Chapter 33
Ciar
“Do you want me to end this?”
I ask the question knowing she needs to hear the option is on the table, but I know the answer before she speaks.
She shakes her head. “No. It’s done. She doesn’t have long left if she keeps abusing herself anyway. At least this way, it’s drawn out and miserable.”
That’s my girl. My queen.
She walks back to the car, her spine straight despite the tremor in her hands. She’s every inch a queen walking away from the ruins of her old kingdom. The flat behind us is a tomb, and she’s just sealed it shut.
Cillian opens the door for her, and she slides into the back seat without a word.
The silence in the car is thick, heavy with things unsaid.
I take my position in the passenger seat, wishing there was some way I could make her past disappear, wishing I could give her the life she deserved.
Going forward, it will be my mission to let her know every day that she is worthy and that she is nothing like her mother.
I saw the fear on her face in the flat. I saw the horror that she might end up that way, bitter and twisted and a pile of drunken bones on the floor.
Axl starts the engine, the low purr of the Brabus a familiar comfort.
“I need food,” Sorcha says from behind me, her voice steady.
Too steady. She’s holding it together by sheer force of will.
“There’s a chippy around the block. Actually pretty good, considering.
” The vulnerability from a moment ago has been carefully locked away, replaced by that fierce mask she wears so well.
But I know what I saw. I know what she’s feeling, even if she’ll never say it out loud.
“Chippy it is,” Axl says, turning the car around the block.
We pull up outside a fish and chip shop that’s seen better days, the neon sign flickering weakly in the fading light. Sorcha’s already out of the car before I can protest, striding towards the door like she didn’t just have a near emotional breakdown.
Cillian follows her like a shadow, and I haul myself out of the passenger seat, ignoring the dull throb in my chest. The painkillers are still working, but I can feel them wearing off. I’ll need another dose soon, but not yet. Not until after we’ve fed our queen.
Inside, the smell of hot oil and vinegar hits me. It’s a good smell, honest and unpretentious. Sorcha orders enough food to feed a small army, her voice clear and unwavering as she rattles off her list to the bored teenager behind the counter.
Axl stands out like a dick in a room full of pussies. He stands off to the side, his face a blank mask of what-the-fuck-is-this.
I snort loudly. “Have you never had chippy before, you posh twat?”
He glares down his nose at me, which only he can do, as most men are shorter than me. Him included. “I have had fish and chips before.”
“Made by the Rhodes’ servant girl,” Cillian snickers.
“This isn’t the Victorian times, you fuck,” he growls. “We don’t have ‘servant girls’.”
“Oh, forgive me for insulting you, my Lord,” he drawls. “Admit you have never been in a chippy before and own it.”
“Like you have?” he retorts. “You are probably as wealthy as I am.”
“Deflection,” I say, shaking my head. “Such a coward’s way out.”
“Fuck you,” he growls and marches up to the counter where the teenager is placing a polystyrene tray of greasy chips on the counter. He snatches up the tray and grabs a handful of the chips, shoving them into his mouth like an animal. “See,” he mumbles around them. “Gorgeous cuisine.”
Sorcha is giggling and handing him a napkin while the teenager stares at him, actually showing signs of something that could only be described as being agog.
I can’t help the laugh that escapes me as Axl stands there, cheeks bulging with chips like some kind of deranged hamster, grease shining on his aristocratic fingers.
The look on the teenager’s face is fucking priceless—somewhere between horrified and impressed that someone who clearly costs more than this entire establishment just demolished a handful of chips like a starving street urchin.
“You’re a disgrace to your lineage,” I tell him, but I’m grinning as I say it.
He swallows, licking the salt from his fingers with zero shame. “These are genuinely excellent. Why have I never been here before?”
“Because you’re a sheltered rich boy who probably thinks food comes from Michelin-starred restaurants and nowhere else,” Sorcha says, taking the rest of the trays from the counter.
She hands me one, the warmth seeping through the polystyrene into my palms. “Come on. Let’s eat in the car before you traumatise any more innocent bystanders. ”
“Here,” Axl says, throwing about three times the amount on the counter. He has no clue. The teenager thinks all his birthdays came at once as he snatches it up and pockets the rest before adding the exact amount to the till.
We pile back into the Brabus, the interior immediately filling with the smell of salt and vinegar.
Sorcha sits next to Cillian in the back, her legs crossed, balancing her tray on her lap like a pro.
I fiddle with one of the small wooden forks, debating how to eat this without looking like an idiot, but Sorcha doesn’t give a shit.
She’s demolishing a battered sausage like it personally offended her, grease on her fingers, a smear of ketchup at the corner of her mouth. She’s never looked more beautiful.
Cillian reaches out with a tiny paper napkin, more plastic than paper, and gently dabs at her mouth.
She smiles and cracks open the can of pop she added to the order. She guzzles it back before handing it to me.
“Thanks,” I mutter and place it in the cupholder between me and Axl.
Glancing at Lord Rhodes, I shake my head at him. He is wiping his hands with a monogrammed hanky before applying hand sanitiser. “Just eat it,” I say.
He gives me a look that could curdle milk, but he finally picks up a fork and stabs a jumbo sausage with it, bringing it to his mouth like he’s handling toxic waste. The fucker actually closes his eyes as he chews. “It’s… surprisingly palatable.”
“So,” Axl says, having decided the food is no longer a threat to his delicate system. “Now that we’ve indulged in this rustic feast. What’s next, my lady? A hostile takeover of the student union?”
Sorcha’s smile is sharp, feral. “First, a shower. Then I’m going to find out what Camille Kavanagh wants. Something tells me she’s not just an orphaned heiress who is going to slink into the shadows.”
“Good call,” I rumble. “I had the same thoughts.”
“It’s like one mind,” she says and sits back as Axl abandons the food and sets off back to Cillian’s house.
When we pull up, I look at it and shake my head. “This place is too small. We need somewhere bigger.”
“Agreed,” Axl says, tossing his half-eaten tray of chips onto the back seat floor. “This minimalist approach to living is starting to chafe.”
“Later,” Sorcha says, her voice firm, cutting through the bullshit. She’s already back in command, the brief flicker of vulnerability from her mother’s flat extinguished. “First, we find Camille. Arthur Collins is our man for that.”
She’s right. That girl’s smirk is a fucking question mark I want to straighten into a full stop.
I haul myself out of the car, my body screaming a protest that I ignore.
The pain is a constant companion, but it’s a dull roar now, not a sharp blade.
It reminds me I’m alive. It reminds me of who put it there.
Kavanagh is dead, but the account isn’t settled. Not yet.
We head back to campus on foot, walking off the heavy food.
Arthur Collins looks up as we storm his office for the second time today, but there’s no fear in his eyes this time. Just a weary professionalism.
“Camille Kavanagh,” Sorcha says, leaning her hands on his desk. “Where is she?”
He doesn’t even blink. He just taps a few keys on his keyboard. “She deregistered earlier.”
Fucking hell. A ghost. Just like her father.
“Can you track her?” I ask.
He shakes his head, his expression apologetic but firm. “She paid cash for her fees. Used a prepaid burner phone. The emergency contact is her father. Her digital footprint on the college servers is a blank slate. Professional job.”
“A professional fucking pain in my arse,” Sorcha mutters.
“She’s not a threat,” Axl says. “She’s an eighteen-year-old girl with a new bank account. She’s probably halfway to Bali by now.”
“Or she’s regrouping,” I counter, my gaze fixed on Sorcha. “Her father was building an army, a righteous army to reclaim the Order of St. Bartholomew’s. He had loyal men. She might be a kid, but she’s a Kavanagh. She knows who to call.”
Cillian says nothing, but his eyes meet mine, and I see the agreement there. He sees the threat, too. You don’t just walk away from a massacre with a smirk unless you have another card to play.
“Find her,” Sorcha says, her voice dropping to a deadly quiet. She pins Arthur Collins with a look that could strip paint. “Use whatever resources you have. I want to know where she is.”
Collins nods, already typing. “I’ll put the word out.”
He chews his bottom lip and gives me a solid stare.
“What?”
“The Order of St. Bartholomew’s?” he whispers.
“What of it?”
“You know about it?”
The office falls into a deadly silence. I lean forward. “Do you?”
He sits up straighter, pursing his lips.
But then he jumps a mile when I bang my fist on the desk in front of him. “Speak.”
Arthur flinches back, his eyes wide behind his glasses. He looks from my hand, still planted on his desk, to my face. The man is a fucking pencil-pusher, not a soldier. He folds like cheap paper.
“My family,” he stammers, his professional calm shattered. “We’ve served the Warden for generations. We are the Keepers. We protect the records.”
“The Warden?” Sorcha’s voice cuts through the tension, sharp and clear. She steps forward, placing her hand on my arm, a silent command for me to back off. I don’t move, but I ease the pressure. “You know about all this secret society bullshit?”
Collins nods frantically, his gaze shifting to Sorcha with a new, fervent respect. “My loyalty is to the position. To the Gannon bloodline. The Kavanaghs believed the title was theirs by right of grievance.”
“Well, we know that already,” I point out. “Tell us something we don’t know.”
“I don’t know anything, except Camille is a Kavanagh.”
“So you think she will make a play for this?”
“It’s in her blood.”
Sorcha huffs out a breath. “In that case, we need to find her faster. Get on it.”
We leave Collins to his work, the air in the registrar’s office thick with secrets centuries old. Keepers. A family sworn to her bloodline. It’s another layer of insanity piled on top of a day already overflowing with it.
“Well,” Axl says, breaking the silence as we walk. “That was a fun little discovery. Secretarial staff with a side of generational servitude. This place just keeps getting better.”
“It means she has allies,” Cillian murmurs from behind me. “And so do we.”
This isn’t just about the four of us against the world anymore. There’s a history here, a structure, and people loyal to the title Sorcha holds.
“Let her make a move. We’ll be ready.” Camille Kavanagh isn’t just a daughter glad to be free. She’s a legacy. A rival claimant to a throne she thinks is hers. She’s not going to run. She’s going to fight.