Page 111

Finished, he holds out the length of leather to Pace. “Clean this,” he says, then jerks his chin at Lex. “And him.”

“Yes, sir.” The words are low, hard, and when that strap changes hands there’s a flicker of time where I think my brother may snap. Or maybe, I think, as Pace regains his composure, I just want him to do what I know I don’t have the courage to do myself.

Father leaves the room. I know from experience that he won’t return until all signs of his abuse have been removed. Until Lex’s wounds are covered, and the box is returned to the cabinet. The instant he’s gone, I fall to my knees, tears hot at the corner of my eyes. “Jesus, Lex. Are you—”

“Not now, Wick.” He jerks away, struggling, but rising to his feet on his own. Once he’s there, he sways, but manages to hold himself up.

“There’s a kit in my room,” Pace says, the words rushing out. “Antiseptic, cream, bandages.”

Wincing, Lex shoves his arms into his shirt. “It’s fine.”

“No,” I say, fists clenching, “it’s really fucking not. And it’s not happening again.”

Lex runs his hand over his sweaty forehead. “This isn’t something you can help with, Wick.”

In an urgent whisper, I plead, “The covenants say I can’t fuck her when it’s not my day, but it doesn’t say I can’t deposit. I’ve got what you don’t right now: unlimited semen. Let me come in the vials for you, and then you can tell Father you—”

“No!” he roars, but it’s followed by a pained grimace and his hand coming down on the back of the chair. He twists and blood seeps through the cotton of his shirt. “That’s too much of a risk–for all of us. This is my problem, and I’m the one who has to fix it.” His teeth gnash, but it’s not about the pain. That, Lex can handle. He’s spent years being on this end of it, inflicted on account of mine and Pace’s failings. Pain has never bothered my brother.

The real wound is the failure.

19

Lex

“Med wing or our room?”Pace asks, directing me down the hall.

“Room,” I grit out, knowing once I lay down, I won’t be able to get back up. He turns me toward the kitchen—where the back stairs lead up to our wing. In this house, blood on the front stairs would be unforgivable.

“Lex,” Wicker starts, resting his hand on my elbow. “I’m—”

“Not now,” I grunt, feeling every nerve alight as I reach the first step. The kitchen staff has vanished. The entire house is still, like everyone is in hiding. It makes the screaming in my muscles—in my head—so much louder. I lift my foot and the movement pulls at my shirt, tugging at the spots where the fabric sticks to the bloody slashes in my skin.

“Fuck,” I mutter. Tears bite at my eyes. As bad as it hurts now, I know the worst is yet to come. The cleaning. The recovery. The stinging. The itching. If it was just the first part–the humiliation and pain in Father’s office–it would be so much easier to swallow.

At least I don’t have hockey practice like I used to.

My brothers crowd me, surrounding me with support, hands on my elbows and hips, as they help me up the stairs. It’s just like the other appointments I’ve had throughout my life, except for one vital detail.

This time, no one but myself is to blame for it.

They’re patient, avoiding the wounds, silent guilt rolling off them in waves. If I thought I could do it without snapping, I’d tell them it’s not like other times. This isn’t their fault. I’m the one who failed by being unable to fulfill the promises I made to Father—to the Princess—but it’s pointless. That’s always Father’s goal with these things. We’re intertwined. A cohesive, symbiotic unit. My pain is theirs. Their guilt is mine.

I exhale at the top of the stairs and make the turn into the main hallway.Twenty feet, I think, lumbering past the sitting area and portraits of former Princes.

“Do you need to sit down?” Wick asks, nose-to-nose, as I fist a handful of his shirt, pulling him toward me. The sting of the flames is already licking at my flesh, a tickle that signals I don’t have much time.

“I can do it,” I grind out.Fifteen feet. I make it six, stopping at the bookshelves, where I slump, leaning against the hard surface with my shoulder. A frame tips, knocking over with a clatter. Closing my eyes, I admit, “Fuck, I just need a minute.”

I breathe in and out, trying to work past the searing pain, trying to get to that place in my head where none of it hurts. The place where I don’t try to understand why Father is like this, wondering where I went wrong and how I can keep it from happening again. These issues with sex—it never happened until I got off the Scratch. I fucked. I fuckedplenty. Freshman year, I got a little fixated with muscles and fucked my way through Forsyth’s entire female diving team. Not that I can compete with Wicker in volume, but I beat him out in satisfaction. Women around campus knew they had a chance of getting a good lay when they saw either of us walk into the room.

Now I’m lucky to nut into a cup twice a week.

I knew fucking with Scratch was messy. That the Counts were flooding the market with a shitty product that hooks people too fast and too hard, leaving them with a series of side effects. It’s part of the reason I tried it to begin with. It was easy to get, cheap, and gave me the energy to get through my hectic as fuck schedule junior year, but mostly it was an experiment. It wasn’t just curiosity. It was the idiotic internal confidence that I was above the rest of them–equipped to handle it, more disciplined, physiologically superior.

As it turns out, I’m really fucking not, but even with all that, I’d trade Wicker’s trust fund for a hit to take away this pain.

“Lex,” Pace says in quiet warning. I open my eyes. There’s movement down at the end of the wing. Red hair catches the light.