There was nothing worse than Hawk’s. Jack felt an odd tightness in his back and shrugged to get rid of it. Rose and Declan had both told him that he would never be sent there. But the older he got, the more he screwed up.
Last night, Declan sat him down and told him that they couldn’t keep going on like this. Changes had to be made. He didn’t say anything about Hawk’s, but Jack could read between the lines. He wasn’t a baby.
William was his only hope. William was Declan’s best friend. If anyone could come to Jack’s defense, it would be him.
He had to make William understand how things were before it was too late.
WILLIAM’S house sat in the middle of a vast grassy lawn, bordered by ancient ashes and oaks. It was a big place, three stories with an attic on top, all brown stone under a roof of green clay shingles. Four round towers, two stories high, sat at the corners of the house. Each tower had a round balcony with a stone rail on the second floor. Their other place was even bigger, a mansion the size of Declan and Rose’s house, but William and Cerise both hated it. They still went there once in a while because it had a bigger pool.
Jack left the tree line, crossed the lawn, and stood in front of the arched entrance, letting William catch his scent. One minute, two . . . Long enough.
He went to the arched front door. It swung open under his fingertips, admitting him into the dark stone entranceway. The door shut behind him, and darkness took him into her black mouth and gulped him down. Jack crouched on instinct, letting his eyes adjust.
William could kill any intruder while he stood there, blinking like an owl. When Jack got his own house, he’d have an entrance just like this one.
Jack’s pupils caught the weak light and the glint of a trip wire strung across the way just at the right height to trip an unsuspecting attacker’s ankle. Jack stepped over it, went through to the next door, and out into the courtyard. The bright light of the day shocked his eyes again. He blinked until he saw a blue pool on the left, surrounded by a stone pathway. Around the path, flowers bloomed in curvy flower beds, yellow and blue blossoms catching the sun with delicate petals. His nostrils caught wood smoke. Cerise was cooking.
Jack headed down the path to the back of the house, through a side door, and into the large kitchen. The huge solid table took up most of the room. William lounged at the other side of it in a big chair, close enough to touch Cerise, who stood at a stone counter. Like Declan, William was tall, but where Rose’s husband was blond and buff, William was black-haired, lean, and hard. Their stares met. William’s eyes shone with yellow once. Just a friendly warning. Jack looked to the floor for a second to let him know he didn’t have a problem with his authority.
When he looked up, Cerise was grinning at him from the counter. She was short and tan, with long dark hair, and she wore a blue apron. “A hare! Is that for us?”
Jack nodded and offered her the hare. Cerise took it. “That’s perfect, Jack. Just in time. And so nicely cleaned, too.”
Jack grinned. She liked it.
“Come, sit.” William pushed a glass of Adrianglian tea in his direction. Jack swiped the cup and landed in the nearest chair. Cerise set a pan on the fire, threw some chopped bacon into it, and started peeling an onion.
“How’s it going?” William asked.
“Fine.” Jack kept his voice flat. He’d have to go about this conversation very carefully.
“How’s school?” Cerise asked, chopping the onion to pieces.
“Fine.”
William and Cerise looked at each other.
“How’s the school really?” William asked.
Jack looked at the table. He was one week into his first year of the Royal College. The College was a big deal. It cost a lot of money and had the best teachers, and he had to pass a load of exams to be admitted. George was two years ahead of him, and he loved it. If someone else had asked him, Jack would’ve said the school was fine because Rose and Declan were paying for it, and he didn’t want to be ungrateful. But this was William’s house, which meant he didn’t have to lie.
“It’s strange.”
“Strange good or strange bad?” Cerise added onion and garlic to the pan. The aroma tugged on Jack. He licked his lips. Cerise cut the rabbit into bite-sized chunks and swept the meat into the pan, too. Mmmm, smells good.
“Strange strange,” he said. “People don’t talk to me, that’s fine. I don’t need to talk to them, either. But they talk behind my back all the time. The girls are the worst. They huddle and whisper things, and when I try to be nice and talk to them, they get all weird. They’re calling me Brother of the Cursed Prince.”
William sat up straight. “What?”
“They call George the Cursed Prince because he does necromancy. And I’m his brother.”
Cerise sighed and stirred the meat. “Girls at your age are odd. I know, I was one. Adults expect them to have little romances, and they kind of think they ought to have them because that’s what grown-up women do, but really they’re little girls, and they have no idea how to go about it. Boys are a mystery. Ask Lark. She will tell you.”
Lark was Cerise’s younger sister. Jack looked down at the table again. “Lark and I aren’t friends anymore.”
Cerise stopped stirring the rabbit in the pan. “Since when?”
“Since two weeks ago.”
“What happened?” William asked. “Did you do something?”
Jack shook his head. “She said that she and I were too much of the same. She said I was wild and she was wild, and when we got together, we were crazy. She says she isn’t mad at me, but she won’t go to the woods to hunt with me anymore. She spends time with George now. She says he’s civilized.”
He wasn’t even sure what the hell that meant. One day, Lark was there; the next, she wasn’t. It pissed him off and made him sad, until he was too confused to do anything about it.
William fixed him with his wolf eyes. “Lark is broken in the head.”
“Damaged,” Cerise said with steel in her voice.