Page 7 of The Bargain

When I’m done reading, I give Austen his phone back, kneel by Birnam, take his phone from his pocket, shivering with the disgust of touching such a thing. I place it in my own pocket, alongside William’s ring. Then I make the twins take off their clothes and rinse themselves in the lake.

I watch them as they wade into the black water, and I feel nothing as Birnam’s blood washes away from them, nothing more than an inconvenient stain. The wind is cold at my back; my voice is colder still as I issue my commands.

“Don’t tell anyone about this. Not a soul. Not Mum or Dad or Blaise or Dimitri. Especially not Dimitri. Keep your mouths shut. As far as anyone knows, you were at the party till I turned up, and then I walked you back to your dorm. Don’t touch anything when you get in: straight into the shower, then to bed. Everything back to normal tomorrow. Understood?”

They nod, eyes wide.

“What about Ophelia?” William asks.

Ophelia.

A wave of nausea rolls through my stomach, dense and heavy. Birnam’s message flashes in my mind—an afterburn I can’t erase, a permanent scar. The things he didn’t say in that message are somehow a thousand times worse than the things he did say.

I swallow back the nausea, shake my head.

“I’ll talk to Ophelia.”

The boys nod again. Finally, they glance towards the wreckage at my feet. Austen looks at William, who is the one to speak.

“And what about him?”

I look down at the broken, misshapen body of Birnam Hastings. Something cold and solid settles over me, as if my entire being has become steel.

“He’s alive. He’ll be fine.”

He’s alive, I think. He should be dead.

I wish he was dead.

“You’re not to speak of this again. To anyone. I’ll handle it.”

“How?”

“That’s not for you to worry about.”

“But—”

“Go back to your dorms. Now. Forget about this, alright? Don’t make me repeat myself. I said I’ll take care of it.”

The boys’ mouths snap closed. They know when I say I’ll handle it⁠—

—it means I will.

Birnam deserves what happened to him—but that doesn’t matter.

I don’t really know what happened between him and Ophelia—I’m going to have to work hard to get her to tell me, because Ophelia barely talks to me these days. Whatever Birnam did, the damage has already been done. The best I can do is tend to the wounds.

I’ve worked so hard to ensure my siblings would all be fine, but I failed. Now, an actual crime has been committed. A crime that will destroy my brothers’ lives, taint our family name. The backlash on Mum, after all the criminals she’s put away, would be unfathomable.

No matter what, I cannot allow this to happen. Whether or not Birnam wakes up, his parents will be coming for blood. Every crime needs a culprit. Someone has to pay. It can’t be my brothers, so it’s going to have to be somebody else.

And in Spearcrest, there’s only one person who would ever risk doing something like that. The question isn’t whether he’ll agree.

The question is what price he’ll make me pay.

@spearcrestinquisitor

One should never mistake privilege for invincibility.