by Lauren Smith
Charles’s teeth felt like they were grinding into powder. “I’d tell you to go to hell, Hugo, but it seems you already rule there.”
Hugo smirked. “Choose no one, and I will kill two.”
“What do you want from me?!” Charles screamed. “My life? I will throw myself upon your sword. My title? You are the elder brother. I will surrender it.”
“Even if that were within your power, I want nothing of yours. Make your choice, brother, and I will make mine.”
Charles looked to his captive friends and back to Hugo. “I…”
“It won’t matter,” said Ashton. “It’s a trick. Choose one of us to leave, Charles, and that’s the one he’ll choose to kill. Whatever he says, it will be a trick.”
Hugo sagged and sighed. “Oh, for God’s sake, must you always be such a bloody know-it-all? Choose, Charles, or Ashton dies first.”
Charles closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He looked to Hugo.
“I choose…to apologize.”
Ashton smiled. Hugo blinked. “What?”
“I know this will not change anything, that you are set upon this path. I know nothing will satisfy you but my death, but…I am sorry. I am sorry I challenged your father. I’m sorry I am the reason for his death and Peter’s. If I could undo it all, I would. I would have found another way to protect your mother from the man you called your father. I am sorry for the pain you have suffered.”
Hugo’s composure began to fail him. He strode over to Charles and struck him with the back of his hand. Charles did not resist, taking the blow, but standing his ground. For the first time since they’d arrived, Hugo began to shake with anger.
“Your apology means nothing!” Hugo roared. “You think you can save yourself with words? Your words killed those closest to me. And now they have sealed the fate of those closest to you. Daniel, a pistol.” Hugo waved a hand imperiously, and Daniel held out a loaded gun. Hugo briefly examined it and then raised the barrel toward the men in the cells.
“No!” Charles’s voice echoed through the cavern. He leapt across the ring, putting himself between Hugo’s line of sight and his friends. “End this, Hugo. But leave them out of it.”
“Charles, don’t,” Godric cried out from behind him.
“You’re only prolonging your pain, Charles,” said Hugo, as if explaining the situation to a child. “Don’t you see that?”
Charles had a flash of inspiration. “This all began because I made a challenge. Let it end the same way. I challenge you, Hugo.”
Hugo snorted. “To a duel?”
“To a fight. You think yourself better than me? Then prove it. Let us settle this, just you and me. Or are you too much of a coward, brother?” He emphasized the word, wanting to draw Hugo’s wrath upon himself and away from his friends.
Hugo’s lips pulled back in an animalistic snarl. “As you wish.”
He handed the pistol back to Daniel and gave his lieutenant the smallest nod. Daniel tucked the pistol in his coat and walked past Charles, only to suddenly turn and lunge.
Pain lanced through Charles’s lower back. He grunted, his legs trembling as Daniel gripped him by the shoulders, holding him with one arm, while his other dug painfully into his lower back. Charles could feel the blade of a knife inside him. Daniel had stabbed him.
For a moment, Charles shuddered as he stared into Daniel’s eyes, feeling the cold steel blur together with white-hot agony. It felt wrong, foreign. He was a dead man. In an oddly detached moment, he wondered how long would it be before he bled out.
He was dimly aware of the shouting of his friends and the rattling of the metal cages as they tried to get to him. Yet all he could focus on was that he had been killed by the man who’d promised to protect Lily and Katherine from Hugo. How stupid he’d been to think he could trust him.
He wanted to close his eyes, to surrender now and let it be over. He couldn’t win a fight, not with a fatal wound—that was beyond even him.
Daniel leaned in close to whisper in his ear, his soft voice surprisingly clear. “It’s not fatal, Lonsdale. You can survive this. So fight. End this, for all of us.” Then he stepped back, a bloodied dagger gripped loosely in his hands.
“Charles!” Ashton shouted, terror coloring his voice.
Charles staggered, covering the wound in his back. When he removed his hand, it came away slick with blood. He raised his eyes to Hugo, who merely smiled.
“You…you won’t even face me in a fair fight.” Charles tried to ignore the way his muscles cramped around the wound and how it made his legs feel wobbly.
“I never agreed to fight fair.” Hugo rolled up his sleeves and waved a hand at Charles, mockingly inviting him to attack. “Come on now. Fight for your friends’ lives. They’re all counting on you.”
Charles tried to bury the pain from his wound, and raised his fists. His breath was shortening. He knew he couldn’t have much time as he felt the hot blood trickling down his back.
This is no different from any other match. Fight him with everything you have left.
He only prayed it would be enough.
28
Lily was lost in a dream of kisses and whispered words of love as she and Charles watched the sunrise through the bay windows. Her husband leaned over her, his gray eyes alight with passion.
Then the sun sank back below the horizon and darkness cloaked them. Charles cried out as dark, shadowy hands pulled him from the bed and dragged him under the floor, which had become the surface of an icy river.
“Charles!” Lily screamed.
She bolted upright in the bed. The empty bed. Charles was gone.
Lily threw back the covers and glanced around the room. The fire had died in the hearth, and everything was quiet. Charles would never have left her, not tonight. Not while they all waited for Hugo to make his move. He had to have been taken. They all had.
But so soon? She had been sure he would wait at least a few days. Why now? No, the why didn’t matter. What mattered was where. She believed she knew where Hugo would take them. A place where he could arrange for privacy and have dramatic effect. A place where Charles would think he had a “fighting” chance.
The Lewis Street tunnels.
Lily’s hands shook as she rushed upstairs to her old room and dug around for Tom’s valet clothes. She needed the ease of her breeches and waistcoat to run. Then she pocketed the one thing she was certain she would need tonight and rushed from the room.
I always knew my time with him would be short, but I never believed I would have him for only a day. It isn’t enough.
Then she remembered her meeting with Ashton.
“It’s never enough when you are guided by love,” Ashton said. “But if you have the strength, you can save him. You can save all of them.”
A ghost of a smile crossed her lips. “Including yourself.”
Ashton sighed heavily. “I do not enjoy playing Hugo’s games on his terms. I would take your place if I could, but I’m not the one who owns Charles’s heart.”
Lily nodded. “I understand.”
She still understood. She knew what she had to do.
Please don’t let me be too late.
Jonathan hid in the shadows of the tunnel entrance that fed into a large cavern with boxing rings. He’d had to evade some of Hugo’s men who were keeping away the riffraff, but that did not prove too difficult. Now he was watching Charles fighting for his life. And losing. Twice he had gone to the ground, and twice he had gotten back up.
With every punch Charles grew weaker. Blood trailed down his lower back, leaving a sickly crimson pattern on the floor as he fought Hugo. It was surprising to see Hugo fight. He was good, perhaps as good as Charles, but the injury to Charles’s back had made him weak. His sluggish steps and off-kilter feints weren’t working. Again he dropped to his knees. Hugo crowed and took a step back, taunting him to get back up.
Jonathan looked toward the cages. The League were watching, all of them silent. Jonathan chec
ked each man over and froze at the sight of Godric, who had blood trickling down one side of his face from his temple.
Someone grabbed him from behind, taking his arm and pulling him back. He raised a fist to strike but halted when he saw Tom…or Lily dressed as Tom.
“What are you—?”
“There’s no time. I’m going to distract Hugo. Do nothing to interfere. No matter what happens, you must stay here. When you see an opportunity, set the others free, but do not try to leave the tunnels until it’s safe. Hugo’s men are still patrolling the surface. Do you understand?”
“How will I know when it’s safe?”
“When Hugo is gone.” It was all she said before she slipped back into the shadows.
Charles could barely breathe, his wound ached, and sweat rolled down his forehead into his eyes, making them burn. Hugo’s fist connected with Charles’s jaw with a crack! and he fell onto his back. Again.
“That’s four!” Hugo said, triumphant. “Lucien’s life is now forfeit as well. Four falls, four lives. All you had to do was stay on your feet, Charles, and you couldn’t even do that. Now, let’s end this.”
Charles wasn’t sure he could get up this time. His arms were like lead, and his muscles were seizing. Blood rolled down his back, leaving the rest of him feeling cold, so damned cold. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath. Part of him wanted to just stay there on the ground, sucking in air until he could move again.
He looked toward his friends, all of them pressed against the bars. Ashton, Lucien, Godric, Cedric. They were all doomed. Because he’d failed them. Everything seemed to be slowing down. White dots colored his vision.
“Charles!” Lily’s face was suddenly over his, her cool fingers on his hot forehead. “You must get up,” she said, just loud enough for him to hear. “You must fight.”
Hugo grabbed Lily by the arm, dragging her up to her feet. “At last, my spy returns. Unexpected, but fortuitous. Did she tell you, Charles? She works for me.”
“Hugo, you don’t have to do this,” Lily said, pleading. “Has he not suffered enough?”
Hugo looked to Charles with a knowing smile. “What do you think, Charles? Have you?”
Charles had managed to roll over, and he was on his hands and knees now, blood pouring from his lip and pooling on the floor. “Don’t…” he gasped.
Hugo turned back to Lily. “My dear, I am glad you came, regardless of your true motives. I’m not angry with you for developing feelings for Charles. He is pitiable, I know. But you have done your job well, and I keep to my agreements. You will have your pension and your quiet life in the country.”
“I don’t want your money, you monster,” Lily spat.
Hugo ignored her. “And I will raise our daughter here in London. Give her a life you would never be able to. She will have privilege and status befitting a Waverly.”
Lily’s face drained in horror. “No… You can’t.”
Daniel approached, reaching out to take Lily away from the ring, but she stomped on his foot and struck his nose with the flat of her hand. With Daniel momentarily blinded, Lily reached into his waistband and took one of his pistols away, cocking it and aiming it at Hugo.
Hugo grabbed her arm and wrestled with her for control of the pistol. But she could not match Hugo’s strength as he bent the pistol around, turning it toward Lily’s chest.
Crack!
Charles’s heart stopped as Lily crumpled to the ground.
“No…”
Hugo tossed the spent pistol to the ground and advanced on Charles, murder in Hugo’s eyes. It was like Charles was back in the river, the dark water closing around his head, the heavy stones pulling him down. No one would come back this time. There were no more miracles left.
My world, my whole world is gone.
Black despair clawed at his chest, squeezing tight. He thought of Katherine, his child, motherless, to be taken in by Hugo and raised as his own. She needed him now more than ever.
Rage electrified his body, and he surged to his feet. A roar escaped his lips as he launched himself toward Hugo. Hugo stopped dead in his tracks. The rage Hugo had stored over the decades shrank and cowered in the face of Charles’s fury. Death itself had arrived, and in the face of it, Hugo Waverly did the only thing he could do.
He ran.
Charles bellowed in rage and chased after him. His boots were slick with his own blood, but he did not stumble across the rough stone floors. He sprinted after Hugo in the darkness, the intermittent torches offering glimpses of Hugo’s retreating form.
The ground began to rise beneath Charles’s feet as they moved upward. They were leaving the tunnels. Suddenly he and Hugo were outside, the freezing air cutting his breath off as he got his bearings. They were close to the Thames.
Hugo skidded down the icy bank, panting as he got ahead of Charles. The Thames looked solid, and Hugo dashed across the ice, Charles just behind him. Twilight bled over the wintry landscape ahead of him, creating eerie shadows from the figure just beyond his reach.
“Stop!” Charles shouted. Pain and rage filled him to the point where nothing else existed within him any longer. He was a beast driven only with one purpose: to kill the man he pursued.
The deafening sound of ice breaking was all around him, echoing across the Thames. Hugo stopped, his boots sliding on the ice. Charles did the same, listening for another warning sound, but he could see no obvious cracks.
“Not another step, brother,” Hugo warned, his voice firm and cold.
The rage within him came roaring back. “Brother? You dare call me that? You took everything from me. She was my world.” Charles’s fingers curled into fists. He dared not close his eyes. If he did, he would see her, his beautiful love, dying in front of him.
“It’s no less than you deserve. You took my world from me,” Hugo practically growled, and Charles saw the pain beneath Hugo’s icy glare. “You and your father destroyed my life.”
“He was your father too. He was trying to save you.” Save you from your hate. Like Peter.
“He left me to save myself,” Hugo said. “You are a disgrace.”
Charles kept his fury at bay. “I’ve never had a problem with the man I am, but you? You are a murderer. If we’re listing sins, yours will come first.” Charles took another step toward Hugo. This had to end. They could not go on like this.
“Murderer? How dare you—”
Crack! The ice broke, and Hugo cried out and plunged into the icy depths below.
“No!”
That should have been it. He should have moved back to where the ice was more solid, back toward the shore. But in that moment he pictured Hugo suffering the fate he’d feared for himself for so long, and what might have happened if Peter and Godric and Cedric and Lucien and Ashton had done nothing.
Charles rushed toward the hand sticking up from the break in the ice, but it gave way and he collapsed into the river as well.
Darkness, ice, and cold enveloped him. He could see another figure struggling in the murky depths. Charles reached for Hugo, his fingers brushing the tip of his shoulder, but the current was too strong.
We’re going to die.
Every nightmare he’d had since university was coming true. His lungs burned, and soon he would be inhaling water. It was the end, for both of them.
Hugo was close enough for Charles to see the puzzled look on his face. The question in his eyes.
Why?
Why try to save him now? Charles had no answer; he just knew he had to try.
And then Hugo’s mouth opened as if he’d had one final revelation. Air escaped as he choked, his pale face contorting as he drew in water. Charles feared he would not be far behind him.
It was always going to come to this. Death in the dark. And this time he had killed his own brother, his enemy, his blood. But the rage that had driven Hugo was one that could have consumed Charles had the duel gone differently. Everything would have been averted if he had not challenged Hugo’s fath
er to a duel.
Perhaps he had been the villain of this story all along…
Charles moved his arms, frantically clawing toward the ice above him, trying to find the opening he’d fallen through. His eyes closed, and he stopped fighting. Lily’s face filled his mind.
I love you.
He’d be joining her soon. There was that to be thankful for. He felt his body flying toward a growing light, moving at a blinding speed, white and black flashing across his closed eyelids as he soared.
I’ll find you, Lily, I promise.
Icy cold pain exploded through him, and something hit his chest hard.
“Breathe! Breathe, you bastard!”
Charles coughed violently, panting and retching as he rolled onto his side. He was lying on the edge of the frozen river, twenty feet from where he’d fallen in. Godric. It had to be Godric. Or Lucien, perhaps. He was the stronger swimmer.
The man beside him was scowling, and when Charles’s hazy mind connected him with a name, he tried to attack the man.
“Stop, you fool. You’re too bloody weak,” Daniel snapped in irritation, holding Charles down until he stopped thrashing. “You’re welcome, Lonsdale.”
“Why?” Charles groaned as he forced his aching, freezing body to a sitting position.
“I owed Hugo everything. My oath of loyalty was one I could not break. But that loyalty died with him. Consider this my offer of a truce. I will see to it that no final orders are carried out posthumously on Hugo’s behalf. It is over.”
Daniel climbed to his feet and walked up the slope of the riverbank. He did not look back and soon vanished down a mews out of sight. Charles followed only until he saw his way back to the entrance of the Lewis Street tunnels.
Every stiff joint and bone cracked as he moved back through the stone passageways. The flow of blood from the wound to his back had slowed from the cold. He was numb, his thoughts trapped beneath a heavy cloud, but he knew he couldn’t give up. His friends still needed him, and Katherine still needed a father.
