King of Fools

by Amanda Foody

  They played for a few rounds. Each time Enne reached for a new card, she held her breath, preparing for a Shadow Card’s vision to take over. Every so often, she looked across the table, expecting to see Levi, sickly and draining of life.

  “This party is mostly Irons,” the dealer told her. “How do you know Pup?”

  “We’re friends,” she mumbled. Friends who’d barely spoken in weeks.

  “They’re not close,” Grace said, then nudged Enne sharply in the ribs, scooting her another inch closer to the dealer. Enne shot her a stormy look.

  “Didn’t you come back with him?” The dealer furrowed his eyebrows. “I remember, when he came back from the bridge, you were behind him.”

  Enne was surprised anyone had noticed them at all, amid the hollers and cheers for Levi.

  “I was there,” she told him drily, turning away from him and attempting to focus, once more, on the game. This was supposed to be a party, but all Enne felt was irritated. “I was there for all of it.”

  “At the bridge?”

  Enne should’ve been more careful, but she couldn’t help herself. “For the bridge. For the meeting at the Catacombs. For the death of Semper.” As she spoke, the image of Semper behind her vanished, like a bullet tearing through smoke.

  Enne didn’t know much about the game, but she had a pair of queens, and she was certain that counted for something. “Fifth round is the first reveal, right?” She threw the pair down on the table, then scooted the extra inch closer to the dealer, close enough that their legs touched.

  But the dealer was no longer paying attention. He stared at the cards, or maybe at the table—anywhere but at her.

  He swallowed uncomfortably. “I...” His eyes flickered to something over her shoulder, and he quickly stood up, stumbling over a chair leg. Enne supposed others might find his clumsiness charming, but his lopsided smile seemed rehearsed, the more she saw it.

  “I’ll take over this game, Tommy.”

  A drink was thrust into the dealer’s hands, which he nervously accepted before hurrying off.

  Levi slid into his place and collected the cards. “Why don’t we start over?” he asked, but the players, too, were leaving the table.

  “Look who finally graced us with his presence,” Grace said flatly.

  Levi ignored her and shuffled the cards, cascading them nimbly between his fingers. Enne stared at the bit of silver peeking out of his breast pocket. She’d been given a similar card by Sedric Torren, but she’d left hers behind in the House of Shadows. It only brought bad memories, and she didn’t want to wear her pain like a trophy. She wondered if that’s how Levi looked back on the night that haunted her—just another victory, just another story.

  Levi dealt out hands for only him and her. Grace cleared her throat. “What about me?” she asked.

  “I’d like to talk to Enne,” he said. He had a seriousness to his voice that told her he’d come to talk about business. That was what they were after all—business partners. Nothing more.

  Enne nodded for Grace to leave, and then she and Levi were alone.

  “I’m going to send messengers to the other lords,” he told her. “We need to meet again. Tomorrow night. And if they’re true to their word, they’ll open up twenty percent to your market.”

  “You shouldn’t have put my plan on the line like that,” Enne snapped at him. “You had no right.”

  “They were going to decline it. It’s thanks to me they now have to give it a chance.”

  “And what would you have done today if I hadn’t been there? I have nothing to thank you for.”

  Levi pursed his lips. This would’ve been the perfect opportunity to actually thank her, but he seemed intent on ignoring it. “Are you prepared? Because I already made a list of businesses to ask to invest.”

  “That’s great. You can give the list to Grace. She’ll help me take care of it.”

  Maybe she was even more bitter than she’d thought. Enne sifted through her cards so she could look at something other than him wincing.

  “I want to help you, Enne.” He whispered her name—it wasn’t an apology, but there was fear in his voice.

  “Do you?” she asked. “Because I never hear from you. You’ve been keeping secrets. How did you get the whiteboots to evacuate Revolution Bridge? Why aren’t there any whiteboots in Olde Town?”

  He stiffened. “I can’t tell you that. It’s too—”

  “Dangerous?” she guessed, letting out a quiet laugh. She squeezed her cards so hard they bent. “If we were really in this together, we actually would be—risk and reward.” She didn’t want to be the forgotten face in Levi’s legends. Being partners was a pretty thought, but if it wasn’t meant to be, then she would rather become a legend on her own.

  “You’re right.” He put his hand on hers and pried her fingers away from the cards. She hadn’t realized she’d been trembling. “Why don’t we leave? I don’t want anyone to overhear.”

  That proposition seemed dangerous in its own way, but even so, Enne nodded and let him lead her out of the party. They crept down the corridor into an empty room, one that was still uncleaned and coated in broken window glass. Levi closed the door behind them, silencing the music. A breeze from outside swept through the room, sticky and smelling of the sea.

  “I didn’t want to tell you this. Because Vianca can’t know.” Levi paused. “This is the part where you agree with me. That you’re too easily compromised. That I shouldn’t tell you.”

  “No, I think you should,” Enne said indignantly. She blew a sweaty strand of hair out of her face.

  Levi sighed and walked toward what remained of the windows. Enne measured the distance between them and took a step back to make it wider.

  “The morning after the Shadow Game,” Levi started, “I met Harrison Augustine, and I made a deal with him.”

  Enne’s thoughts returned to Worner Prescott’s party that afternoon, how Vianca had trembled under the scrutinizing, judgmental gazes of everyone in the room. Levi was playing with fire.

  “So that’s why there aren’t any whiteboots in Olde Town?” she asked. “That’s why the bridge was already cleared?”

  Levi nodded. “I didn’t want to tell you because—”

  “Because it’s another secret to keep from Vianca,” she finished. Admittedly, that was a worthwhile reason. If the tables were reversed, she wasn’t sure she’d have behaved any differently. “But...if she does find out...” A shiver of fear ran down her spine. Maybe—as irritating as it was to admit—he shouldn’t have told her after all. “She’ll kill you, Levi.”

  He snorted. “Vianca would never kill me.”

  “You didn’t see her today, since Harrison’s candidacy was announced. She was humiliated...and furious.” All that belief in legacy, and her legacy had betrayed her.

  “Even so, we won’t need to worry about Vianca forever. Harrison intends to kill her.”

  Enne’s eyes widened. It felt wrong to wish for murder, but Vianca Augustine was an exception. “When?”

  “After the election, should he win,” Levi said. He leaned against the wall, his gaze fixed out the window. “I can’t be the one to pull the trigger, but I’ll help him...in whatever way I can. It’s not just about my freedom—it’s also about yours. I want to make that right.”

  “I don’t blame you for introducing me to Vianca,” she murmured. “You know that.”

  His expression told her he felt otherwise. Despite everyone in the museum toasting his triumph, Levi looked ill. His eyes were sunken, and his voice weak.

  “You were sent to the Shadow Game for no fault of your own, but I wasn’t,” he said. “I’d cheated half the city. And I can’t take back the things I did to you, or to Chez, or to Reymond, but I can make penance.”

  She’d had no idea Levi felt that way. Maybe she’d been too harsh w
ith him. It’d been hard not to look at this party and the silver card in his pocket and assume his fame had gone to his head.

  “I don’t think you made that many mistakes, Levi,” she told him, joining him beside the window. The cool air made chills creep across her skin. “You’re just punishing yourself. I was at the Shadow Game for hurting Sedric Torren—and not just because Vianca made me. Because I wanted to hurt him.”

  Levi shook his head. “I found out this morning that Chez died from the wounds I gave him. Sedric deserved to die—Chez didn’t.”

  Enne stilled. “Do the Irons know?”

  “Everyone knows.”

  “But...the party... I thought Chez used to look after them.”

  “He did.” Levi’s voice was distant, somewhere else. “For months at the end of the scheme, I was paying my way out by stealing from the Irons. And I’m scared there’s nothing I can do to make up for that.”

  Enne could never imagine stealing from her friends, but Levi had been desperate. Before she’d come to New Reynes, he’d suffered Vianca alone.

  “Did Chez know?” Enne asked.

  Levi shook his head. “He would’ve tried to kill me much earlier, if he had. Mansi found out, and now she’s gone. I don’t blame her.”

  Enne was about to tell him that she didn’t think any less of him, that she knew him. He was loyal and clever and good, and no matter what mistakes he’d made in his past, he deserved his successes now. She was even about to reach for him, her own embarrassment and bitterness be damned.

  But then he continued. “There’s something else. Harrison wants information on the Torren Family. He asked me to send someone inside their empire, to find out who the next don would be. Someone I could trust.”

  “Jac,” she said. The person Levi trusted most in the world.

  “He wouldn’t want me telling you this.” He sighed and rested his head against the doorframe. “But I think it’s important you understand why I’ve done what I have.”

  “You don’t need to keep making me understand. I don’t think you’re half as terrible as you seem to. Selfish and infuriating, maybe, but not terrible.”

  He smiled weakly. “A few years ago, Jac was working a job that got him mixed up with Lullaby, a Torren-owned drug—one sold all up and down Chain Street.”

  Enne’s breath hitched. She hadn’t known that.

  “He was addicted for almost a year. It happened around the same time I started working for Vianca, so I hardly ever saw him. Sometimes he’d disappear for weeks on end. He ran himself broke. Every time we met, I didn’t know which Jac I would face—the one lulled and empty, or the one who was withdrawing...and angry. For a while, I hated him. He’d say awful things. He’d go through these cycles over and over, until it nearly killed him.” Levi drew in a shuddering breath, a haunted look crossing his face. “After I dragged him out of that place and he realized he’d overdosed, he promised he’d get clean. And he did.”

  Enne stared at the sparkling city skyline because it was easier than looking at him. “And after all of that, you sent him to the Torrens?” In some ways, that seemed a worse crime than killing Chez. Jac was Levi’s best friend.

  “I never should’ve asked him to do this. But he agreed. He wanted to do it.” Levi squeezed his hands into a fist. “So if one more person smiles at me or cheers for me, I think I’ll be sick again.”

  Enne noted the word again and softened her voice. He didn’t need someone else to hate him when he clearly already hated himself. “Lucky for you I wasn’t going to do either of those things.”

  “What will you do then? Leave?”

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  He laughed hollowly. “No. I want everyone else to leave, but not you.”

  Enne tried not to dwell on what his words could mean. He was the one who’d taught her to second-guess herself.

  “I thought the deal with Harrison would make me feel more in control. And then the wager with the other lords. What happened today at the bridge.” He closed his eyes. “I don’t feel in control.”

  “For what it’s worth,” she told him, “I forgive you. I forgive the terrible choices you made, even if you don’t forgive yourself. Because I understand why you made them, more than Mansi or Jac or anyone. I know what it’s like to feel helpless around Vianca. I know how it feels to have no control.”

  For the first time since they entered the room, he turned to look at her, and the city lights shining through the window cast splintered shadows across his face.

  “You understand better than anyone,” he murmured. “But you have no idea how hard it is to control myself, when...”

  He stepped closer, close enough to touch her, and Enne didn’t trust herself to move. She shouldn’t still want him, not after the rejection, the secrets, but it was hard not to reach for him. And so she focused her gaze on the floor and the shards of glass beneath their shoes, reminding her how easily another move could cut.

  “I don’t...” Levi swallowed and slid his hand around her waist, pulling her into him. His hand cupped her cheek, and he tilted her chin up to look at him and the distress in his eyes. “I don’t accept your forgiveness.”

  He squeezed the fabric of her dress, making its sleeve slip from her shoulder. Gently, he slid her hair to the side and brushed his lips against her bare skin. She shivered. All of his touches were slow and deliberate, as if he’d given each of them some thought. And that realization enraged her.

  He wanted her. He’d wanted her even when he’d told her he didn’t. He’d wanted her even while he’d spent his nights with someone else.

  She wanted to slap him. She wanted to kiss him and draw an apology from between his lips.

  Instead, she whispered. “You’re still keeping secrets.” Because Levi was right—she understood better than anyone, and so she was the only one with the power to forgive him. And that meant there was another secret he still hadn’t told her.

  He froze, his forehead pressed against hers. “You’re right,” he breathed, but he didn’t move. “Before Jac agreed to the job, he made me promise something in return. And so... I told him I wouldn’t... That I wouldn’t be with...”

  Enne didn’t need to ask him what he meant. It was obvious from the way his hand tightened around her waist, tugging her closer when there was no space left between them. The truth wasn’t that he wanted her. The truth was that he wanted her, and it ate at him.

  She should kiss him, just to break his promise and see if it broke him, too.

  Instead, Enne hissed, “Why would he ask that?”

  “Because Vianca would use us against each other,” Levi answered. “That’s what he said, and he’s right. She loves the idea of us together. We’d be giving her what she wants.”

  But even as he spoke those warnings, his gaze still fixed on her lips. Still, this wasn’t desire, she realized. It was defeat.

  Enne pushed herself away from him, and he staggered back. “You’re unbelievable. Did you like knowing that I wanted this? That you could go home with whoever you wanted, and that I would still be here waiting?”

  He cringed. “No. Muck, no. Of course not—”

  “Then you must be terribly thick.” Enne swallowed. She was working herself into tears, but she didn’t care. “If Vianca asked me to save you again, right now, I would. If she hurt you to get to me, then it would work. Wouldn’t it be the same for you?”

  “Of course it would.” He started to reach for her, but Enne swatted his hand away.

  “You do not get to touch me.” Tears finally spilled down her cheeks. She didn’t care how broken he felt tonight—he couldn’t use her as a weapon for his own self-destruction. “Your promise was useless from the start. Only now it’s worse, because if Vianca used you to manipulate me, it would still work, but I would hate myself for it.”

  Levi flinched as though she’d
slapped him for a third time that night.

  “I’m glad you have your gang back,” she said, reaching up to wipe the tears away. “I’m glad Jac came here with a girl and looks so happy.”

  “You know I’m not happy,” he rasped. “I don’t deserve any of their praise up there, but I’m trying so hard to be better. I just don’t know how to be better if I don’t keep this promise to Jac.”

  “Fine,” she snapped. “Then I’m glad we’re both miserable.”

  She stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind her so he wouldn’t follow. When she returned to the party, she immediately made for Grace, who was dancing with an Iron boy. Grace took one look at Enne and pushed him aside.

  “That bastard,” she muttered. “What happened?”

  “We’re leaving,” Enne answered. “Tell Lola.” While Grace hurried to find their friend, who’d abandoned her music with Tock so they could dance to someone else’s, Enne retreated to the edge of the room. The last thing she wanted was to run into Jac right now.

  Lola stormed over, Grace behind her. “Are you alright?” she asked.

  Enne wiped away her smudged makeup with the back of her hand. “All this time, I’ve felt like a thickhead, but then he told me that he made a promise to Jac not to...” It felt pathetic even to say it.

  “That’s a muck promise,” Grace snapped, “and we’ll kill them both.”

  Grace grabbed her dagger necklace, and Enne thought, for a moment, she would actually have to tell her not to murder the Iron boys. But then Grace drew the blade across her palm. Blood spilled on the floor.

  “Tell me your real name,” she said.

  Enne knew what this was. And she also knew from the fierceness in Grace’s dark eyes that she had earned it. It was the only thing Grace could’ve given her to make her feel better, to make her feel powerful once more. So Enne whispered her true name into Grace’s ear, and Grace spoke the words. “Blood by blood. Oath by oath. Life by life.”

  “Thank you,” Enne said when Grace finished.