Dukes of Madness: Royals of Forsyth U (Royals of Forsyth University Book 5)
Dukes of Madness: Chapter 16

My fingers keep slipping against Remy’s skin. I claw my nails into his back for any sense of feeling tethered. With every punch of his hips, I hear my own voice crying out, but I don’t recognize it. His wet hair sways above me, and every crash of his body into mine knocks droplets to my cheeks, cooling my overheated skin.

This must be what sex was meant to feel like. No awkward fumbling. No malice. No violation in the dead of night.

There’s still pain—the ground hard against my back, his hips battering into me, his cock stretching me open for him. There’s pain, but no hurt. Only the thunder above and his lips, so red as he grunts, plunging into me again and again.

He tips down to kiss me, but it’s without precision or intent, as if he just wants to consume my exhales into his lungs, and I let him. Fuck, I’d let him take anything if it meant more of this. His palm on my jaw, holding me steady as he jolts my body into the mud, fucking me in a way that might seem full of anger to anyone else, but I know better. I can feel the desperation, see the plea in his eyes as he rumbles along to the rhythm of the clouds.

He wants a piece of me that doesn’t exist. He wants intensity, substance, emotion, solidity, but inside, I just feel empty.

And I use him to fill the void.

It’s so wonderfully dirty, and even if I had the power to control my destiny, to choose another person and place and time, I’m not sure I would. Remy looks like a beautiful ghoul above me, the ink on his skin shifting, making it seem alive, and I give in to the impulse to press my mouth to it, lips latching onto the soft skin of his neck.

“Fuck,” he spits, fisting his hand into my hair as his hips pick up tempo, cock slamming into me. “Need it, Vinny. Give it to me, give it to me…”

The orgasm comes like the storm Remy described earlier. My body and his, warring against one another, fighting it out until the release comes in a torrent of bruising grips and bitten-off fricatives. For once, I embrace it, letting the sensation ripple through me, spreading outward like a bolt of lightning from my core to my fingertips, forking off into the sweetest petrichor.

“All blue, no yellow.” When I open my eyes, he’s staring down at me, head tipped against my own, hips punching in an erratic beat. “Indigo. Did you see them, baby? Did you see where we are?”

I cup his cheeks and pull his mouth to mine, wet from the rain, dirty from the ground, and I promise him, “I saw them.”

His forehead presses into mine, and his breath is hot when he exhales a deep, rumbling groan. The final thrust is hard, distinctly painful, and so welcome that it almost feels like I’m coming with him. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, Vin,” his jaw tightens. “Fucking hell.”

He lands on top of me, cock still pulsing inside, and rolls us to the side in a mass of floppy limbs. His chest heaves and I rest my ear against it, listening to his thumping heartbeat. It’s only then I realize the rain has stopped, the storm moving to somewhere in the distance. I look to the skies, but they’re still cloudy, a blanket of nothingness covering us. Even so, what I said was true.

I didn’t just see the stars.

I felt them.

The only sign of my late night arrival is a dog barking in the distance, an alert to the people in Daniel’s tidy little community that something is amiss. Little do they know that prior to his death, this house was run by a kingpin and now it’s the scene of an ongoing crime.

It must be nice to live with blinders on. To ignore the dog’s warning bark. To sleep every night in your own bed, on your own volition.

I walk through the house with a limp, unhurried stride, my limbs still twinging from a mixture of exhaustion, desolation, and utter fucking satisfaction. I feel as though I must weigh a metric ton, and it tickles at my awareness, how strange it is to open the door to the garage without collapsing.

Wordlessly, I flick on the light.

There’s a long moment where Nick covers his eyes, and I know that feeling. How blinding light can be when you’ve spent so long without it. The sting, the ache in your temples, the physical cringe.

Annoyingly, it doesn’t take him very long to adjust. “Jesus fuck,” Nick says from his spot in the cage, eyeing me in the buzzing fluorescent light over the workbench. “You look like you survived a tsunami.” His voice is rusty and quiet, piercing through the stillness with an abruptness that even seems to make him flinch.

I think back to what happened just an hour or so ago, and yeah, that seems apt.

“What, did you have a fight with a tiger?” he asks, blue eyes dull with the same exhaustion I feel. His eyebrows hike. “Broke into the cutsluts’ dressing room and started a brawl?” He’s playing it off. The effects of being trapped here. Hungry. Tired. Alone.

I know when he fails that it must be bad.

Pretty Nick rarely lets his mask slip.

“Do you ever shut up?” I ask, well aware that I look more like a drowned rat than anything else. A well-fucked drowned rat, granted, but it makes sense he’s wondering why I’m standing here, late at night, in a once-sparkly dress that’s now covered in mud. My elbows are rubbed raw. My hair is a matted mess of dead leaves and grass. And Nick can’t see it, but Remy’s cum is still flaky on my inner thighs.

But since he’s Nick, I see the moment it comes to him. No, not comes.

Slams.

“Which one?” he asks, hands balling into fists. Any attempt at artifice falls away, leaving a haggard, threadbare gaze. “Which one fucked you?”

“That’s not why I came.”

His lip pulls back in a sneer. “Oh, you didn’t come to gloat? Sure. Why else are you gracing me with your wild, unfettered presence?”

Carefully, I tuck the keys into my cleavage. “Because we need to talk.”

“About?”

I grab the metal stool from the workbench and drag it closer to the cage. Closer, not close. I hoist myself and the tattered skirt of my dress onto it. There’s a moment of silence where I try to figure out how to say this. He spends it staring at my bare, dirty legs.

Shamelessly, he reaches down to adjust himself.

Jesus Christ.

Rolling my eyes, I begin, “I want to talk about why you really went to South Side for two years.”

“So it was Remy, then,” he says, mouth twisting into a bitter grin. “Should have known. You actually seem satisfied. Sy couldn’t have—”

“Remy wasn’t the one who told me.” I confess this freely, without reservation. But I don’t disagree about Remy being the one to fuck me, and the longer I don’t, the more Nick slumps into his cage, eyes tightening. “It was you, actually. I don’t always know what’s going on in your thick skull,” this is a lie, one I wish wasn’t true, “but I’ve learned a lot about you these past few months, the biggest being that you’re unequivocally loyal. Violently so. Only one thing would send you to Daniel Payne, and I’m pretty sure it’s revenge.” After a beat, I add, “Also, there are files about it all over your laptop.”

He scowls at me. “That’s password protected.”

“Please,” I scoff. “I cracked that in ten minutes.” If I didn’t know better, I’d say he looked embarrassed. But since he’s Nick, he just stares back like the defiant bastard he is. “Lavinia Bruin? What are we, in middle school?”

“So, what?” The dark bruises beneath his eyes tighten when he glares back, and I get the sense he’s holding onto something. A weakness. “Anything worth knowing is trapped up here.” He taps his temple.

Nodding, I say, “Yeah. Figured as much.”

I slide off the stool and walk over to the electrical box on the wall. Flipping the switch, the slight hum that was barely noticeable once you got used to it, vanishes, leaving the room in a placid silence. When I look back at Nick, he’s staring at the bars. After a second, he thrusts his hand out, gripping the steel.

Nothing.

His chuckle is rough, serrated in a way that sends a chill up my spine. “Honestly, I already got used to the pain. So if this is some kind of threat to get me to talk, then—”

“Remy thinks Leticia is dead.”

Nick looks up, and the days of being stuck in that cage shine back at me. That’s what he’s trying—badly now—to hide. Nick wants out, but he’d never ask, and he’d certainly never beg. “Maybe she is. Maybe she isn’t.”

The tears that well within my eyes surprise me just as much as him. “I hated her, you know.” I walk around the garage, this big empty cavern in the middle of rows of happy homes. “She was my father’s daughter, through and through. His precious Leticia, so perfectly cruel. Do you know what she used to say to me after father let me out of the chest? ‘Clean yourself up’.” My laugh is a soft, wretched thing, and I watch as it pulls Nick’s gaze to mine. “Remy wants me to tell him it’s all true. That Leticia and Tate were lovers, and the whole thing was probably romantic and tragic and beautiful, but truthfully? I don’t think she was capable of compassion or empathy, let alone something like love.” Raising my chin, I recall, “She was bulletproof. Nothing got in and nothing came out. She never complained. She never said no. She cut people down with nothing but a flick of her smile, and it was… stunning. She was everything, everything that Forsyth wanted her to be. She was cold and elegant and pretty, and if Leticia couldn’t survive this goddamn town, then, Nick…” I give him a bland, watery smile. “I’m fucked.”

The vestiges of that fake bluster bleed away, and he trembles with a shiver. “If you’d let me protect you—”

“You can protect me,” I cut in, voice sharp, “by telling me everything you know. What you found out from Daniel. What you learned from the Lords. Anything.” There have been countless times I’ve found myself in a position to beg. The first time I ever grasped it and lowered myself to bother, it was to Nick.

Turns out, the second time is, too.

“Please,” I breathe, the word sour with the taste of bile. “Dead or alive, Nick, I need to know what happened to my sister. I don’t think I can move on until I do.”

The shadows cut hollows of his eyes, but the blue of his irises blazes through them. He leans back, stretching against the bars for the first time in days. “I’ve always known Tate was murdered. There was no way she would have killed herself. I didn’t know about your sister, but I knew something was happening with her. Something good. Before she died, she’d just put a down payment on an apartment, and she had that soft glow, you know? The one chicks get when they’re getting consistently laid.” His eyes rake over me, like he’s seeking confirmation. “But mostly she was just kind of… happy. And in a place like this, that was noticeable enough.”

Nodding, I ask, “So you didn’t think she killed herself?”

“I knew she didn’t. I knew it that night. I knew it when the cops wouldn’t listen to me. I knew it when Remy lost his mind, and I knew it when I walked away from my family and legacy and to serve the enemy.”

“But why the Lords?” I ask. “Did you think Daniel killed her?”

He tips his head back against the cage, rolling it back and forth. “I spent years chasing down every lead, every thread, and every dark and shit-filled rabbit’s hole trying to find that out. Did Daniel kill Tate? I don’t think so. She would’ve been a speck on his windshield. But he was into pussy and property, and back then I thought I might find a link. I didn’t.” He rubs his chin, the stubble thicker than I’ve ever seen it. It makes him look roguish and frayed, and frustratingly handsome. “But I can admit that I’m not sure now, Little Bird. There was another player on the board I didn’t know about, and trust me, the Lords didn’t either.”

“Remy thinks Leticia was the real target.”

“He may be right. The Royals have a real hard-on for the Lucia girls.” His grin is wolfish but full of spite. “Which is about the only thing I do get.”

“So that’s it?” I wonder, hardly believing it. “You spent two years in South Side being Daniel’s prized lackey, turning your back on your family, your friends, your Kingdom, doing god-knows-what in the name of justice, and you just… have nothing to show for it?”

The shutters fall over his eyes with such force that I nearly take a step back. “You don’t know me. Maybe I found something, maybe I didn’t. Maybe I have enough dirt on the Kings to burn this whole fucking place to the ground. Or maybe,” he grinds out, “I had something to show for it and she spit in my fucking face.”

The force of his words stuns me so hard that for a long moment, the only thing I can do is gape at him. “What was I, Nick? Some kind of surrogate mission? Did you see a sad, trapped girl, and think to yourself, ‘well, maybe I can save this one’? Or was I just some sick reward you consoled yourself with for time spent in South Side? Is that what I am? Your participation trophy?”

“See, you think it’s one or the other,” he says, staring up at me coolly, “but you were all of those things. And since you’re so hot for the truth tonight, I suppose I’ll give you some more. I’m not sorry. Not for wanting you, taking you, saving you.” He tips his head down to peer up at me, flicking the bar of the cage. “Every soldier needs something to keep him going.”

“You’re not a soldier anymore,” I point out.

He looks around, gesturing to the door, the keys. “And you’re not in a cage.”

I wrap my arms around my middle, fighting a shiver. “So where does that leave us?” I wonder.

Nick lets out this harsh little laugh. “Oh, it never leaves us. Some things you just don’t shake off, Little Bird.” When he looks at me, I see something I’ve searched for but still don’t expect. There’s an ache in his eyes. It’s a loss that’s older than the cage he’s sitting in, and when he speaks, it’s in a voice that sounds rubbed raw. “I’m not sure I can go back to the person I was before I met you.”

“Funny.” I don’t laugh. “I was just about to say the same thing.” I walk over to the cage and Nick shifts. He watches me carefully, as if I’m a snake ready to strike, but that cunning look vanishes when I insert the key into the padlock and open the cage door.

He doesn’t move. “I said not to let me out until you stopped hating me.”

“You were right,” I say, standing back. “You are the most important person in my life. But not because I hate you. You’re the only person who can help me find out the truth about my sister. You’re the closest hope I have to putting this to rest and moving on with whatever sad joke of a life awaits me on the other side.”

He looks up at me, arching an eyebrow. “So you’re saying you need me?”

“Goddamn, seriously?” My voice is shrill. I hate it. I hate everything about this moment. I hate that he gave me a moment of real sincerity and I hate that I saw it. “Fine! I need you. Get out of the fucking cage before I change my mind!”

“Alright,” he says, shooting forward to start a slow, agonizing escape from the cage. It looks painful. Pathetic. He hisses when his muscles seize, and grimaces at the pain in his back. These are all feelings I know well. A string of curses echo in the garage as he hunches, stretching his feet.

I don’t feel bad. I’m not sure I feel anything. Putting someone in a cage isn’t a great moment. Freeing them isn’t much better.

I stare at the journal, which is sitting on the counter. Sy writes in it every morning and most evenings. I’ve only gotten a couple of glimpses of the pages, always snatched away before I can truly decipher it.

But the second I open my mouth, Sy drolls, “You’re not reading my journal.”

I finally break, “Just one page!”

“No.”

“One sentence?”

“Okay.”

I perk. “Really?”

He shoots me a glare. “No. I told you. It’s required for my Human Behavior class. Everything in it is confidential.”

My palms drag down my face. I don’t think he realizes how impossible it is to live with a book I can’t read.

“Is he still in there?” Sy asks, standing over the stove as he makes breakfast. Remy’s phone is going off, and we both try to ignore it. There’s a nice rhythm to my mornings now, and it’s surprisingly a comfort. Sy knows that I like my eggs over easy, my toast slightly burnt, and my coffee black. ‘Like your heart, Sy.’

Maybe living here isn’t so bad.

“Since he got home,” Remy replies, popping a handful of pills in his mouth and then making an obnoxious show about swallowing them. It’s dramatic and unnecessary, but I know it makes both me and Sy feel better witnessing him taking his meds. Last night was crazy enough. I don’t even want to think about what that would have looked like with Remy unmedicated. “Well,” Remy adds, face pensive, “he did take a piss around six, and then I heard him cuss out the Archduke on the way back to his room.”

I pause, holding my coffee midair. “Do you know everything going on in the tower?”

“Hard to sleep with this thing going off every twenty minutes.” Remy taps his cell phone before raising an eyebrow in Sy’s direction. “But I do know a lot. Like someone needing to work on his foreplay, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Christ,” Sy says, running his hand over his face. “Remy—”

“Look, I’m here for you if you need some tips. The Duchess just likes to be handled a certain way, that’s all. I know for certain, one-hundred-percent guarantee, that she likes to have her pussy—’

“Stop!” My entire body has turned an unnatural shade of pink. “Just… stop.”

Remy shrugs and neither Sy nor I can make eye contact for a full thirty seconds.

I didn’t have the chance to give him his ‘lesson’ last night.

Here’s hoping he taught himself.

For the millionth time since waking up, I hear Remy’s phone go off. His own phone, not the one he stole from his father. But from the way a stony sort of delight crosses Remy’s features when he glances at the screen, I’m betting it’s his father calling about that very thing.

Sy must make the same calculation. “You can just block him.”

“I could.” Remy shrugs, putting the phone back on the counter. “But his misery is entertaining.”

“Anyway,” Sy finally says after clearing his throat and sliding the plate of breakfast in front of me, “Nick didn’t say anything else about what Saul had him doing?”

He’s asking me, because officially, I was awake and sitting in the living room when Nick returned home from his trip. Unofficially, Nick and I came to an agreement on the way home from the Payne house. This was after I stopped at the drive-thru and bought him six hamburgers and a milkshake, all of which he consumed in less than the ten-minute drive back to the tower. It was clear that neither of us had any desire to tell Remy or Sy what had been going on between us for the last few days. I explained the excuse I made up about him doing a job for Saul. He seemed impressed at how well I covered my tracks, but it’s obvious he’s not in a rush to let the guys know I got one over on him. So here we are again, tied up in secrets and lies. Reliant on one another.

Not my favorite position.

“Nope,” I reply. “He just said he was beat from doing Saul’s bidding and not to bother him. All he wanted was ‘some fucking peace and quiet’.” I add the finger quotes for legitimacy.

Remy, still shirtless, hair mussed from the shower he took the moment we got home last night, shrugs. “Well, at least he wasn’t working for the Lords for once.”

“Yeah, no,” I say, choking on my coffee. “Not this time.”

“Listen,” Sy says, leaning over the counter. His shoulders tense, and it rustles his shirt up to reveal the hard muscles of his biceps. I fight the urge to tug it back down. “I’ve got a busy day on campus. My professor roped us into a research project and today is my shift in the lab. Can we meet at the gym tonight for our workout?”

“What about family dinner?” I ask. I missed the last two, and although facing everyone at the gym—the DKS, Mama B, and all her cutsluts—sounds as good as having my skin peeled off, I know I can’t avoid it forever. These are my people now. Remy and Sy need me to support them, and I’ve accepted I need to at least pretend to have Nick’s back in public. Plus, I need to give Ballsack and his boys my thanks for being the presumed pledges Nick took on his ‘job’.

Sy lowers his voice. “Yeah, we can work out after it’s over—when the gym is… quiet.”

Even though the thought of working out on a full stomach is less than appealing, I shrug. “Sure, yeah. That works for me.”

“Great. Nick’s up for Friday Night Fury.” He looks over at Remy. “You think he can hack it after that job Saul sent him on?”

I straighten, only now realizing Nick is up next for fighting. Neither of them have seen him yet, but Nick isn’t in fighting condition. He can’t be. He just spent the last three days trapped in a cage.

Not that they can know that.

Fuck.

“You know him,” Remy says, voice wry. “The devil works hard, but Nicky works harder.” As he passes, Remy runs his hand down my back, sending a flare of electricity down my spine. It’s been like this since we had sex. The ride home was basically spent on the edge of a needle, our bodies pressed together on the bike. It’s like a bolt of that lightning shot through me and hasn’t burned out. “I’m heading over after my drawing class. I’ve got ring time scheduled with Bruce later.”

He walks off, vanishing into his room, but my shoulders tense at the name. Bruce is the one who got Sy so worked up in the locker room that he tried to choke me on his cock. If Sy notices my discomfort, then he doesn’t react. What would he say, anyway? ‘Sorry about that time I tried to sell your pussy for a watch’?

Gross.

“You start classes on Monday, right?” he asks instead.

I straighten. “Yeah, just a few more days.” Everything is hanging uncertainly in the air. Remy, Sy, my precarious truce with Nick, being a Duchess by choice instead of force. But I can’t deny I’m excited for the little corner of normalcy that will be attending classes.

Sy watches me, eyes narrowing. “How do you plan on staying busy in the meantime?”

My eyes shift over to the clock face. I’ve been reading up again, getting my bearings on the tools and mechanics needed to try to make it work. “I have some projects.”

Sy follows my gaze, looking doubtful. “You’re okay with being alone here with him?”

“Yeah,” I say, trying to firm up my voice into a confidence I don’t feel. “I think we’ve come to an… understanding.”

“Good. We don’t have time to play mediator anymore.” He drops the pan into the sink and heads into the bathroom.

Cranky.

Guess that answers my question about whether or not he’s taken his lessons into his own hands.

I finish my breakfast just as Remy returns from his room, portfolio slung over his shoulder, jeans barely hanging on his narrow hips. I don’t mean to give him a look, it’s just that I’m remembering last night, halfway wondering if he’s as sore as I am and halfway searching for that man who’d pushed me down into the dead leaves and told me I was about to become his.

I’m just wondering what that means.

The answer comes when, a moment later, he drops his portfolio and traps me, hemming in against the wall as his green eyes bear down on me. “You keep eyefucking me, and I’ll never get out of here.”

“I’m not—”

He swallows my disagreement by diving down and capturing my mouth with his. That crazy lightning-bolt feeling explodes in my belly, fraying a soft, plaintive sound from my chest. Remy meets it with a hungry sound of his own, reaching down to cup my ass. He yanks me up against him, the hard line of his dick grinding into my pelvis.

“Fuck.” He pulls away just to mouth at my jaw, muttering, “Can’t do it here. Promised Nicky.”

“What?” I say, too dazed to untangle the words.

He just sighs into my neck. “Wear that black dress Jade gave you to family dinner. Duke’s order.” The leather thing is strappy but covers everything. Sexy but not slutty. It’s probably perfect.

“Sure.” Anything to make him not stop doing that thing with his teeth on my earlobe.

Of course, then he pulls away. I bite down on a frustrated sound just as I realize my fingers have made a tight fist into his hair. I quickly release him, only to catch the edge of his smirk as he grabs his bag and swaggers out the door.

Sy stands between the bathroom door and the kitchen, stiff and awkward, so I’m guessing he watched all of that go down. The expression on his face is all twisted up, like he’s doing higher math equations. I can almost see them running through his head, like, should he kiss me goodbye? Is that part of our deal?

“Right. Tonight.” He strides by. “Later.”

Later?

The door shuts behind him, and I’m left pondering Remy’s oozing sex appeal versus Sy’s complete dysfunction, and whether or not I’m going to survive the whiplash. Oh, and let’s not forget the unrepentant asshole sleeping off his three-day cage vacation.

It’s hard to see how a normal Royal woman, even under normal circumstances, can handle it. I’m basically dealing with one-and-a-half Dukes at the moment and even that’s too much for my brain to juggle. Remy’s intense kisses, Sy’s intense staredowns, sex on a cliff, late night fumbling.

How can a normal Duchess have the bandwidth for anything else?

I’m about to find out.

I take my plate to the kitchen and refresh my coffee, heading up to the loft. My toolbox is right where I left it, along with the manuals. After a long moment of panicking about the enclosed space, I dart up the narrow staircase into the part of the tower that houses the inner workings of the clock. Something tells me these men are stuck, just like the face of this clock, announcing the Dukes’ chaos to all of Forsyth.

I may be the only one that can fix it.

The clock is a machine.

Machines rust. They fall out of alignment. One part breaks and another follows. They’re troublesome and complicated, but entirely rational.

That’s what I’m thinking as I tinker, following one problem to the next. The main gear shaft is all mucked up, which threw the chain off its axis, which sent the opposing rod off-kilter. They’re all just silent pieces of a puzzle, which might strike me as a profound thought one day.

Time can be broken if your world is small enough.

I follow the links in an effort to find the beginning, the end. Gear shaft first. Rusted, immoveable, stubborn piece of shit.

Huffing, I whip out my phone, the time flashing as half past ten.

Duchess: Anyone seen my lube?

Duke Sy: Is this a prank?

Duchess: No, I need my lube and it’s not in my box.

Duke Remy: I can be home with some all-natural lube in a jiff. Get naked on my bed and I’ll get your box good and wet.

Duke Sy: JFC.

Duchess: I’m talking about the lubricant—oil—that I need for the clock cogs.

Duke Remy: Oh, I don’t think cum would be good for that, but if you need someone to oil up your cogs, I’m here for you, baby.

Duke Sy: I haven’t seen it-later.

Later. Seriously?

Duke Remy: Oh, the little canister of oil? I borrowed that. For my bike. It’s in the bag hanging by the door.

Duchess: Thanx

Dreading another pass through that tiny stairwell, I hoist myself off the ground, brushing my knees. But before I can even start for the door, it opens.

Nick stands in the entry, blocking my way.

The first thing I note is that he hasn’t shaved yet, the thick stubble a shade darker than the hair on his head. The second thing I notice is that the circles beneath his eyes have hardly faded. If anything, he looks actively worse than he did last night. That would probably surprise most people, but not me. I happen to know the most brutal part of escaping a box comes twelve hours later when your muscles are screaming. Sleep doesn’t come as easily as you’d thought it would. You’re hungry, but your appetite has turned its back on you.

Nick looks fucking miserable.

Excellent.

He’s wearing an old band shirt and ratty jeans, the tattoos on his arm blotted by the shadows. Sunlight barely reaches this chamber of the tower and the few anemic bulbs hanging from the ceiling are probably old enough to be hung by Edison himself. I’m alone in a dark, crowded space, and Nick Bruin is blocking the only exit.

Not excellent.

His hand stretches out, and I suddenly realize he’s holding the can of oil.

“I was coming down for that,” I say, glaring.

His hand twitches the same way it had last night, tremors from being shocked for three days. “Now you don’t have to.”

Reluctantly, I reach for the can, straining over the distance. I get this vision in my head of him snatching it away at the last second, only to grab my wrist and—

But he lets me take it.

Our fingers brush as I retreat and I flinch back, curling the can close. Figuring the best thing to do is ignore him—and absolutely refusing to thank him—I return to the gear, folding myself down onto the floor.

I get about five minutes into scrubbing the metal with a wire brush before it hits me that he hasn’t left. Glancing over my shoulder, I find him inspecting one of the fallen rods. “What?” I snap.

He nods up at the beams. “If you want to lift that thing up there, you’re going to need someone with upper body strength.” Nick’s shoulders are still folded into a sad curve, as if it hurts just keeping his spine straight.

“You’re atrophied.”

His eyes narrow. “It was only three days. I can hold my own.”

I give the gear an aggressive scrub. “Is this about the rod or Friday Night Fury?”

There’s a long beat of silence before Nick scoffs. “I’m fighting some sophomore LDZ. I could win that with one arm.”

“I hope so.” I stare at his hands, still giving the sporadic tremor, fully aware of the worry in my eyes. “I don’t think anyone is going to take it well if we lose to the Lords.”

Nick just shoots me a sharp, vicious grin. “Leave the fighting to me, Little Bird. You have your own project.”

He’s talking about the clock. “Well, half the pieces are broken. There are spiders burrowed in every crevice, and the main cog is so rusty I doubt a gallon of this oil will make it move.” I dump some oil onto a rag and begin working it into the grooves.

Nick, annoyingly, sits down, settling against a beam about twenty feet away, socked feet crossed at the ankles. Casually, he asks, “So how was it?”

I don’t look up. “How was what?”

“Getting fucked by Remy.” I fumble the gear and it clatters between my legs. The air around us vibrates with Nick’s low chuckle. “Girls say he’s good at giving head. Definitely not better than me, but—”

“I’m not talking about this,” I say, shutting it down.

“Did he fuck you hard and fast, or was it all slow and sweet?” He muses, “Never can tell with Remy. Sometimes it’s like he wants to rip a girl’s skin off, but occasionally he likes to take his time, do it right.” Though his voice is casual, I can see the flame of jealousy in his eyes—something he has no right to. “It was in the rain, right? Makes sense. I can see him getting off to the drama of it.”

I bang the can of oil down, turning to him. “Fine, you want to know so bad? The heavens opened. Angels were singing. There were trumpets and cherubs. It was easily the best fuck I’ve ever had.”

Nick stares at me, slowly bringing his hands together in a clap. “You sure know how to drive a knife into a guy, don’t you?”

Rolling my eyes, I stand to fit the gear onto its axle. “I don’t see why you should care. You’re the one who made me his Duchess. You knew what was going to happen before I did.”

He doesn’t argue with me. I’m sure we both remember that first night, right after he won me, when he insisted to Sy and Remy that he was willing to share. Instead, he says, “Eventually they’re going to wonder why we don’t just kill your father.”

“Because Saul wouldn’t let them.” I raise my hand, waving it. “Ripples,” I say, repeating something he’d told me early on.

“Murdering a King is like throwing a rock into the water,” Nick had said. “It makes ripples. The closer you are, the more you feel them. You’re way too close to that rock, Little Bird.”

He snorts. “If you think Saul is the ripple I was talking about, then you’re definitely not as smart as I—”

My head whips toward him. “I know what the ripple is, idiot.” I meet his eyes, catching the flash of surprise there. “I lived under his thumb for most of my life. I know what his real legacy is. It’s not drugs, and it’s sure as hell not his children. Give me some credit.”

His face twists. “If you knew about his failsafe, then why’d you ask me to kill him?” But immediately, his expression clears. “Right. I guess Forsyth and the Royal system haven’t been very good to you. Get far enough away, the ripples won’t touch you.” He gives me a creepy grin. “That’s some dark shit, Little Bird.”

“I never asked you to kill him,” I remind Nick. “I just asked if you would.”

“So, what? It was a test?” His head snaps back. “Did I pass or fail?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Truthfully, I wasn’t entirely sure he knew until just a minute ago. There’s a reason my father is so obsessed with who his Kingdom passes on to. It’s meant to be someone loyal. Someone he can control, long after he’s gone. Whoever that person is, they’ll have this whole city under their heel.

And right now, that person is Perez.

“Your sister…” When I look up, Nick is staring at his hand. I follow his gaze and notice a twitch—a tic—just before he curls it into a fist. “I can’t tell you if she’s alive. But if she’s dead and there’s no body, then I know where to go to look.”

I straighten, all thoughts of cogs and machinery cast aside. “Where?”

He tips his head, watching me through his lashes. “Where do bodies go to not be found?”

Blinking, I realize, “The Barons.” There’s just one problem with that plan and it makes me laugh. “You’re crazy. The Barons would never narc about a job. Their whole operation hinges on a century of secrecy.”

He gives a slow nod. “There’ll be a price. You might not want to pay it, so think long and hard before I set this shit in motion, because once I do, there’s no going back.”

His words rustle up the memory from last night, Remy entering me, pressing me into the ground as he whispered so roughly that I’d become his. I look down at the cog in my lap, considering it carefully. “The Barons… they’ll want to spill blood. It’s the only currency they recognize.”

“Probably.” The crackle of tension between us rises to a crest when he insists, “The others can’t know. Sy and Remy wouldn’t let you—” He looks away, the muscle in the back of his jaw ticking, and I wonder what he’s thinking.

Is Nick’s willingness to let me walk into the House of Night and possibly never leave some kind of fucked up gesture?

A pensive silence settles over us, and I spend it watching him in my periphery. The hand twitches, the muscle spasms, means he’s feeling the effects of the electricity, being shocked over and over again inside the cage.

I suppose everyone in Forsyth pays a price for something.

“Set it up,” I decide, meeting his gaze.

Dread builds in my gut, but it’s not alone. It’s accompanied by an iron resolve, because I’m a Lucia—the Duchess of West End—and a little spilled blood isn’t enough to scare me away.

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