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Annoyed, I grumble, “God, I hate the Barons’ insufferable flair for the dramatic.”

I feel her gaze on me and when I look over, sure enough, Verity’s staring at me with her jaw dropped.

“What?” I ask, shifting into a lower gear as we approach the wrought iron gates of the cemetery.

“Theyhave an insufferable flair for the dramatic?” she asks. It’s followed by a snort in the backseat, and I shoot Ballsack a hard glare in the rearview mirror. He shrugs, and I don’t have time to stop the car and beat the smug look off his face before Verity adds, “I’d tell you to look in the mirror but you’d get so hung up on your reflection that whatever is waiting on us would be long gone.”

I don’t bother responding, mostly because there’s no room for error. The cemetery is neutral territory, unclaimed by any of the five Forsyth frats while also being maintained by the Barons. But being the rightful Baron heir with his Princess in the vehicle, I can’t be sure this isn’t a well-designed trap.

Ballsack seems to have the same concern. “I’d feel a lot better if your brothers were here,” he says, not for the first time.

“I can handle this,” I say, gritting my teeth. There’s no safer feeling than having Lex and Pace at my six, but this is one of those things.

I have to do it myself.

Not even thinking to question this, Verity says, “We need to get out of the North Side and over into BRN,” and points to a sloping hill where the Baron’s sprawling plot overlooks the entire cemetery. It reminds me of Effie perched on the top of Pace’s bookshelves, acting as a sentinel overlooking the room. “I think 237 should be up there.”

But I don’t need a number to find our destination. A massive black mausoleum sits at the peak, towering over the headstones. Even from a distance, the pentagram etched into the marble is visible in the rising moonlight, and the name KAYES set in gold underneath.

The King of the Barons is leading me home.

Verity, growing quiet next to me, seems to understand this as well. I steer the car down the narrow gravel road, stopping just beneath the mausoleum.

“Jesus, that’s creepy,” Ballsack says, looking up at the onyx building. It has a peaked roof and thick columns framing a door made of intricately welded iron. Four thick marble steps lead to the entry. “This is where he sent you?”

I cut the engine, allowing the silence to engulf us just as thickly as the impending darkness. Truthfully, I don’t remember anything about being a Kayes. It’s just a name I had and molted away like dead skin. How can someone feel a connection to a place they’ve never called home?

But as soon as I look at the mausoleum, that frenetic scream trapped inside my chest transforms into an inexplicable stillness. I’ve never worn the name. I’ve never mourned it. I’ve never breathed it, bled it, or claimed it.

But it’s stillmine.

Grabbing the key from Verity before stepping out of the car, I take a moment to absorb the spectacle of the cemetery. The serene rolling hills. The grass, bright green from the afternoon summer rains. I see the dotted rooftops of other mausoleums in the different territories, each aligned with an important bloodline in Forsyth. But none have the grandeur of the tomb that houses my grandfather, Clive Kayes. Even decades after his death, he still carries a presence in this town.

Unlike Verity and Ballsack, places of death aren’t unusual to me. I wonder briefly if this familiarity is nature or nurture. I’ve spent countless hours playing the cello in front of Michael’s headstone, surrounded by the scent of warm earth and quiet misery. But there’s a thrum in my blood, an acknowledgment as I hold the heavy key in my hand, that this is where I belong. Ofa life stolen from me by a deranged, vindictive man I now have trapped in a crypt of his own making.

Walking around the car, I open the passenger door and help Verity out. It’s reckless to bring her along, even if the envelope was equally as addressed to her. When Lex and Pace find out…

Her green eyes lock on mine as she takes my hand, her palm soft and dry as a goddamn bone. “I can handle this,” she says, parroting my words from before. Her legs are smooth, bearing a new warmth of color after her trip to West End. Pace says there’s a garden on the rooftop of the gym. Exposed natural sunlight, not like the filtered canopy in the solarium. I like the idea of her up there, staring across Forsyth as she drinks in the light. She belongs there, not here, lost in all this death and darkness.

But as much as the Kayes name is mine, it also belongs to the life growing inside her. Perhaps more than anything, I need her to know—to understand—what the weight of the name means.

Ballsack gets out of the car and moves to the back, opening the trunk. He pulls out a black duffle bag of supplies I brought from the dungeon. None of us are exactly sure what Maddox called us here for, but I have a suspicion.

“You sure you want to do this?” I ask her. “Because I don’t know what’s waiting inside, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to be unpleasant, and you just stopped puking every fifteen minutes.”

“I haven’t vomited in a month, thank you very much.” Her eyes dart to the black building, lip disappearing between her teeth. “I’m not sure I have a choice. Both of our names were on that invitation.”

She’s right about that. When William came after Verity, he slighted both of us. Her, personally. Me, because that child, like it or not, is mine.

“Eugene,” I say, not forgetting the dig from earlier, “keep an eye out.”

He rolls his eyes, leaning against the trunk. “Got it.”

Taking the bag from him, my Princess and I climb the steps, approaching the dark, heavy door.

Slotting the key into the lock, I turn it.

It opens with a heavy creak, musty, cold air rushing out to greet us like a quiet exhale. It’s dark inside the room, other than the faint light filtering in through a window made of stained glass. In Baron fashion, the window has been designed to project a pentagram along the back wall. Dust motes float within the ethereal rays, billowing toward the black of darkness when we disturb the air.