Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Gia and I sat on the floor in my room, clues strewn around me while she dabbed my skinned knees with a cotton ball.
“Ouch!” I cried, swatting at her hand.
“Don’t be a baby.”
She leaned down and blew air on my knee to calm the sting.
I pouted, but it helped.
As she covered my scrapes with ointment, I read the cyphers again. “I feel like I’m missing something. I need to make a list of my clues.”
Gia grabbed a pen from her bag and tossed it to me.
“Okay, so I got the lockbox from Landon, then the black light from Morty. That led to the code, and inside the lockbox, I found the magnifying glass and the photo with the bear statue, which I didn’t get to check out before I was so rudely assaulted by Ben.”
“Excellent deflection, as usual.” Gia tipped an imaginary hat to me.
I bowed my head. “Why, thank you.”
She pointed a finger at my face. “How are you doing with that? Ready to talk about it?”
“Nope.” I shook my head, aware that deflecting would only last so long. “I can’t react to what happened with Ben until I end this. Not fully. Not the way I need to unpack it.”
Gia gave me a sympathetic smile. “I know, babe. As long as you know I’m here when you’re ready.”
“Always.”
She reached out and squeezed my hand, assuring me without words, and I returned her smile before moving on. “Okay, the riddle is from Kingston, and the diary came from Max, so if my theory about the order is right, I’ve gotten a clue from everyone I met at the Maiden Selection.”
“The next significant part of my journey was being attacked by the girls and going to Merle. But what clue did I get from Merle? Kingston wouldn’t have left him out if he designed this around my journey here.”
We lapsed into silence as I thought about it.
I needed the map of Camelot Court that Merle had given me, but I had left my laundry bag at the apartment after finding Max’s napkin. “Hey, did you bring my laundry bag?”
“Yeah!” She hopped up and grabbed it from her overnight bag before she tossed it to me.
I rifled through its contents and pulled out what I’d shoved into the pocket of a rumpled dress.
The map of Camelot Court Merle had given me before the Honor Challenge wasn’t something I’d expected to need again, but I’d held onto it just in case.
Scanning it quickly, I saw nothing that helped, but my eyes fell on the pledge paddle as I set the map beside it.
Merle had given one to everyone. He’d also been a part of everyone’s journey, whether directly or indirectly, so it was possible the paddle was a clue.
I picked it up, examining the wood.
“It’s pretty!” Gia pointed at what I’d carved into it after Bonding Day. “Got a little heavy-handed with the knife, huh?”
I ran my finger over the word Princess.
“It was my grip,” I lied.
I’d nearly gotten a blister on my palm, but my grip had nothing to do with it.
“Sure, sure. Okay, so you think this is the clue?”
Landon, who’d assured me repeatedly that everything was fine after his confrontation with his father, walked in the room before I responded.
He came over to where we sat on the floor and leaned down to kiss the top of my head.
“I wanted to make sure you’re alright before I go set up for the party.
Will you two be alright in here? I’ll see you in a few hours? ”
I groaned. “Yes, we’ll be fine, but do I have to go?”
“Yes.” He laughed, smiling as if he too recalled our back and forth over the first party.
Covering my mouth, I coughed. “But I’m sick.”
He pressed the backs of his fingers against my forehead while I suppressed a smile. “You’re not warm.”
“You’re not either.” I blew him a kiss. “And that’s not an insult. I’m serious. You run cold in your sleep.”
With a laugh, he straightened and walked to the door. “I’ll see you later, Maiden.”
“Hey,” I called out when he reached it, and when he turned around, I checked for any sign of hidden stress. Finding none, I pointed a finger at him. “Don’t be late, Buns. Your actions reflect on me.”
He bowed his head, a teasing smile on his lips. “I won’t let you down, my Lady.”
Tapping his hand on the door, he nodded goodbye to Gia and looked at me one last time before heading out.
When he left the room, I shivered.
Gia’s brow furrowed. “Woah, is there a draft over there?”
I shook my head, frowning over my body’s reaction as I stared at my collection of clues. “I don’t think so. My blood sugar must be low, or my wires got crossed. Who knows.”
“We should probably eat before you pass out. You did a lot of exercise today.”
“Fine, but hand me that diary. I need to break the lock. Might as well kill two birds with one wood paddle while we’re down there, right?”
After she force-fed me one of Alice’s premade sandwiches, Gia followed me onto the back patio.
She eyed me warily. “Are you sure about this?”
“Of course, I am.” I lined up my paddle with the tiny lock on the diary. “It’ll be fine!”
I gave it a solid whack, and the paddle caught the edge of the lock. It launched the diary across the floor like a shot put.
“Oh, goddammit,” I muttered, crawling over to the table it disappeared beneath.
I winced as the stones dug into my knees and palms, but I stuck my hand under the tablecloth and searched around for it. When I couldn’t find it, I ducked my head beneath it too.
“Where the hell did you go?”
Heavy breaths, hot, sticky, and panting, came in response.
“Arghhh!”
I scrambled backward, scraping my knees deeper on the patio floor and rising onto them when my head cleared the table. The breathing grew closer, and I toppled onto my butt.
“Woof!”
“Brutus!” I cried out, frustration, fear, and a surprising bit of joy mixing at the sight of the big mutt. “What the heck are you doing under there?”
Dax called out behind me. “Yield, Brutus!”
The dog sat.
I clambered to my feet as Dax came up. “You okay, Quinn?”
“I’m fine!” I spotted the edge of the diary beneath the tablecloth and darted back down to grab it. Lifting it triumphantly, I waved it at Gia and Dax. “See! I found it.”
When I walked over to them, Dax had turned to introduce himself, and Gia stared slightly awestruck with her hand in his. I held up the diary again. “Told you. Totally fine.”
Dax raised an eyebrow. Gia smiled and nodded in a way that said, “that’s so great, sweetie,” loud and clear. I was pretty sure she’d thought I’d lost my mind, but I appreciated the show of support as I brushed myself off.
“Remember, Quinn. I told you what that means.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I glanced at the mutt sitting calmly beside him. “Why do you have Brutus?”
“I offered to walk him while Morty enjoys his bigger responsibilities.” Dax smiled as he moved to leave, taking Brutus with him by the collar. “See you at the party, yeah?”
My brow furrowed, but Gia called out as he walked away and distracted me. “Wouldn’t dream of missing it!” Once he was out of earshot, she turned to me. “Okay, seriously, I know it’s all high stakes and drama right now, but what the hell do they put in the water here?”
Laughing her off, I set the diary on the table and whacked it again. The lock cracked open, and I plopped into the nearest seat to thumb through it. “Gotcha!”
Gia sat beside me as I balanced my paddle on my knees.
“Ouch!” I winced and pulled the paddle away. “Dammit!”
Blood welled from the pinprick a splinter of wood had left in my thigh. A splinter of wood nicked my thigh, and blood welled from the pinprick. I wiped it, and then cursed myself for not sanding down and painting the paddle.
Then I un-cursed myself when I remembered why I hadn’t. Inspecting the wood, I accepted some of the blame and saw the real reason I’d been splintered.
My attempts at forced entry into the diary cracked the corner of my pledge paddle. Right at the spot where I’d carved Princess into it with all my might.
“Seriously!”
Gia touched my shoulder, her voice gentle. “Are you sure you don’t want to go upstairs and get ready?”
I shook my head. “I need to figure this out and get ahead of the others. Let me just look through this.”
But after thumbing through every page of the diary, I found nothing but a bear drawn on the last page and a symbol on the inside back cover. It looked familiar, but I couldn’t place it. All looping lines and what looked vaguely like letters.
“You could try reverse image searching on my phone?”
She handed it over, and I huffed at the blank page the reverse image search returned.
“Nothing. But at the very least, the diary leads me to the statue, so whether I start with the lockbox or the diary Max gave me, I end up with that.”
“Did they give you two sets of clues ending in the same place, so either way, you’d get to the right spot?”
“I guess so.” Her phrasing jarred my memory. “Paul kept going on about two paths and deciding which one to take before it was too late. And before this all started, Morty mentioned I’d need to make a choice. He said something about getting to the depths of this hellscape.”
“That’s ominous.”
I waved her off. “Par for the course, really.”
“Maybe you need to look at the map again, using the little loupe you got. Or maybe the black light will show more on the pages. We can get ready and keep hunting at the same time.”
Accepting temporary defeat, I followed her to my room. We passed a few more Knights as we went through Camelot Courtyard, and Gia reiterated her earlier thoughts on the men.
“Are you sure you want to cap your harem at three?” She bit her thumb as Austin walked by, his serious expression firmly in place. “God, the smolder on that one.”
“Keep it in your pants, Gia. What about your new guy?”
She flipped her hair, now back to its usual honey-blonde shade, off her shoulder. “Yes, but he’s not my boyfriend. Until he is, I reserve the right to ogle freely.”
“Do you want him to be your boyfriend?”