Page 54 of Barons of Decay (Royals of Forsyth University #10)

H unter

I hate this.

The chapel’s too quiet now, which is saying something with all these bodies stuffed into the pews, shoulder to shoulder, like the bones down in the catacombs. If that’s not enough, the heat of the candles feels suffocating, the hundreds of flickering flames sucking up all the oxygen.

Under my cloak, I tug at my collar. Our outfits were laid out in a room off the narthex. Black suits with crisp button-down shirts and a silk tie. The cloaks are ceremonial, different from the ones we’ve worn before–nicer.

Heavier.

DK hasn’t said a word since the Princes walked in and he told me he knew Pace Ashby. He’s more connected than I realized, although it doesn’t seem to matter. His independence is palpable, the weight of the cloak seems even heavier on his shoulders than on my own.

His jaw is now locked in place, like he’s bracing himself, and I follow his gaze to the back of the sanctuary, understanding why.

The Dean has arrived, all bluster and bravado, like a champion taking a victory lap.

He strides down the aisle, smiling and greeting guests, making this day about him.

His suit is black, but his tie is red, glaring like a bloodstain.

When he reaches the reserved seating area, he attempts to engage the Royals. Killian gives the man a stare that would shatter souls. And Lucia looks like she knows exactly what kind of man he is. The Princes disregard him, his status too low on the food chain to even acknowledge.

There’s a lesson here on how to handle men like Hexley. One I’d like to learn, because I’d spent every moment since last night's dinner with my gut twisted in knots.

The Dean’s voice keeps replaying in my skull, clipped and clinical: “I require proof.”

And the King’s cool, oily response: “I can assure you that she’s pristine.”

All through dinner she’d been dutiful and quiet, the total opposite of how she is with us. There was no fight. No passion. No glimmer of the blood-splattered girl standing over a dead man. Not a trace of the sexy-mouthed vixen kneeling before me, taking me hard in between her lips.

She was soft and demure. Compliant. Snapped back to some version of herself that her uncle expected.

Once Graves shut the door, sealing her off, I only had my imagination to think of what happened next. How she was stripped and forced to spread her legs? How she was touched ?

It took everything in me not to follow his shiny silver sedan off the property.

To call Ares to the truck, grab my knife out from under the seat, and go on a real hunt.

I’d love to see how the Dean fared under pressure, with a collar on his neck.

Even now, in the cool air of the chapel, my blood starts to simmer.

She doesn’t belong to him . She belongs to us.

The Baroness is ours. That happened the night of the Claiming. He doesn’t seem to understand that.

When I got on campus, the sedan continued on to the Manor and I let him slither away. I drove on to the station where I completed my shift, prophesied, and smoked my two cigarettes down to ash. When I left, I took the long way home.

The hotel stands quietly on the edge of campus and around back, the lure of the non-descript door that led to the Sanctum.

I sat in the truck with Ares, thinking about how easy it would be to go inside and work off some of this anger.

To go back to that place where I felt comfortable–as a viewer not a participant.

An outsider, simply watching.

In the few weeks I’ve lived in the King’s house, shared a room with DK, experienced life with Arianette… I’m no longer sure observing is enough. Especially after last night.

I came back to the House of Night.

The music shifts and people start to stand, just slightly, shoulders turning, necks craning. Even the candles seem to hush, like they’re holding their breath at the event we’re about to behold.

She’s here.

The doors open at the far end of the aisle, and everything slows.

Arianette Hexley.

Not the girl I chased through the forest or the waif with bloody hands and a thousand-yard stare.

This version of her?

She’s unrecognizable.

The side door creaks open, barely audible over the hum of the organ.

He enters like the boldest of shadows–our King.

Face covered in an ebony mask with horns tipped in gold.

He sweeps into the chapel in a long black cloak.

His presence is calculated, quiet authority, while not taking away from his bride’s entrance.

The pentagram ring glints on his finger.

He doesn't glance at the crowd, or over at Graves, who is standing next to the altar prepared to officiate the ceremony. His eyes are locked on her.

Made of black satin, the dress clings to her body like a second skin, her waist cinched so tight in a corset it might as well be armor. A large bow sits at the back of her head, and I’m taken right back to the first day we went to campus and she was dressed like a schoolgirl.

Now, I get it. It suits her. That twisted mix of innocence and the taboo.

It comes off her in waves, like the way her skirt flows behind her, lace trailing over the stone floor.

Her hair is done up, coiled into an elegant silhouette with curls twisted in place, the bow mounted at the top of her ponytail, childlike and chilling all at once. A doll in a funeral dress.

Her face is covered by black mesh–a veil protecting her from this world. It’s impossible to see her face, her features hazy like a mirage, something intangible. I know Arianette is real. I’ve seen her run. Dance. Writhe in ecstasy. I don’t need to see her face to know the woman underneath.

She walks slowly. The music low as a whisper.

I’m an engineer. I deal in facts and figures. Calculations and hard truths. I don’t believe in religion. I don’t believe in fate, or curses, or whatever it is that makes men create agreements over a woman’s body, much less her soul.

But standing in that chapel, watching the shadows stretch long across the altar, it doesn’t feel like pageantry. It feels real. Ancient. Like the ground is shifting beneath us, ready to swallow us into the catacombs that run beneath the city.

Something bigger than us is about to happen.

I glance toward DK. His face is unreadable, but I think he feels the shift too. That somehow we went from outsiders to insiders, although she doesn’t look at anyone. Not me. Not Damon. Not the crowd of women whispering behind their hands.

Arianette doesn’t smile or flinch.

She just walks toward the King, a sacrificial lamb who already made peace with the knife.