Page 51

I’ll be an instrument that suits the needs of a King and his territory.

Right now, that instrument is taking care of the Princess and our unborn child, and unknown to my father, it’s peeled back the methodical way I’ve approached my goal. Verity is very real. Warm flesh. The baby’s heartbeat, a drumbeat imprinted on my soul.

“What are you doing?” I stare at my bed, covered in the clothing Wicker is haphazardly tossing from the dresser.

He answers matter-of-factly, “Packing your shit.”

“For?”

I spot the wild look in his eye, his blonde hair ruffled as if he’s been combing his fingers through it for the past hour. I don’t have long before I need to be down the hall, readying myself and Verity for bed. The mess isn’t welcome.

“Northridge,” he answers, throwing open another drawer, “Tidal Cove, the Briar Cliffs—anywhere but here.”

I spring forward to stop him from rifling through my boxers. “Would you slow the fuck down? What are you talking about?”

He dives for the duffel I keep beneath my bed. “We did our part, Lex. We dressed up as Princes, we knocked her up, we gave him an heir. Time to scram, you feel me?”

“Father isn’t going to let—”

“He doesn’t want us!” Wick explodes, shoving shirts into the duffel. “And we sure as hell don’t want him. We have enough leverage now to buy our freedom. Fuck the money, fuck the cars, fuck this whole fucking life. I mean,” he turns to me, breathing hard, “Lex, what’s keeping us here?”

This is not a rhetorical question, I realize.

‘Father’ is my instinctual answer, but I know it’s not true. We’ve been planning to get away from him since middle school. School is a better answer. Graduation is in two months. I’m still waiting to be accepted into a good med school, and running now would be throwing away a decade of grueling commitment. That’s reason enough.

But it’s not the one that makes me lunge for the duffel, ripping it from his hands. I say nothing as I dump it out, and I don’t need to.

No one knows me better than my brothers.

“Her?” Wicker’s low, disbelieving laugh is like nails on a chalkboard. “Verity ‘Backstabber’ Sinclaire? You can’t be serious. She wants us even less than he does! She betrayed you as much as she did me!”

“It’s not about her,” I snap, but before I can elaborate, I feel another presence in the room behind me.

“She’s carrying our baby.” Pace is in the doorway when I turn, his eyes fixed on Wicker like knives.

Wicker gives an aggressive, uncaring shrug. “So what? We don’t even know whose it is, not that it matters. Fuck the kid, too. Let him have it.”

The truth is, I can’t even blame Wicker. This has been the unspoken plan even before Father announced us as Princes. It’s why we tried so hard to succeed—why we made deposit after deposit, hoping someone’s seed took hold in her womb. Because there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was illuminating a path to somewhere else.

But that was before wecreated.

“No.” The word comes out raggedly, rough as sandpaper, and not even the way Wicker’s face falls can shake my conviction. “After all we’ve been through, Wick? Are we really just going to let him do it again? Take someone’s abandoned kids and make them into—” I can’t even finish my thought. That’s how vile it is to me. “No,” I repeat.

“Am I tripping right now,” Wicker asks, face screwing up, “or are you choosing some fucking bean-sized parasite over your real family?”

Snatching a pair of socks from his fist, I point out, “That bean-sized parasite could be the only genetic tie you have in this world. I’m doing it for you as much as me or Pace.” This is a much easier explanation than the truth, which is that something nuclear happens in my chest when I imagine Father being the first person to hold that baby. To see it all covered in amniotic fluid. To wipe its eyes. To be the first thing it sees of this world.

It makes me want to kill someone.

“It’sours,” Pace says, perfectly mirroring my thoughts.

I agree, “We created it, and I’ll deliver it.”

Wicker looks between us, that special unhinged gleam in his eye. “Have the two of you been freebasing? This isn’t some innocent, cute little baby. It’s the barrel of a gun pointed right at our heads. And since when do we give a fuck about genetic ties?”

If Pace is anything like me, he doesn’t answer because he can’t. Ten minutes ago, I didn’t even know this was a line in the sand. How many times have I accomplished something, only for Father to swoop in and take the credit? The same man who laughed in my face at the notion of my becoming a doctor is the same one who brags about it at dinner parties.

I won’t let him take this one.