by Nora Cobb
Yeah, I doubted it either. The pauper, as I liked to fondly call her, wasn’t scared of shit. We had thought we were getting a lamb that we could manipulate in our hands and mold her to our liking.
Instead we got a tiger who refused to give up.
“Arthur was there too.”
I didn’t wait for Max to make the move, striking so fast that he had to scramble back as the sword swiped at his abdomen. He easily blocked my first parry, but I got him with the second, barely nicking his side before he held up his hand, panting hard. “What the fuck, man?”
I lowered the sword. “Yield.”
“You need to get your shit together if you are gonna fight next week,” he said instead, walking away to place the sword back in its case. “Or I will be picking up your body pieces.”
“I’m fine,” I ground out as he grabbed his shirt, shrugging it on, signaling that we were done here.
He grabbed his bag, slinging it over his shoulder before turning to look at me. “Yeah, say it enough and you might believe yourself.”
I watched him go before swearing as I stalked over to the case, placing the sword back. Max was right about one thing. I would be in pieces if I didn’t get my shit together. For the last four years, I had run an underground sword-fighting club, carefully selecting those who were allowed to step into the circle and duel it out for money. While we used blunted swords, blood was still spilled on a routine basis.
The rules were simple: first to draw blood was the winner. Anyone who tried to do more harm than that was thrown out, shunned by the kings, and banned for the rest of their time at the academy. I was pretty sure that the headmistress knew about my little business, but she knew better than to try to break it up.
After all, she wasn’t an idiot to forgo getting her cut in the form of a check every month. It was one of the things I was going to miss about this academy. I couldn’t believe that my time was nearly up, the weight of what I would be facing this time next year scaring the shit out of me. Here, I ruled this fucking place with the other two kings. There was nothing I couldn’t have.
Well, maybe one thing and it still was pissing me off.
Picking up my towel, I wiped my face and shoulders, removing the sweat that had collected there. I couldn’t remember what moment had led to her getting under my skin, but now that she was, I couldn’t shake her.
I shrugged on my shirt and grabbed my gear, not forgetting to grab the swords so that I could replace them in the gym before anyone noticed them gone. The girl on my mind was my pauper, the American orphan that had somehow gotten herself in the midst of a shitload of rich kids.
The one we had been waiting for.
Flipping off the lights, I stalked out of the room and up the stairs that would lead outside, where I knew it was still raining. Anna Komita had been our plan from the beginning, a wager between friends to see who could lay claim to the lost princess. When she had arrived, we had all been on an even playing field.
Until Arthur had gone rogue and fucked it all up. He had taken her virginity and tried to have a fucking relationship with her.
When Max and I had found out that we had been robbed of the same opportunity, I knew I had to take matters in my own hands. Yeah, it hadn’t been all excitement to spill the beans to Anna, the devastation on her face when I had told her the truth about why Arthur was interested in her to begin with too raw, too emotional.
Everything that we were not. She didn’t have the steely exterior that most of us had been taught in our younger years.
She was, well, too fresh, though she had held her own pretty well given the shit storm that Isauros had caused upon her arrival. I had been secretly impressed that she hadn’t wavered despite it all. And no matter what we did to her, Anna was still here.
Hell, even I had softened toward her. Anna had made me feel a stir of emotion I hadn’t wanted to toward any other person and the burn in my gut had stuck with me for days after, no matter what I had done to her.
The roses had been a peace offering, though I was sure she thought I was the last one who would give her anything like that.
It had been a moment of weakness, one that I hadn’t wanted to admit to and wouldn’t admit to. I had no weaknesses. Weakness would get your legs cut out from under you or a sword to your throat, both physically and figuratively. My father had taught me at a young age to never show emotion.
So, I didn’t.
I stepped outside and pulled up my jacket hood, awkwardly jogging to the parking lot where my car waited. It was a sleek Audi, an early graduation present from my father.
Little did he know that I might not graduate. I hadn’t given a shit about my studies this year and I was dangerously close to failing my English class of all things.
Hell, I was fucking British.
The professor had given me all that he could, knowing that his salary depended on the kings graduating, but I was going to have to buckle down for the next few months to pass his damn class.
My father would have a shit fit if I didn’t pass. A long line of Whitehalls had come from Weissmore Academy so naturally he had sent me here to further my education.
Hey, being related to the royal family of England helped out.
But if I failed out of the academy, I would be a disappointment to all of them. I was to follow in my old man’s footsteps one day and I couldn’t do it as a college dropout. And staying another year was out of the question.
That would be a bigger embarrassment, especially without Arthur and Max here. Sure, it would be fun to have another year of partying under my belt, cultivating the sword fighting to an art, but the snide remarks would be there, and my father did not like to be embarrassed by anyone.
Not even his own son.
Sliding into the car, I fired the engine, letting the power roll under me. I fucking loved this car.
I leaned back against the headrest and my thoughts drifted back to Anna and a particular moment in which I knew she was stronger than she looked. Max and I were trying to intimidate her, scare her away from Arthur so that they wouldn’t get too close, but the moment I had pointed that sword in her direction, she had turned into someone else entirely.
Hell, I had liked it. Her saucy mouth, the way her breasts had risen above that black lacy bra; it had all been a surprise to my body and I had nearly lost my façade in front of her. I had wanted to pop all the buttons on her shirt and move to her jeans, to see the surprise in her eyes as I removed all her clothing with a few swipes of my sword.
What would have happened if Arthur hadn’t arrived when he did? The world might never know but the hot-ass fantasy lived in my mind, haunting me more than I liked it to.
“Damn,” I whispered, adjusting my shorts before throwing the car into drive and pulling out of the parking lot. When was the last time a girl had gotten me so turned on without even touching me? I had done everything to make her hate me, yet every time I was around her, I felt myself drawn in just a bit more.
My screen suddenly lit up with my father’s number and I hit the button. “Yeah.”
“You’re in your car.”
“What did you think I would be in, a fucking bus?”
Instead of lecturing me about swearing at him, my father chuckled. “Are you coming home this weekend?”
“No,” I bit out, clenching the steering wheel. This weekend was some sort of high-society event that my mother was throwing, and I knew she wanted me there so she could try to match me with a society debutante that would be an appropriate wife in her eyes. After all, that was how she had met my father. Little did she know, I had no interest in marrying any of them. “Mum will have to use her damn matchmaking skills another time.”
There was only one person I wanted to be matched with and she hated my fucking guts. Well, maybe hated was a bit much. I had been civil to her at times, much more than I had planned to be, and while her words were still biting whenever she was around, I didn’t see the malice in her eyes any longer.
&n
bsp; And the few times I had allowed myself to touch her, she hadn’t forced my hand away. That had to be something. Arthur had been a dumbass, pushing her too fast. Besides, he should have known that one or both of us was going to retaliate for breaking our pact.
I had just beaten Max to the punch.
Could I do it? Could I take Arthur’s place? He was a more suave talker than the rest of us, which was why he had gotten to Anna first, but now that he had ruined her idyllic dreams about the kings being the good guys, maybe he had also opened the door for the rest of us.
There was no way in hell I was going to let Max beat me to it. We were closer to each other than to Arthur but in this instance, our friendship was all hands off. I knew he would feel the same, though he hadn’t said much about Anna. “Did you know Kameno well?” I asked suddenly, a thought forming in my mind.
“Kameno?” my father asked, puzzlement in his voice, likely confused by the sudden change in conversation. “What do you want to know about him?”
“I need a copy of his will,” I replied evenly, navigating the car down the slick roads to my mansion. I knew what I needed now to win over Anna and get to my side. I just needed some leverage to do so.
“What the fuck, Royce?”
“Just do it, okay?” I asked, not wanting to explain to him why I needed it. “I don’t ever fucking ask for anything from you.” I didn’t. I had done everything they ever wanted me to do, only taking what they offered, and unlike the others that I shared the academy with, never asking beyond that.
Hell, I didn’t even want this damn car, but they thought I did so I played along, giving them the satisfaction of thinking that they had made me happy.
“I don’t need to,” my father said after a moment. “Kameno loved that academy. I wouldn’t put it past him to turn that damn castle into his own personal treasure trove, with things just waiting to be found. He was odd like that.”
My heart started to thud against my chest wall. “You think his will could be here?”
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” he replied. “Rumor was that he went back before he died. My bet is on the crypts. He loved history and well, we threw a hell of a party or two in those crypts so he could scare all the girls into going to his room. They didn’t let us live off campus back then.”
“Thanks,” I found myself saying as I hit the garage opener on my visor, pulling into my driveway.
“Yeah, sure. I gotta go, all right?”
I didn’t answer and he rang off. I navigated the car into the garage and closed the door behind me, shutting off the engine. Well, hell. He had given me exactly what I needed to move forward.
Chapter 3
Anna
I squinted at the tiny writing, trying to make out what it said. My father had written something in the margins of the book, and I had spent the last hour trying to decipher the faded ink, hoping that it was something important.
Likely it was some sort of musing from him, but it was from all the same source, which meant I needed to add it to my ever-growing collection of Alexei Kameno. Little by little, my father was taking shape in the pages of my journal, but I still felt like I was light-years away from the truth.
“Dammit,” I said softly, pushing the book away in frustration. Those words were nothing. I was nothing. Everything I was finding was nothing that was closer to me finding my mother.
Another dead end.
Threading my fingers through my hair, I tried to calm myself down and look at the facts. I had found out who my father was here at the academy, identifying him as a king just like the ones that enjoyed torturing me whenever they saw fit.
He was smart; far more intelligent than I could ever hope to be. He could have really done something amazing for the world given the papers I had read that he had written.
He was powerful once he left, given his holdings and investments. Maybe a little ruthless at the same time, but who wasn’t?
But the entire existence he had with my mother was still a big gray area in my research. I didn’t even know her name, only that Isauros truly hated her with a passion for butting into her marriage.
Not that I could blame her, I guessed, but still, I needed to know what had attracted my father to her. I felt like if I knew how they met, then it would give me a better understanding of who my mother was and why they hadn’t ended up.
Or why she had sent me to America instead of staying in the same country as he was.
“This library holds no answers.”
I eyed Royce as he sat down in the chair next to me, crossing his legs at his ankles. “Are you lost?”
He grinned. “I’m telling you the truth, pauper. The answers you are looking for are not in this library.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, glaring at him. “Do you care to be more specific, maybe?”
Royce gave me a shrug. “Maybe.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes as I stared at yet another king trying to worm his way into my life. Royce was the complete opposite of Arthur. He was crass and never one to sugar coat anything he had ever told me. Because of him, I had found out about their wager, severing my happily ever after from Arthur and putting me on this path to find out who I truly was.
He had accosted me more times than I cared to admit to myself, though he’d been very careful about not hurting me every time he did so. I had found myself more annoyed with him than frightened, but it was hard to ignore the fact that Royce Whitehall was gorgeous.
All the kings were, but he was more my type—if I had one, that was. Brown hair that curled at the ends, flashing hazel eyes that held a bit of hardness to them that had always made me feel uncomfortable when he glared at me, and a wide mouth that always held a sneer in my direction.
Well, until today that is. While the hardness was still present in his eyes, I noted that he was wearing a careless grin, like he was up to something.
Oh yeah, Royce was definitely up to something. “What do you want?” I asked, attempting to look casual myself. I wasn’t scared of him, but he did turn something on inside me that had me being more cautious than normal.
He leaned forward and I could see the faint bristles of an afternoon shadow dusting his strong jaw, the smell of mint drifting out of his mouth with each word.
Why, oh why couldn’t the kings be ugly? It would be a hell of a lot easier on me.
“I have a proposition for you, pauper.”
A laugh escaped me. “A proposition? Come on, Royce. You can’t possibly think I would agree to anything with you. If I recall, the last proposition you had for me, I nearly became pregnant.”
“Nearly doesn’t count, pauper,” he said, showing me a set of even white teeth. “For if I had been first, you wouldn’t be nearly.”
His words were crude, but I pushed them off. I was used to that with Royce. “Just a little cocky, are we?”
“You have no idea, pauper,” Royce grinned, the barest hint of a dimple on his left cheek. I felt my breath stutter in my chest at the sight, wondering if I had truly looked at Royce before now.
Oh dear God. “I want nothing to do with your proposition,” I forced out, clearing my throat. “Sorry.”
He sat back, the smile on his face telling me he wasn’t giving up just yet.
I really didn’t know how much I would be able to handle from him.
“Well then,” he stated. “Let’s try something different.”
“All right,” I said slowly. “I’ll bite.”
“I bet you do, pauper.”
My cheeks heated. “Stop it and tell me why you are here wasting my time.”
His grin remained on his gorgeous face. Were his eyelashes really that long?
Where did he get that small scar near his left eyebrow?
I really, really shouldn’t be looking at him like I was, but it was hard with him being so close and not threatening me with a sword.
“The first question you should be asking yourself is why you are at the fine Weissmore Academy in the fir
st place,” he finally said.
I let out a laugh. “No shit. What do you think I’m trying to do?”
“Listen to me, pauper,” he said, clenching his jaw. “I’m trying to fucking help you out.”
“You? Help me?” I asked, shaking my head. “Come on, Royce. You don’t even like me. You can’t even say my name. Why do you care what I found out?”
His jaw clenched and unclenched several times and I realized that the king was trying to control himself, from doing what I didn’t know. “Anna.”
I gasped, unable to help it. “What?”
