Morty huffed a soft laugh. “It’s the farthest thing from that to them, but it’s not talked about or seen except behind closed doors. Their turn at The Quest. Their turn to secure power. Not for them, but for their families.”
What Izzy had shared at the bougie thrift store came back to me—the pressure they were under, how their families saw them as little more than pawns to use within the Camelot Society, and how they’d had their roles drilled into them from an early age.
Their role in The Quest had been more than I’d thought.
Morty nodded at the acceptance in my expression, and he kept going. “You showed up with all your attitude and poor judgment, and what’d they do when you seemed like a threat?”
I scoffed. “They tried to drown me.”
His dark eyes pierced mine, his lips flattening into a thin line as he shook his head. “They held your arms and pushed your head into the lake. When you were already weak, but not long enough to drown you.”
“How do you?—?”
“They wanted to scare you off. They wanted you to run. It looks very different when they want to kill you, little princess.”
The ghost of emotion lingering in his eyes returned, and I pieced together what he meant. “Is that?—?”
Though I’d stepped away from him, Landon remained in my peripheral vision, and I felt more than saw him stiffen.
Kingston had shared that he used to swim.
Morty spat, “They didn’t want an outsider winning their game. So, they let her take the wrong path. Made sure she got the wrong information. Knowingexactlyhow it would end.”
My eyes widened, trying to understand. “How?—?”
“By giving it to me.”
He clenched his jaw, face twisting with something…almost sinister.
But grief haunted me to this day, and it reflected as sharply in Morty’s features as it had in the cemetery with Kingston.
With everything they’d shared in pieces so far, I put the truth together. He had loved her, and they found out. They hadn’t wanted her to win, so they killed her.
And they gave him the information that did it.
Staining his palms with her blood, they tied up their loose ends and kept power in their clean hands.
When I said as much to Morty, he nodded, and my position in this game became perfectly clear.
It was the same as hers.
“What was the false information?” I asked him.
“You’re asking the wrong Dread.Andthe wrong question.”
Kingston stepped forward. “Morty?—”
But Morty ignored him.
Eyes locked on mine, he kept going. “There will come a time when you have to make a choice. You’re smart enough to get there. You’ll solve the riddles, find each clue, and make it to the depths of this hellscape. But how will you know which way to go?”
“I don’t—Morty, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You will. And the answer is simple, Quinn Everly.”
Kingston’s voice rose. “Morty, stop this! You’ll ruin her chance to win by telling her too much.”
Again, he shirked his order. “You go back to the beginning. It all goes back to that.”
