Gabriel rolls his eyes. He’s in no state to get to the bottom of this, but that’s why I’m here. I protect him. “Why is that? What is this urgent need to have your son, whom you disowned and disinherited, married off so suddenly? Answer me this and I might consider helping you.”
“You must not breathe a word of it,” she hisses. “If the duke’s political enemies get word of his condition, they’ll crucify him.”
“His condition?”
Her mouth droops. “Bone cancer of the most aggressive sort. His body is riddled with it. They’ve given him a year to live.”
Gabriel’s body stiffens. I squeeze his arm, but he doesn’t acknowledge me. His eyes flutter shut and he checks out of his body, goes somewhere among the stars where I can’t reach him.
His father’s dying.
“The duke seemed very sprightly in the drawing-room earlier,” I can’t help but remark.
“He’s a proud man. He hides his pain well, but he’s losing weight rapidly and he hasn’t the energy for his duties. We’ve been seeking treatment in Europe, but there’s nothing else that can be done.” She turns away, her chest heaving. But I have a feeling it’s not grief for her dying husband that causes her pain.
There’s something else about Gabe’s father – that defiant look in his eyes when I held the sword to his throat.He knows he’s going to die. He almost welcomes it.
As long as he drags Gabriel down to hell with him.
I won’t give him the satisfaction. I silently vow that I will find a way to make Gabriel the greatest gift I can give – that his father will live to know Gabriel is free of him. That the duke will be forced to watch his empire crumble as his own body betrays him.
“Son,please. If you don’t accept the title, then he’ll divorce me.” Her eyes blaze. “He says that if his son won’t step up to his responsibilities, he must make another son. He’s had his sperm frozen, and he has a young viscountess on standby. I had this one last chance to convince you, and if you don’t agree then I’ll be thrown out without a penny to my name—”
Gabe tears his arm from her grasp. He staggers away, his mouth open. He has so much he wants to say, but no music in his veins to express it. Instead, he lets out a scream that curdles my soul, and takes off for the door.
“Shit.” Noah throws down his sword and starts after him. I dive in front of him and shove him back. Gabe needs me right now.
“Gabriel, come back!” the duchess cries.
She rushes after him, but Noah and Eli step in front of her, blocking her exit. I throw myself into the hallway just as Gabriel disappears around a corner. I take off after him.
“Come back, son.” The duchess’ screams echo from the stone walls. “You must do your duty.”
My chest heaves as I struggle to keep up with Gabriel as he winds his way through the labyrinthine halls. I nearly lose sight of him in a long gallery of creepy portraits, catching up to him just as he disappears up a winding stone staircase. The steps are uneven and worn round on the edges. I scramble up after him, growing dizzier as I climb higher. I have to use the velvet rope pinned to the wall to keep my balance as I wind around and around.
Finally, I reach the landing and step into a round room filled with simple, comfortable furniture coated in layers of dust. The bare stone walls are crowded with photographs, children’s sketches, and Gabriel’s album cover art. There’s no one in the room, but I see a wooden ladder leading into the ceiling.
As I make for the ladder I peer at the images on the walls – pictures of Gabriel as a boy, his dark hair styled in a haircut nearly identical to his father. These aren’t the posed portraits of the galleries downstairs – someone who loved him has taken these candid pictures of Gabriel and another boy playing on the lawns, rowing a boat on the lake, feeding animals, riding horses, drawing, and playing music. The pair of them always together, always grinning wildly.
I recognize the steel-grey eyes and full lips of Dylan O’Connor from band photos. My stomach lurches. I know I’m trespassing in Gabriel’s memories. I need to tread carefully. I turn from the photographs and climb the ladder.
Upstairs is a circular bedroom. We must be in one of the turrets – small arrow slits filled in with glass offer views across the lawns. A single brass bed made up with layers of wool blankets is shoved against one wall, and on the other is a chest for clothes and a rough bookshelf filled with comic books and rockstar biographies. A dusty drum kit sits neglected in an alcove.
Gabriel lies on the bed, staring up at a circular skylight. I climb up beside him and curl up into his armpit.
“This is Dylan’s old room,” he says. “I used to hide up here all the time. The duke would never wish to step into the servant’s quarters to find me. Look.”
He points to the ceiling where someone has scratched his and Dylan’s names into the ancient wood beams. Gabriel chuckles, but his laugh is tinged with sadness. “Liam was so angry when he saw we did that. Liam was Dylan’s dad, and he kind of saw it as his job to father me, too. Satan knows no one else wanted to job. ‘This house is a majestic lady and you’ve treated her like an old tramp,’ he said. He made us scrub the entire ballroom, top-to-bottom, for defacing the castle. But he couldn’t stay mad at us long. He loved this house, and he loved Dylan, and me.”
Gabriel points to a telescope in the corner, so thick with dust and cobwebs it appears to be assimilated into the stone itself. “Liam gave that to Dylan for his tenth birthday. He must’ve saved every penny of the duke’s meager wage for a year to be able to afford it. I’d sneak up here after I was supposed to be in bed and the three of us would train it at the skies and imagine ourselves far away, anywhere but here. Then Liam would sing us to sleep. He knew all these old folk songs, about fairies and water spirits and going off to fight Napoleon. My parents forced me to attend stuffy piano lessons since I was four, but I got my love of music from listening to Liam sing.”
“Where is Liam now?”
Gabriel swallows. “He died. Shortly after Dylan and I left the castle. The duke stumbled across us in one of the outbuildingsin flagrante delicto. He reacted about how you’d expect a conservative peer of the realm to react, said some things that still burn in my nightmares, and threw us out of the house.”
I’ve read enough press interviews with Octavia’s Ruin to know already that Gabriel considers himself pansexual, which he used to play off as simply, ‘I’ll fuck anything that moves’ in true rockstar style. But hearing his voice crack, I see his feelings for Dylan were deep and real to him, and his father’s rejection hurt more than any of the other wounds the duke has inflicted.
“Liam tried to make the duke see sense, and for his efforts my father dismissed him from service. Forty-nine years of loyalty, of practically raising me as his own son, and the duke throws Liam out without a pension. Liam died ten months later from cancer he never told us about, alone in hospice, while Dylan and I were on tour.”
