He looks at me, the headlights from the car shining on his face now that he’s level with it. Blood paints his face and clothing, the knife gripped in his hand. He tosses the knife over and it lands near Bishop’s feet.
“You’re right though,” he starts, sidestepping around the mangled corpse on the ground. “I hated you. I never understood why you came back. When we were kids, at my birthday party, I hated all kids, not just you, but my father had already started talking about what he was going to get us to do together.” He pauses. “When you started Riverside, I didn’t know at first whether you remembered me or not. At first, I thought you did remember and you were—I don’t know—fucking with us after some revenge for what Lucan did.” Shit, that makes a whole lot of sense. “But also…” He pulls out a pack of smokes and puts one into his mouth, lighting it. “…You were my first. So there was hate for you from that as well. I didn’t make the Silver connection to The Silver Swan, which I should have. I’m an idiot for not making that connection. I just figured it was because of your eyes. They’re murky green now, but when you were a kid, they were silver.”
I nod because they were. It was always strange.
He steps up to me, leaving the smoke in his mouth. “Do you feel that?” he asks, tilting his head.
I look deep into his eyes, a sense of peace washing over me. The fire I had burning for so many years from undying hate toward Lucan had gone out. Smiling, I nod. “Yeah.”
He blows out a cloud of smoke. “At least that’s one of us.” He narrows his eyes at me.
I frown. “You still hate me?”
His eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “No, fuck.” His eyes dart around the place. “It’s just—never mind. But I don’t hate you. I feel peace with you now.” Then he smiles. The first time I have ever seen Brantley smile, and it’s at me. I want to jump on him and hug him, but that’s probably going too fast for him. Baby steps.
Turning back around, wrapping my arms around Bishop, I look over his shoulder, directly at Hunter and Jase. My brothers. Biological brothers with Daemon.
Hunter steps backward, shaking his head and walking straight toward the parked car, slamming the door behind him. I frown, my shoulders dropping. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t for Hunter to act like that. He’s always been warm toward me.
Jase just stares at me, his dark eyes glued to mine. The last string in my heart is about to snap when he smiles at me. Giving me a wink. For the older brother, that surprises me. I haven’t spent much time with Jase, if any, but I know in that moment that will change.
Bishop tucks me under his arm as the rest of the boys walk back to the cars. He looks at his dad. “Want me to call Katsia about this mess, or do you want to?” he asks his dad, nudging his head toward the destruction on the road.
Hector looks at me and then looks at Bishop. “I’ll call her.” Then he looks to me. “There was a reason for my bringing you here tonight, and it wasn’t that.”
I sink into Bishop, and his grip tightens around me. “Though, I did plan to tell you that you’re adopted.” He looks to Bishop. “But you see, as much as I love my son, he did something bad tonight. Something that is against our rules. And we only have one rule, Madison.” Hector looks right at me, and chills break out over my flesh. “So now that your adoption is exposed, I guess it’s only fair I find something else to tell you since my son is so trigger happy tonight.”
I look up at Bishop. Trigger happy?
Hector steps forward, putting his hands into his pockets. “I’m sure you’re familiar with the initiation process of a King?” he questions, looking at me. I nod. “Very good. So you know…” He gestures behind him, and Khales reemerges from the shadows. Bishop freezes, his grip turning to steel. “…That Khales was Bishop’s…” My head spins and my stomach recoils. Someone else steps out of the shadows. “…As was your adopted ‘mother.’”
“Lost is not a place. It’s a soul in paralysis…
Waiting to feel moved.”
-Atticus
Bishop
Ten-Years-Old
“I want you to think of a wall, a bulletproof one that no matter how hard any weapon hounds on it, it could never break.” Rob had said, pacing up and down in front of the seven of us. We had been close all our lives, whether by family or by choice, they were my brothers. I chose to care for them, no amount of family influence could have forced the kind of brotherhood we shared—which made us the most lethal Kings created. The generations before us, my father had said they always fought or struggled to get along sometimes. Whether it be by girl or just by personalities not being compatible, it never happened. They never had a generation that flowed fluidly like we did, so they had big plans for us.
“A wall?” Nate snickered. “You brought us here to teach us about a wall?”
Rob waved him off diffusely and continued his army march backward and forward in front of us. “I want you to start building this wall inside of your brain, but before you do so, I want you to make sure there are six seats there beside you. Not eight, not two, not any other number but seven total,” he paused, looking down at me. I wasn’t a short kid. For a ten-year-old, I was pretty tall, but staring up at Rob in this moment, I felt two-feet. “I want you to start building this wall today. Work on it, I mean really train your brain to build it, because by the time you initiate in, I need that wall to be solid. To be unfuckwithable. This”—Rob gestured around—“was who you trusted. No one else.”
“What about my dad?” I argued, looking at the guys who all glared at me like “shut the fuck up.” Rob was scary, but I didn’t scare easily.
“Even your dad. He went through the same when he was your age, and so will the next ones who come after you.”
“What, as in we have to have kids?” Hunter scrunched up his face.
“Yes.” Dad interrupted, walking around the back of the cabin dressed in one of his fine suits. “You will have kids one day.”
“No, I’m good. I don’t want kids.” I knew at a very young age that children didn’t appeal to me, and I doubted that would change in the future. Call it the only-child curse.
“Oh I bet you will, I bet you and Khales will have kids by the time you’re sixteen,” Eli snorted, only no one joined him.
“No. I don’t want them.”
My dad kneeled down in front of me, searching my eyes. “You will, son, and lucky for you, I have someone lined up.”
My eyebrows pinched together. “What? Who?” I was still not having kids, but I’d ask him who he thought I could be matched with anyway.
He reached into his front jacket pocket and pulled out a small photograph, flipping it around to show me. It was a little girl, had to be around the same age as me or younger—unless she was just really small. She had brown wavy hair, chubby cheeks, a bright smile and blue eyes. A couple of freckles were scattered over her cheeks and she was holding a hunting rifle. “This girl.”
“That girl?” I questioned, obviously my dad was off his meds. That girl wasn’t anything great, I had seen better at my school, but she had something contrastive about her, an imbalance if you will, but her eyes. Her eyes ate up the distance between us, even if it was a photo that she was staring at me from. “Who is she?”
Dad looked sideways at me, noticing the other guys trying to get a look. He folded it and pushed it back into his pocket, shooting them all a warning glare. “Someone who is going to arrive in your life at the exact moment you need her to.”
“Like fate?” I asked. I didn’t really know what that word meant, but I had heard it be thrown around a lot with the adults.
He laughed. “Not fate—karma. Your wake-up call.”