Chapter 31 #2
“No.” Nic shook his head as horrors went on spilling into it.
He turned to Lord Francis still standing at his side, the man’s expression a grim rictus.
“Mama was just your scapegoat. You killed them, didn’t you?
Gillingham. Everel. Millie. You weren’t here because Lord Ricard paid you.
You came to make the illusions, and then my father blackmailed you with that damn page.
” He turned back to the duke, his certainty a heavy burden.
“Each murder was just an increasingly desperate attempt to make the Serrals cry off. We couldn’t afford to break the contract, but you needed them to, didn’t you?
Because while it had an audit clause, you couldn’t sign it. ”
Nic gestured to the broken remains of the chandelier. “Even just now, you chose to kill me rather than sign it with that audit clause still in. Would a falling chandelier killing one of the principals trigger the accident clause, do you think, Master sa Vare?”
“I… should think so,” came Dashiell’s quiet reply. “He wouldn’t get paid any forfeit, but neither would he have to pay any.”
“Finally found a use for me, sir?” Nic’s lips twisted into a mocking smile. “As a corpse.”
The deadly click of a pistol’s hammer being cocked cut through the room as the duke lifted the gun. Nic stared down the barrel, his father’s face a blur beyond the shining silver circle. He sucked a shocked breath, only for the barrel to swing away, its aim coming to rest once again upon Dashiell.
“Sign it, Nicholas.”
The first time he had not believed his father would truly put a bullet through the vowsmith, but this time the gun aimed at Dashiell’s head had promise. And a hair trigger.
Mouth dry and hands shaking, Nic made his way to the table. He dared not look at Dashiell, just silently stepped in front of him to reach the contract. The hand he held over the page trembled, every finger covered in tiny cuts.
“I make myself known as Lord Nicholas Francis Monterris, Earl Monterris,” he said. The words were rough in his throat, but it was almost over, almost done, and with a feeling of quiet triumph Nic took up the quill and signed—the last thing he would ever sign with that name.
“Now give me that,” Lord Charborough said, striding up to the duke.
“Unless you’re going to shoot me, Val.” He held out his hand, and for a moment the two men stared at one another over the loaded pistol, before with a soft laugh the duke let it go.
The weapon dropped into Lord Charborough’s hand, and with a practiced thumb, the marquess uncocked it. As one, the whole room drew breath.
Lord Charborough did not immediately step back. Instead his hand ghosted down the duke’s cheek. “Tell me you didn’t do this,” came his hoarse whisper. “Tell me we didn’t drive you to this. That we haven’t so lost our way.”
Nic waited for the lie. His father was so good at them, but the longer the silence stretched the more he realised he just wanted to be wrong. The duke said nothing, and second by second Lord Charborough’s grip on the uncocked pistol tightened until at last he looked away.
“Lord Francis?” Leaf spoke into the silence.
“Have you more lies for us? Or finally some truths? Was it easy to take a spare bow and kill Master Everel from the pavilion? Easy to kill Gillingham and hang him from the chandelier? And Millie. Was that you, or did you let His Grace do that one himself?”
All eyes turned to the profligate Monterris. The man had folded his arms, but his gaze flicked to Nic as he said, “I rather think in the circumstances, Lady Leaf, that I will hold my silence.”
“Ha! It’s too late for that,” Lord Ricard spat. “I will make sure you both hang for his. Having the thing signed won’t save you.”
The duke laughed, a long peal manic at the edges. “That doesn’t matter,” he said, pushing the words through his dreadful amusement. “Since I have already given up everything for this family, what is one more sacrifice to keep it alive?”
“You killed my Millie!”
“It wasn’t meant to be her!” the duke cried, something almost pleading in the words. “I wouldn’t have done that. A shock to realise that you had no such qualms when it came to my son.”
Lord Ricard advanced on a snarl. “You rotten piece of—”
“Ricard.” Lord Charborough stepped in front of him, the word quiet and brittle on his lips.
“You have not been blameless in all this. You ought to have left well alone instead of doing everything you could to ruin him. Instead of trying to kill Lord Monterris into the bargain, and for what? Still more revenge?”
Lord Ricard flung a hand in the duke’s direction. “He took my wife from me!”
“It would have been against the guild charter to change that,” the duke said, a hint of his laughter returning upon exasperation. “You were asking me to break the law. And—”
“And then you couldn’t even stay the course with your own damn contract so I could have my title.
Yes, I did everything I could to ruin your fortunes, I don’t deny it.
And yes, I tried to kill Monterris. But that is nothing to what you have done.
Hitting closer and closer to me since I arrived in the hope that I would blink, but fuck you, Val, I will never blink! ”
“As you have been hitting at me for years,” the duke hissed back. “Undermining business deals. Taking Francis to gaming hells. Ruining everything I tried to build.”
Lord Ricard gave a disgusted snort. “I’m only impressed you noticed, since I’m always invisible to you.”
Stepping close, the duke tore off his dark glasses. “You think I don’t remember you every time I look in my mirror? You think I have ever forgotten? Even if I wished to, you would never let me.”
The two of them stood close for a heartbeat, holding their years of unspoken anger in bloodied hands.
In another time, another place, it could have been a different moment, one made of tears and memories and the sorrowful smiles of old friends.
Here they could only hold their hurts and look away—this the wasteland they had made of their lives.
A wasteland Nic refused to inherit.
He reached into his coat pocket for the folded sheet of paper that was his entire future.
“Death is the only way to escape being a Monterris,” he said, pulling it out.
“You’ve told me so since I was a child, but I refuse to accept your fate, and I refuse to inherit your pain.
” He laid it on the table, looking to Dashiell.
“If you please, Master sa Vare, my death requires only a moment of your time.”
“Death?” The duke’s gaze whipped his way. “Nicholas. You cannot—”
Lunging, Nic snatched the pistol from Lord Charborough’s slackened grip and lifted it, sighting right into the duke’s scarred eyes.
“Don’t you dare tell me what I can and cannot do,” he hissed, while the song of Dashiell’s working sigils whispered against his mind. “I am done listening.”
It was not the first time Nic had held a pistol, but never before had he stood before his father and held all the power.
The realisation that he could just pull the trigger and change the world was intoxicating, and in that moment, he understood some part of Lord Ricard’s desire for revenge.
But as he stared into his father’s uncovered eyes, Nic realised there was nothing he needed.
No amount of the man’s fury would have mattered, no acceptance would have been enough, and if he pulled the trigger now, he would live with ghosts forever.
With a huff, Nic lowered the gun and handed it to the marquess. “Take it. I am done.”
“Nic.” Dashiell had his quill poised over his death certificate, his signature all it now required. “Last chance to change your mind.”
Nic didn’t so much as glance at his father. “Never.”
And so, with a nod, Dashiell set his quill to the paper and signed the death of Lord Nicholas Monterris.
The moment he finished, the faint shimmer still emanating from the freshly signed contract died like a snuffed candle, only traces left to fade like so much stretching smoke. From a few paces away, the duke stared at it—a man watching all he had worked for become nothing.
“A fine end to your sacrifice, Val,” Ricard said, and spat on the floor. “To your precious name.”
“But I don’t understand,” Lady Theresa said, finding her voice as she took an abortive step toward the table. “A death certificate? But he is not dead. Ought we challenge it?”
“And be stuck contracted to a family of murderers?” Leaf asked. “A foolish idea in the circumstances, I feel, Aunt. Truly, we should all be grateful to Nic for saving us that embarrassment.”
With a pained groan that seemed to be wrenched the length of his body, Lord Charborough said, “I wish you had just told me, Val. I would have had the audit clause removed if you had explained.”
“Explained what?” Lord Ricard sneered. “What is there to explain? He just didn’t want his pride smarting.”
At those words, the duke’s exhausted gaze flicked to the pair of letters patent still hanging on their easels beside the table, and a final realisation dropped into Nic’s gut like a lead weight.
“No,” he said. “No. That’s not it.” Shaking his head, he turned to Dashiell.
“What did you say about the estate? No land. No money. Nothing.” He pointed at the Monterris letters patent, from which the imperious portrait of King Charles II stared back.
“There are requisite ducal thresholds built into the king’s law. ”
Quick steps took Nic to the easel, where he lifted a hand to skim over the old vellum.
Vellum held magic well, but it had been smithed over a hundred years before, leaving even such powerful magic dead to Nic’s touch.
It might have been just blank paper beneath his hand, until about halfway down the tiniest of whispers hummed against his fingertips.
Bending close, he found a line of sigils that was little more than suggestion, so small it would need a magnifying glass to read.