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“He still making you do all that?” I know without asking exactly which he Pace is talking about. “Only sometimes,” I answer. Pace knows I’m lying. He always knows. “I bet the Lords would pay you better,” he says, and the touch of derision in his voice isn’t meant for me, but it still makes my buzz turn sour. “South Side knows how to treat their whores.”
Remember who your King is. Lavinia’s words give me strength not because of Sy, but because of where I come from. I’m from West End. I’m a fighter.
Pace doesn’t even use a napkin, licking out to catch any wayward crumbs. I hesitate to make any fast movements, almost certain he’d give a possessive snarl. It makes a wave of homesickness spark in my chest. He eats like a Duke.
“Maybe I can be to East End what Lavinia was to me. Maybe there’s a girl out there who needs a voice in this Palace. I’m going to make sure she has one.”
Wicker is a little something I like to call fuck-sexual. His dick is an equal opportunity lender. Chick, dude, MILF, DILF, barely legal or gender ambiguous, he doesn’t discriminate. Wicker’s libido is Ellis fucking Island. Give him your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. He’ll fuck their brains out.
That’s the thing about the three of us. We were molded to hurt, cut, and deceive, but no matter how much Father hoped it’d be against each other, it never has been. We made that pact years ago. In blood. In darkness. In agony. We’re a Cerberus–three heads, one heart.
The Hideaway is a massive mansion nestled in the heart of South Side, once owned by a rapper who infamously went down for tax evasion. I met him once when we were both in county lockup. Cool guy. Really intense about macramé.
“I’ll give you one of the upper trail cams. Take it or leave it.” I take a moment to make it look like I’m considering. An upper trail cam will be nothing but sky and tree scape. Probably any sign of human life will be so distant on the ground, they’ll be specks. “Deal,” I say. Effie’s gonna fucking love it.
I don’t think the highway patrol is going to care about Operation: Pussy DoorDash.”
None of us were meant to create. We’re the creations.
“Mischief,” Pace mutters. He twists to peek one annoyed eye open at us. “Their collective noun. A group of rats is called a mischief.” I laugh as Lex turns out the bedside lamp, thinking that nothing has ever been so fitting as this. “That’s us,” I say, the words twisting bitterly. “A mischief of Ashbys.”
“You may be a virgin, but your body wants to be treated like a slut.”
I wait for Laura’s cheeky response, but it never comes. Peering into the room, I look for my friend, but don’t see her.
“Vinny,” Kathleen says, eyes wide and incredulous, “she’s East End now.” Lavinia shrugs. “And I was North Side. A little part of me will always be.” She lifts her foot and puts it on one of the benches, exposing her leg. A snake wraps around her calf—Remy’s artistic skills having brought it to life over the past couple weeks. “We’re in a new era–one where the women of Forsyth stop bashing on one another. At least as long as you’re in my house.”
That fire in her eyes? That sort of spark can be fun. Exciting. I make a promise to myself in that moment without even really meaning to. If there’s a way to avoid completely snuffing it out, I’ll take it.
There was never a dark hole Father forced on me that couldn’t be quickly adapted to. I crafted stories in my mind, keeping it sharp, and I was always able to find something to make fast friends with. Once, a tiny spider named Geraldine. Another time, a shiny beetle I called Shadow. One notable time, I managed to meet a couple of mice who I’d pretended were Wicker and Lex. I talked to them for days on end, and the next time I was put down there, they were still nesting in the vent, so I talked to them some more. I had so many conversations with those mice that I’d ended up forgetting which
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“If you don’t win the game this weekend,” he says, sharp as broken glass, “I’ll have Lex remove your index finger.”
Rory Livingston wants to organize a volunteer group to put up flyers for his sister, who went missing in late December.
I’m still holding the box, the urge to toss it in the fireplace more powerful than any other desire in my life. More than scoring goals. More than fucking. Only one thing supersedes it: the need to grab my brothers and run from this nightmare of a hellscape.
That’s always Father’s goal with these things. We’re intertwined. A cohesive, symbiotic unit. My pain is theirs. Their guilt is mine.
Before the back garden became overgrown with dead, wilted things, it used to play host to all sorts of curious plants. One of them was a type of stinging nettle–urtica. I did a paper on it in high school. Buried beneath paragraphs outlining its medical uses was a passage on urtication, sometimes used as a form of punishment, and how the fibers could be extracted, weaved with something like leather. I got top marks.
They’re already carrying enough guilt. There’s no need to pile on. The urge to protect them runs deeper than the scars on my body. Someone had to stand between them and Father’s ire.
My own father was a past failed Prince. As far as I know, his Princess was unsuccessful, and he was dismissed after three months. Later, he married my mother and had me. I don’t remember much about being adopted myself, just that the night of my parents’ deaths, in the midst of red and blue flashing lights and puddles of thickening blood, Father came and took me away in his big, fancy car. I was only two.
the first time he was taken out of boarding school, returning the next day with a boastful story about the tall woman with razor-sharp nails who Father had ordered him to spend the evening with.
all the time in-between, slowly figuring out that home wasn’t this place made of sticks and stones, but instead him. The blue-eyed boy with a smile like a knife’s edge.
I don’t need to remember when I started feeling protective of Pace. It happened the first second of the first minute I met him. Somehow, I just knew he was meant to be ours. Strong but fragile. Paranoid and curious. Hostile but desperately lonely.
Wick pushes the pills into my mouth and helps me with a swallow of water. He settles in next to me, hand on my head, running his fingers through my hair in soothing strokes.
Something inside of Verity Sinclaire is horrifyingly like us, and the longer she looks, the more she’s going to see the truth. We grew up in East End—three lost boys, motherless, haunted by the ghost of Father’s dead son. Kept in line by his obsession with perfection, lineage, and creation.
Wicker, with his attractiveness and ability to charm, was always too valuable to scar–physically, at least. Pace’s calculated intelligence, his endurance for isolation and affinity for torture, made him Father’s perfect tool. But me? I’m just a mechanic of working parts, and someone has to take the punishments we’re due. Someone who can pay the debts. Someone who knows how to hurt but hide it. Someone who can be ugly.
“He could have told us more about your dad.” “Maybe, maybe not.” Pace jerks a shoulder in a shrug. “I’d rather have a brother than a dad.”
“You know I set that explosion off, right? In North Side?” “The one that killed your dad?” She nods, lowering her gaze. “Turns out my father’s property wasn’t quite as deserted as I thought. Someone I know got caught up in it, and I just found out last week that he’s really hurt.” I gape at her. “Shit. Lav…” We all heard the reports, but none of them mentioned any survivors. “Who was it?” She meets my gaze, mouth twisting. “Cash Mallis.”
“Lex gave me Bruce’s severed finger as a gift.” Lavinia blinks at me for a suspended moment. “To anyone else, a horrific side note. To me, a Thursday.” Brows rising, she asks, “So he likes you?”
“Really, who among us can resist the charm of being given your enemy’s severed finger?” A little too lightly, I wonder, “What did you do with yours?” “I threw it back in Nicky’s face.” Her smile widens. “But Remy’s anatomy drawing professor has this tank of beetles that cleans bones, so he put it in there for a few days, bleached them, and then mounted it in our entryway.” Her brow ticks up. “A warning to the others.”
“We have really weird conversations.” She laughs, and it’s a warm sound, filled with an undercurrent of happiness. “Just wait until it’s a severed head.” I grimace. “Did he mount that in the entryway too?” “Living room.” I can’t help but laugh. “That has some nice irony to it.” “Remy thought so.”
My eyes drop to the tomb, heart kicking like a mule when I realize where the cries are coming from. Michael.
“Yes, the twins will be stationed at the door and will give one to each patron as they depart.” She gestures to the two teenagers in the foyer. Trudie giggles. “Micha and Michaela? That’s a fabulous idea.
"Jesus Christ, I'm so sick of hearing you whine about that. So you had your cherry popped and it was shitty. Boo-fucking-hoo.” Flinging a hand out, he gestures to the crowd at the end of the hall. “Ask around, Princess. No one had a fun time losing their virginity. You came into the masquerade as a grown ass woman, knowing well and fucking good there might be something in store for you." His eyes rake up and down my body, lip curling in disdain. "That's a choice, and it's more than most Royal women get." Bitterly, I ask, "And what do Royal men get?"
Ask me how old I was when I lost my virginity." The words bring me up short. "What?" "Ask me,” he repeats, low and hard. The look in his eyes is a dare, and I’m not sure I should take it. "How old were you?" I ask, searching his eyes. I think I must be expecting some terrible boast. Wicker Ashby would probably do that–flaunt around the fact that he was banging high school bimbos left and right. Or maybe he’d brag about waiting for the right one. The perfect set of tits. The ideal lay. What I’m not expecting is the cold, sharp smirk. And I’m definitely not expecting his answer. "I was ten." I
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I give and fuck and smile, snatching away little parts of myself and hiding them away, because they’ll be taken if I don’t. It’s all taken, in time. Some days I wake up and wonder how there’s any of me left. Some days I seek out my brothers and just sit there as they talk, like I’m an empty battery and they’re charging me up. Some days I feel like a brittle skeleton in a lake of piranhas, picked clean, nothing left to offer.
After years of being used, there’s a certain thrill in being able to do it to someone else.
Of course Verity wants me–physically, at least. She’s only human. I can see it in the way her pupils blow wide, wet eyelashes fluttering with a slow, heavy blink. She wants it, but she’s waiting. She’s waiting for me to give it.
“I’d done it before. Playing cello, getting praise and encouragement afterwards. No big deal. So I went with him, all dressed up in my tuxedo, and I played the song I knew best: Air from the 3rd Suite. Father has always approved of Bach.” My mouth ticks up into a cutting smirk. “When I finished, they announced dessert, but Father kept me on the performance platform.” Despite being cold as fuck outside and only wearing a towel, a sheen of sweat coats my skin. “That’s when the bidding started.”
“I want to keep her safe,” I plead. “Freedom means choice, Ver. The choice to sit down, or the choice to stand up. She’s made hers.” Lavinia raises her chin, and within her eyes, I see the same fight that was there the first day she walked into this gym. It’s what makes Lavinia Lucia a Duchess. “Just like you and I did.”
This is mine. I wanted–no, needed–it to be mine. As if I could wash away the guilt and humiliation of being ten years old again, up on that stage as those monsters eyed me like a piece of meat.
In fourth grade, we came home from boarding school over the holidays, our interim reports in hand. We lined up in front of Father’s desk and handed them to him, one after the other. Mine had two Ds. After handing him the paper, I turned on my heel and walked myself down to the dungeon. It was the last time he bothered punishing me for my own deeds. After that, if I came home with an unsatisfactory grade, it’d be Lex kneeling in front of the fireplace–or worse, it’d be Wicker getting dressed in his finest tuxedo for a night out with the only woman I’ve ever wanted to kill.
The first time I saw Wicker, I knew he was going to be mine. I didn’t understand yet, six years old and coming out of a group home situation that the social worker explained ‘isn’t going to work out for you’. I just remember seeing him and thinking that I’ve never seen anyone so pure and clean and pretty, and if life is about obtaining the very best things, then little Whitaker Ashby just became number one on my list. And then he opened his mouth. “Who the fuck are you?” he asked. Just as snottily, I replied. “I’m Pace. Who the fuck are you?” “Your worst nightmare.” With his blue eyes
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And then I think of her. Rosilocks. Verity. Because I got the same feeling the first time I saw her. Somehow, I just knew she was going to be mine.
One of life’s greatest tragedies is that Lex’s hands have been trained to hurt and maim, because the world will never know just how good he is at the opposite.
“You don’t even know if it’ll work.” “Yes, I do.” I know it like I know the earth orbits the sun. I know it like I knew Wicker and Pace belonged to me, and like I know Verity does too. I just can’t face up to it. But I can face up to this.
Look at me. I’ve made her do it every time I’ve put my seed into her. She’s never pushed with the need to know why, which is good, because I’d never tell her. There are no facts or studies or clear analytical evidence attached to my reasons for it. The truth is, I do it because of where I come from–who I come from. I do it because if creating life is more than medical, then I want to be sure. I want to be sure it’s made with some kind of connection.
