Page 10 of A Knight’s Revenge: The Complete Series

Later, after sequestering myself in my room for a few hours to work on homework, it was time for crew practice—my Tuesday and Thursday afternoon block for the fall semester.

I tossed on a sports bra, my gym shirt, and some track shorts before tightening up my ponytail and grabbing my cheap sunglasses.

I meandered down to where the Academy’s boathouse sat on the banks of the western fork of the Obsidian River.

Entering the girls’ locker room, I found the locker labeled with my name, ignoring the wary glances I was getting from the rest of the team.

I changed into my Academy-issued kit and sat down to lace up the fanciest rowing shoes I’d ever had on my feet while the coach—a middle-aged, no-nonsense woman named Janet who was in the best shape I’d ever seen—barked instructions at us.

It was easy to discern the two distinct groups of athletes in the room.

On one side of the locker room were the rich girls from Tier One and Tier Two families who’d grown up at the yacht club and were just here for a gold star on their resume.

On the other side were the girls attending the Academy on athletic scholarship, here to seize the opportunity to obtain the Holywell degree that might give them some kind of upward mobility in the City.

When Coach finished with our first-day instructions, we filed out of the locker room, making our way down to the open grass near the docks. The boys’ team was already warming up nearby, and I instantly spotted Bennett among them.

I wasn’t the only one. It was my lousy luck that Harper Jansen was also joining the crew team, and I was treated to her prattling loudly to her friends as they pretended to stretch while avidly watching Bennett and the few guys from his team he let hang around him.

“It’s almost a done deal,” Harper purred with a haughty, self-satisfied smile. “Daddy’s been in talks with James Spencer about beginning the negotiations for a formal engagement . ”

She tossed her long dark-blonde ponytail over her shoulder as she bent over to stretch her hamstrings, making sure her ass was pointed in the direction of the guys.

Her friends gasped and cooed their fakest congratulations at her, while I ignored the pit that suddenly dropped into my stomach at the prospect of Bennett’s arranged marriage.

He’d known, even as a preteen, that there was a chance his parents would push for something like this.

Theirs was an arranged marriage, and it had been a dying tradition among the Four Families and the top Tiers for generations.

But the rest of our parents had all been love matches—even Medusa incarnate Andrea Ferrero to Zach’s late father—so it wasn’t as if arranged marriage was a requirement of the Families.

Young Bennett had talked about it with a sort of resigned acceptance, but none of us thought much about it back then because that kind of thing was a grown-up problem.

I’d only been on campus for a few days, but I hadn’t seen Bennett pay much attention to anyone who wasn’t Zach or Noah, and certainly not Harper, but that didn’t mean things weren’t in the works.

As I stood up from my own stretching, I couldn’t help but smirk in Harper’s direction.

She was going to be shit out of luck because there wouldn’t be a Spencer empire to marry into if I had anything to say about it.

“Something funny, gutter trash?” Harper snapped at me. “You look a little too happy for a dead girl walking.”

Well, that was a little extreme, but okay. “I was just thinking I should congratulate you on your upcoming nuptials, Jansen,” I replied. “I wish you a long and happy life as medicated arm candy trapped in a writhing pit of snakes.”

Gasps rang out all around.

Was that too far?

“How dare you, you stupid, low-class bitch!” Harper shrieked. “Just who the hell do you think you are?”

Everyone was staring now, including Janet, the boys’ team, and their coach.

“I’m nobody, Harper,” I said flatly. “Not sure you or your future husband should give a shit what I think.”

“You’re going to pay for that, you dirty slut,” she sputtered at me. “No one insults the Four Families, especially not a lowlife like you . ”

“Ladies!” Janet shouted, barging into our space in the nick of time. “On the water! Move it!”

With one last hateful look at me, Harper marched off to begin her workout, teamed up with her buddies in her crew of four.

Janet was wise enough to make sure she stuck those of us on scholarship in the same boats, so my hour on the water was a little awkward but mercifully free of entitled assholes with bad attitudes.

When practice was over, I took my sweet time making my way back to the locker room, hoping to avoid everyone. I paused out in the hallway, pulling my phone out to shoot a message to Dom, who was going to murder me, to forewarn him about how truly terrible I was turning out to be at laying low .

Text sent, I glanced up from my phone and found myself looking straight into the same mossy green eyes that were burned into my very last memory of my time as the Knight Heir.

Bennett loomed in front of me, wearing a long-sleeve crew-team shirt and gym shorts that revealed long, muscular legs, and he smelled freshly showered. He stared me down with the cold intensity that seemed to have become a permanent fixture on his face.

I pocketed my phone, then I crossed my arms and held his green eyes with my violet ones. I said nothing—he clearly had a reason for approaching me in this deserted hallway, so he needed to get on with it.

After a few long seconds of a stare-off, he finally spoke.

“Unlike everyone else here, I do not think you’re some ignorant girl from the slums who doesn’t know her place.

It’s clear to me that you’re an extremely intelligent girl from the slums who knew exactly what this Academy would be when she chose to come here. ”

I quirked an eyebrow at him. “Careful, Spencer. That was dangerously close to a compliment. I’m sure it’s bad enough you’re speaking to me at all.”

His lips pursed, but he ignored my words. “You know who you are and what this place is. You shouldn’t be at Holywell if you can’t accept how things are done here. Either fall in line or get out.”

Still super fucking bossy, I see.

I stepped an inch closer to him, the two of us nearly toe-to-toe now, and I craned my neck to stare straight into his eyes—eyes that I might have expected to be dead and lifeless by now, seven years after James Spencer had pulled back the curtain.

But in this moment, at least, they were lit up from within, all fire and righteousness, and it only made my own burn hotter.

“I’m exactly where I need to be,” I replied, my words sure. “If you and the leeches you call your peers can’t handle that, it isn’t my problem.”

I dropped his stare and stepped around him, but he reached out, quick as lightning, and caught my hand.

My heart skipped, and I tensed.

“I won’t call them off,” he said, his voice low and threaded with warning.

I just stared down at where his big hand gripped mine. I could’ve thrown him off the second he touched me, but I didn’t, I fucking didn’t —I just stood there and let him hold my hand while I braced against the barrage of memories of my best friend that threatened to bury me where I stood.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less of a Spencer,” I murmured.

He frowned, and finally I tore my hand away, intent on putting as much space as possible between Bennett Spencer and me from now on.