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I’m trying to please a man who can’t be pleased.
Dean is spiteful. Vengeful. Full of rage.
He could destroy me with a single word, just because I looked at him sideways.
The train of his hatred is long and complicated.
He hates Leo Gallo because of the feud between their families.
He hates Miles and Zoe because Miles is Leo’s cousin.
And he hates me because I’m Zoe’s sister.
But that barely scratches the surface of his fury.
I’ve thought about this long and hard over the summer, wondering how I truly attracted his ire.
Therealreason he hates me is that I saw him in a private, unguarded moment.
I saw him sobbing after Ozzy’s mother was executed by the Chancellor. I saw him hunched over, tears streaming down his face, as he gave in to the storm of pain inside him.
And he will never, never, never forgive me for that.
I saw Dean weak and vulnerable. He’ll have me killed before he’ll chance me telling anybody else.
Like a fool, I handed him the perfect leverage over me.
I murdered Rocco Prince, my sister’s intended fiancé.
And Dean knows it.
The Rule of Recompense is the most iron-clad law of Kingmakers: an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, life for a life.
If Dean tells anyone what I did, I’ll be executed, just like Ozzy’s mother. I’ll be forced to kneel before the school so the Chancellor can slit my throat.
This is the situation in which I find myself as I stand on the sunbaked deck of the ship. One wrong move, and Dean will throw me to the wolves. My only chance of survival is to hope and pray that somewhere, deep inside of Dean, there lives a spark of humanity.
Or maybe he’ll just get bored of fucking with me and move on to something else.
I can’t see any other way out.
“Cat!” Perry Saunders cries, throwing her arms around me in a hug. “How was your summer?”
Perry is blonde and bubbly, curly-haired and apple-cheeked. She dresses like an American Girl doll, already wearing the plaid skirt and jaunty academy jacket that forms our school uniform.
My roommate Rakel was likewise crossing the deck to greet me, but as soon as she sees Perry, she makes an abrupt about-face to head in the opposite direction. I grab her by the arm and haul her back, deciding that this year Rakel is going to be social whether she likes it or not.
“Perry, have you met my roommate?” I say, slinging my arm around Rakel’s slim shoulders so she can’t get away.
“No!” Perry chirps. She holds out her hand to shake. “Periwinkle Madeline Saunders, nice to meet you.”
Rakel forces a smile that looks more like a snarl and shakes Perry’s hand with two fingers in a pincher grip. “Just . . . Rakel,” she says.
“I wish the Accountants roomed down in the Undercroft!” Perry says, enviously. “All the other divisions have such cool dorms, and ours is dull as dishwater. It might as well be cubicles in our tower—we don’t even have a view off the cliffs.”
“We don’t have windows at all,” Rakel reminds her in a monotone.
“I know, but at least that’s spooky!” Perry says.
