told him yet?”
“Because it’s not just up to me. Sharing that. I know we talked about it before the Knights’ Quorum, but that night changed things. I—” He tugged his shirt down and picked up his running shoes. “I wanted to discuss it with you first.”
My heart warmed at how he’d considered that. “Thank you, Buns. But I do think he needs to know.”
He nodded. “I can talk to him as soon as I get back, before I come up here.”
As he slipped on his sneakers, my legs shifted restlessly. I didn’t love the thought of him leaving at all, even if Kingston’s father might not show up right away. Or at all.
Landon sat next to me on the mattress, his palm running over my thigh to ease the bouncing. “When I told Kingston about the memories returning, he mentioned running. I hadn’t been doing it as much after the Knights’ Quorum. He thought it might help to keep the memories at bay. If I wanted that.”
I gave him my best attempt at a reassuring smile.
“I hope it does help.” I shook out my hands and straightened my spine. “I’ll be fine until you get back.”
Landon stroked my cheek, easily seeing through me. “You’ve had a lot of information thrown at you. Unsettling things about something— someone —you don’t know how to face yet. It’s understandable if you’re nervous or scared, you know?”
“I know that.” The words left my mouth far too quickly to be believable. “I’m not scared.”
“I don’t have to run today, Quinn. It won’t change anything.”
“No.” I shook my head. “No, you go. I want you to do whatever you can to help with the flashes. If that’s what you still want. It’s important. This is just anxiety over something that hasn’t happened yet. It’s?—”
“Also important,” he said firmly.
I smiled, soothed by that. “It’s also something I can manage while you do what you need to do.” I leaned forward and kissed him. “Hop to it, Buns. The sooner you go, the sooner you get back and we can shower.”
His eyebrow quirked, but he shot me a pointed look and didn’t take the bait.
“Fine,” I groaned, feigning annoyance although I really felt seen. “The sooner we can talk about my feelings, you quack.”
“Good girl,” he murmured, weaving his hands through my hair and pulling me in for a deeper kiss.
By the time he was done, I planned to force the issue on a pre-exercise shower. It just made sense. For lots of reasons.
Reasons I couldn’t think of at that moment, but surely, they existed.
But before I broke out of my kiss-induced daze and gave him my opening argument, Landon hopped to it , and I collapsed backward on the mattress, my mind racing with thoughts of where we’d all go from here.