Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Torn between letting them hash it out to get answers, and demanding them, I took the latter approach.
My voice rose, cracking sharply over the lawn.
“That’s enough!”
They whipped their heads toward me. Landon cursed and spun away from us, dragging his hands through his hair. Max seethed dangerously, seconds from launching at one of them, but he didn’t take his eyes off me. Neither did Kingston.
After catching his breath, Landon turned back to face me from a few steps away.
With distance between them that they refused to remove, they stood on the lawn, raging silently. Faces bloodied and clothes torn, arguing over whether I had a right to know if something affected me. I couldn’t stand another second of it.
I wouldn’t.
“You need to tell me what the hell is going on, and what happened right now.” My body locked tight with tension as I stood my ground. “I’m no longer okay with this secret. Not when it’s causing all this, and we need to deal with the bigger problems at hand.”
When they stayed silent, I gestured wildly at them.
Max shook his head and opened his mouth to argue.
“Then, go!” I snapped. “If you don’t want to be involved, then don’t be. But all this? It’s because I didn’t go with my gut, and I’m done with that now.”
His brow drew down with a frown, either confused or thinking about what Morty had shared with him.
I kept going. Kept fighting to get through to him.
“Max, you have every right to be mad right now. Furious, even! I kept a secret from you, and you had to find out from him.” I thrust my finger in Morty’s direction, ignoring his cry of innocence, and gave Max the truth.
“I’m not going to stand here and defend myself, even if that moment was mine to keep or share, even if it was between me and them, because it’s bigger than that between us, and we both know it. ”
My chest heaved with the admission, and the tension in his jaw eased. For a second, I thought he heard me, but I wanted to get through completely.
“I should’ve told you. I realized that before you found out, but it doesn’t matter. You’re hurt, and I’m sorry.” I clutched my chest as the words came out, bearing the weight of them. “But Max, please, no more secrets. Be honest with me now, so we can move forward.”
He snapped his gaze to Morty, features twisting with hatred, and I closed my eyes when that pitch-black gaze turned on Landon and Kingston. I heard it before he said it.
A word I hated more than any other inside Camelot Court.
“No.”
Anger pulsed through my veins. Breathing hard, I stared at him. I wanted him to do the right thing. What I hadn’t been able to do. Like he had before when he pushed me to admit the truth about how I felt.
I needed him to be honest with me.
But he wouldn’t budge.
Stepping closer, I pointed at Morty. “If he’s dangerous—If he’s a threat to my safety, I deserve to know why. So, I can decide if I want him involved.”
“No.” At Max’s curt denial, I begged him with my eyes to hear me, but his next words assured me he refused to see past his hatred for his brother. “What you need to do is get the fuck away from Camelot Court, and everyone in it.”
My face fell.
“How can you say that, Max?” My hands shook, and I balled them into fists. Nails digging into my palms, I took another step. “If I leave—”
“You’ll be safe.”
“And you?”
He stepped backward, lifting his chin as he stared past me. “Doesn’t matter. Whatever comes from this, we’ll deal with it.”
With a muttered curse, he turned away from me and stormed toward the house.
“You said you weren’t going anywhere.”
He froze.
Slowly, he faced me again, his hardened expression firmly in place.
But it cracked when my voice broke.
“You said you were done being afraid.”
He rushed forward, his eyes pleading this time, and he took my face in his hands.
“I’m not afraid to be with you or choose you over all this if it comes to that.
But losing you? Because you’re choosing to side with people who aren’t safe?
Who will lead you right to your death if it helps them reach their end goal?
” He pressed his forehead to mine. “I’ll always fear that, Princess.
And I can’t sit by and watch you do it.”
Tears blurred my vision, and I blinked them away as I grabbed his wrists and squeezed, as if I could send everything I felt through where our bodies connected. “Then, stay. Protect me.”
“I can’t protect you from this.”
A tear slipped down my cheek, confusion raging inside me as fiercely as his anger. I wanted to understand, but I couldn’t. “Why won’t you tell me what you know?”
“Why do you need to hear it?”
His grip tightened on my face, and his gaze darted to his hands, his chest—as if to say his actions should explain it.
“Why isn’t this enough?”
When I didn’t know how to respond, he dropped his head. His fingers slipped from my skin, and he stepped back.
Away from me.
“If all you want is answers, then let them tell you. I just—I need some fucking air.”
He stormed off as I reached for him. My hands fell to my sides, and I stared at his back in disbelief. With every step like a nail into a coffin, his departure froze me in place.
Landon and Kingston came beside me. As Kingston’s hand found the small of my back, Landon touched my left shoulder.
“Quinn—” he began, at the same time Kingston said, “He’s not wrong, love.”
My voice croaked. “No.”
I stepped away from them, needing answers as much as I had after the Knights’ Quorum. The last time that word turned everything on its head. I spun on my heel to face Morty, pointing at him and ignoring the smug gleam in his eyes. Because underneath it, something else lingered.
“You. Start talking. Now.”
He pursed his lips at the order before shoving his hands in his pockets.
Although aligned at the moment, I still didn’t trust him, but Morty wanted the truth out as much as I wanted to hear it.
Running his eyes over my exposed skin and non-designer clothes, he arched a brow and started talking. “Camelot Court doesn’t like outsiders, but you already know that.”
“Yeah, you’re all a bunch of pretentious, elitist assholes.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m fully aware. But that’s not the information I need.”
He smirked, his posture relaxing slightly. “The other girls have spent their lives being prepared for this. You walked in here thinking it was just a silly game—belong to a Knight, take his orders for thirty days and walk away with a coin purse?”
My jaw clenched.
Morty huffed a soft laugh. “It’s the farthest thing from that to them, but it’s not talked about or seen except behind closed doors. Their turn at The Quest. Their turn to secure power. Not for them, but for their families.”
What Izzy had shared at the bougie thrift store came back to me—the pressure they were under, how their families saw them as little more than pawns to use within the Camelot Society, and how they’d had their roles drilled into them from an early age.
Their role in The Quest had been more than I’d thought.
Morty nodded at the acceptance in my expression, and he kept going. “You showed up with all your attitude and poor judgment, and what’d they do when you seemed like a threat?”
I scoffed. “They tried to drown me.”
His dark eyes pierced mine, his lips flattening into a thin line as he shook his head. “They held your arms and pushed your head into the lake. When you were already weak, but not long enough to drown you.”
“How do you—?”
“They wanted to scare you off. They wanted you to run. It looks very different when they want to kill you, little princess.”
The ghost of emotion lingering in his eyes returned, and I pieced together what he meant. “Is that—?”
Though I’d stepped away from him, Landon remained in my peripheral vision, and I felt more than saw him stiffen.
Kingston had shared that he used to swim.
Morty spat, “They didn’t want an outsider winning their game. So, they let her take the wrong path. Made sure she got the wrong information. Knowing exactly how it would end.”
My eyes widened, trying to understand. “How—?”
“By giving it to me.”
He clenched his jaw, face twisting with something…almost sinister.
But grief haunted me to this day, and it reflected as sharply in Morty’s features as it had in the cemetery with Kingston.
With everything they’d shared in pieces so far, I put the truth together. He had loved her, and they found out. They hadn’t wanted her to win, so they killed her.
And they gave him the information that did it.
Staining his palms with her blood, they tied up their loose ends and kept power in their clean hands.
When I said as much to Morty, he nodded, and my position in this game became perfectly clear.
It was the same as hers.
“What was the false information?” I asked him.
“You’re asking the wrong Dread. And the wrong question.”
Kingston stepped forward. “Morty—”
But Morty ignored him.
Eyes locked on mine, he kept going. “There will come a time when you have to make a choice. You’re smart enough to get there. You’ll solve the riddles, find each clue, and make it to the depths of this hellscape. But how will you know which way to go?”
“I don’t—Morty, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You will. And the answer is simple, Quinn Everly.”
Kingston’s voice rose. “Morty, stop this! You’ll ruin her chance to win by telling her too much.”
Again, he shirked his order. “You go back to the beginning. It all goes back to that.”
“The beginning?”
He nodded. “One moment—that showed you everything you needed to know about Camelot Court.”
While I racked my brain, trying to figure out what he meant, Morty turned to Kingston. “I didn’t break the rules. I didn’t tell her anything that could get her disqualified, and she needed to know something more than the clues you three have been feeding her.”
“What—?” Kingston shook his head.
I glanced from him to Landon, whose eyes had narrowed at Morty’s accusation.
Morty scoffed, dragging his gaze over them both. “Oh, play dumb all you want.”
Landon’s hand clenched into a fist at his thigh, but before another fight broke out, I stepped between them.
Placing my hand on Morty’s shoulder, I tried to draw his eyes back to mine. “Thank you.”
Morty swiveled his gaze from Landon’s fist to my face so slowly, I flinched when he finally spoke.
“Don’t.”
He glanced out at the lake with a glassy, faraway look in his eyes, his expression cracking before hardening to stone. Beneath the sheen in his gaze, staring but not seeing, memories played out like a silent film. And when his eyes met mine, regret lingered in the dark brown depths.
“Pas de rédemption pour les redoutés.”