by S. K Munt
‘Look who’s talking!’ Aaron barked at her. ‘Want to know why I don’t like you Finn? It’s because, back in eighth, I heard you telling Cara that you didn’t get what Bonnie and Mischa saw in me!’
‘I said that because you threw tissues at me and asked if I was missing something for no reason other than to get a laugh out of your mates!’ Finn cried. ‘And you know what? I stand by that opinion! You made fun of kids when they got a zit, even though you had a full face of acne! You mocked girls that did their hair special, even when you hadn’t washed yours for a week! You wagged class to smoke cones so people would think you’re cool, then acted like it was everyone else’s fault when you flunked a test… and you’re still doing that sort of thing every day now! You are pathetic, and as sick as I am of Bonnie’s crap right now, I cannot wait for the day when she realises that she belongs with someone in Amory’s league- and you belong in a cardboard box on the side of the road!’
‘Finn-’ Cara hissed. ‘Ms Shevington’s coming!’
‘Well I’m leaving anyway!’ Finn snapped, turning on her heel. ‘And don’t worry- this Cling won’t be coming back to bother you guys ever again!’
‘Finn please…!’ Bonnie cried, sounding hysterical.
Aaron snorted. ‘Going to sit with Jade and the band geeks Finn? Good! Oh, and tell her to tell Reeve I said hi while you’re there, kay?’
Finn froze, but Mischa was the one who gasped: ‘What?’
‘Oh didn’t you hear?’ Aaron chuckled, while Finn’s skin crawled like she’d been covered in radiation again. ‘Jade hopped right on that barge the other day after Finn ran away, determined to convince Reeve to give Finn a second chance. Only somehow, over the weekend, she forgot why she was there, and convinced Reeve to take her to the wedding this weekend instead so… she’s been avoiding Finn since, because she doesn’t know how to tell her.’ Aaron snorted. ‘I, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to share that news, you know?’
‘Oh god….’ Bonnie whimpered, as Finn’s heart hit the concrete beneath her hard enough to punch a hole through it. ‘Finny…’
‘Goddamn it Bonnie…’ Cara muttered. ‘Finn’s right- you need to put a muzzle on him!’
‘Why’s everything my fault all of a sudden?’ Bonnie wailed. ‘Isn’t it Jade we ought to be ripping a new one? She’s the one who’s stolen Finn’s boyfriend!’
Finn had been about to retreat back to the library, not to wherever Jade and Gemma were, but Aaron’s announcement, and Bonnie’s summary of what had actually just happened, shattered her so completely that she turned on her heel and raced toward the castle gates instead, knowing she’d be expelled for leaving the school in the middle of the day, but not caring, because she never wanted to see another single person that went there ever again anyway!
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Finn was not surprised when she received a messenger at her van about an hour after homeroom time on Thursday morning, informing her that she was required to report to the king as soon as possible. She didn’t want to leave the safety of her nook, because by that point, she’d gone so long without being able to stomach food that she’d been almost too weak to stand, and because she’d cried so hard over Jade’s betrayal (and Bonnie’s stupid, painted shirts) the night before that she’d developed a headache that her mother’s herbal remedies could not corral. But she’d forced herself to get dressed anyway, because she was sick of not knowing what was to become of her, and figured that at least being officially expelled from school would give her some clue as to how to proceed from there!
If I’m out, I’ll agree to do whatever stupid job he wants me to do until I’ve saved enough to buy a car! Then once I have one, I’ll apply for leave, and take mum looking for Autumn for a while, whether Amory likes it or not! Finn had thought as she’d brushed her teeth and dressed quickly in the old jeans she’d once ripped herself, which suddenly fit her again now that she’d lost at least three kilograms. But if he tries to reason with me to stay in school for the sake of my stupid Potential and that stupid contract for another nine years, I’ll pretend I’m gonna do it and the Broadsound job too! But the moment I’ve saved enough money to buy a car- which will happen faster with that other job- I am SO out of here anyway!
Finn went outside to tell her mother where she was going and why, but then hesitated when she saw that her mother was hunched over in her vegetable garden- or what was left of it- sobbing quietly while clutching her avocado tree, which had been snapped in half by the collapsed lattice. Seeing her there alone like that, trying to muffle her misery so her daughter wouldn’t overhear it and take it personally made something inside Finn’s chest ache the same way it had when she’d learned about Reeve and Jade, and suddenly, Finn couldn’t bear the thought of giving her mother any more cause to worry. So she’d gone back inside and had hastily written a note, explaining where she’d gone and why, before slipping out the back, the same way the burglar had, sniffling back tears of her own all the while.
The castle was hectic that day because there were staff everywhere, running around with fabric swatches, crates of what looked like real champagne and decorations, prepping for the big day that Finn would no longer be attending. Yes, she wanted to see Miriam crowned at long last, but she wanted to avoid seeing Reeve with another girl more, so she and her mother had decided to sit it out. In fact, her mother said she’d rather be tarred and feathered, than show an ounce of support for ‘that horrid man,’ and though Finn had understood why she’d said that, she’d begged her mother to refrain from saying anything like it again, lest a loyalist should overhear her!
Finn had expected to have been made to wait, given how many people had been already waiting in the corridor outside Amory’s office when she’d arrived, but one of the staff had spotted her and had ushered her in immediately while shooing out a chef, and though Finn had prepared to see the king and Lady Miriam in all sorts of states when she’d arrived, she had not expected to see him sitting behind a pile of her possessions- including a stack of notebooks tall enough to reach his chin- and she was so stunned by the frightening sight that she’d had to shoot her hand out to steady herself against a wall.
‘Miss Monroe!’ the king managed to convey the grim mood he was in with just his red, watery eyes over the top of her notebooks. ‘Please… close the door and lock it behind you. As you can see- this is a very personal matter.’
Finn clumsily reached out and slammed the door, then collapsed back against it, wondering how many people had already seen her soul stripped bare like that. ‘Oh my god…’ she bladed her hands over her nose, eyeing the journals, which were stuffed with her thoughts about everything, from his ability to lead them, to the desires that Reeve’s kisses had awakened within her. ‘How did you…?’
‘A Tutela in my employ was caught out of bounds on Monday night, attempting to cross from the Peninsula and into the kingdom, via the woods, just behind the refuse centre,’ the king said coolly, leaning back in his chair and studying her intently. ‘And he was also caught trying to stash a large black bag behind the recyclable materials after he’d been sighted.’ Amory raised his eyebrows. ‘He told the guard on duty there who caught him- Granger, of course- that he’d gone to do some fishing, but Granger was suspicious over the fact that he had a traveling bag instead of a reel, so he ordered the Tutela to leave the bag where he’d deposited it and then walk away without making a fuss, unless he fancied getting himself shot. The Tutela in question did as he was told, but no one’s seen him since so it’s presumed that he left town shortly after, and evidently has no intention of returning, because he took most of his stuff with him.’ Amory gestured to the books, ‘And now that I’ve seen what was inside that bag, I can’t say I’m surprised- because he knew that a report had already been filed against him, didn’t he? And that it would only be a matter of time before his lost property was flagged as being your stolen property?’
Finn still had her hands over her face but she nodded, eyes wide. Was that wh
y Granger had wanted to see her? To tell her he’d finally managed to read some of ‘that book’ she’d been writing? God! How close had he come to getting shot because of her?!
‘Anyway… Granger took one look in that bag and knew what he’d found and who it belonged to, so he delivered it straight to me. He hadn’t known the name of the Tutela at the time, but we worked it out after he failed to report for duty yesterday afternoon, and since then I’ve managed to get quite a few kids to admit that he’s the guard that’s helped sneak them out in the past. And that apparently, he did so because he was quite sweet on Miss Janks, who is evidently a heavy drinker. Not to mention, a masterful liar.’ The king’s face contracted in anguish. ‘As my half-brother is… yes?’
Finn’s stomach sucked into her spine. ‘Y-you…worked it out?’
Amory barked out a laugh and stood up, turning to look out the window. ‘Worked it out?’ He echoed. ‘Indeed, I did. Not that it was difficult, once I had your diaries in hand.’ He cleared his throat as Finn squeezed her eyes shut. ‘You’re quite the writer, Miss Monroe.’ He turned to look back at her, arching one eyebrow. ‘Funny and insightful as well. And dare I say…. an idealist, like myself?’
‘Oh my god…’ Finn groaned. ‘How much did you read?’
‘Just snippets from the more personal ones…’ Amory said, lowering his eyes. ‘Enough to confirm that everything you’d said was true, and that everything you failed to say out of fear, had damned you.’ He swallowed hard. ‘Of course, the natural inclination would be for me to ask why you didn’t report Liam, but now that I’ve had access to your confidences… I don’t suppose I need to, do I? Why would I take your word over the word of my own flesh and blood and one of our finest students, if you couldn’t get the boy who loved you so dearly for so long to give you the benefit of the doubt first?’
Finn began to weep into her hands then. She wanted to feel relieved that the king finally believed her, but his knowing what had happened didn’t change the fact that it had happened, and that there was no coming back from it now. Amory could apologise until he was blue in the face, and Finn was fairly certain that that was what he was about to do. But she couldn’t get Reeve to un-dump her, and even if she could, how would she ever be able to look at him the same way again anyway, now that he’d made her feel as worthless as he once had precious? ‘The damage had already been done…’ she whispered brokenly. ‘So I just tried to get out of it without doing more…’
‘You did more damage to yourself though,’ Amory protested, slicking his golden hair out of his eyes. ‘You accepted punishments you didn’t deserve to save Cara, who forced you to have the party in the first place and like you’ve said, probably wouldn’t have cared if you’d shown up or not!’
‘Well, Cara was already the least of my problems by then, your highness,’ Finn said honestly. ‘And she’s been a better friend to me this week out of fear of me dobbing her in then most of my oldest friends have been in general.’ She shrugged. ‘Punishment I knew I could handle. But selling out the only ally I had left seemed like a suicide mission, you know?’
Amory frowned. ‘But from what I’ve heard… you ripped your so-called allies to shreds very publicly yesterday anyway…?’
Finn snorted. ‘True. But by then, the word suicide had had a pretty nice ring to it too so…’ she shrugged, ‘there’s that.’
‘God.’ Amory groaned and leaned his face forward into his hands. ‘I don’t get it! You’ve been through so much, and you all have so much potential power to tap into one day rushing through your veins… yet all of them bar you expend more energy on destroying one another, than on simply bettering themselves! Why?’
Finn snorted softly. ‘No offence, King Amory, but it’s kind of funny that you assumed that being offered more power in a scarier world would make teenage girls better people. I mean… torturing one another until the weakest suicided was a treasured pastime amongst cliques before the Strike as it was, so what did you think would happen after you upped the ante by offering the victors a chance to move into a castle if they came out on top?!’
Amory sighed. ‘Well, I can see that now, so I thank you for being one of the few Potentials with a bit of perspective about what actually matters.’ He swallowed hard and appraised her. ‘I can’t decide if you’re very brave, very foolish or a very good blend of both, but I know I owe you big-time either way.’ Amory cringed at her and sat back down behind his desk. ‘More than even you know, because I’m afraid, I’m going to have to ask you to make another sacrifice for the greater good here before you leave this office today.’
Finn rubbed away tears with the back of her hands, sighing. She was already furious with him for what she knew he was going to ask, but she was so emotionally exhausted that all she could manage to do to get that message across, was to eye him as disdainfully as he had eyed her on Monday as she asked: ‘You’re going to ask me not to file a report against Liam… aren’t you?’
Amory bit his lip, lowering his reddened, faded blue eyes. ‘We’re a lot alike you know, Miss Monroe…’ he murmured softly. ‘We both came from what many people would label as being the wrong side of the tracks…’
‘Come again?’ Finn raised an eyebrow. ‘Wasn’t your father in line for the British throne once?’
‘Yes but… look I don’t want to bore you with all of the details, but by the time we moved here when I was eight, my mother had left my father for another man and taken most of his money- leaving him just his title, and a lot of very public humiliation, which is why we had to move here, you see? To escape the stigma of being a broken family with a diminished fortune and a tarnished name, which had once been a great one.’ A ghost of a smile haunted his lips then. ‘My father started earning a good living at the mines after we’d been here for a while, but that turn in fortune didn’t come until I’d been almost twenty, and had already suffered through the public school system as a poor foreigner, and had paid my way to getting a real-estate license by working as a cleaner out at the mines for quite some time.’ He made a face. ‘My father always felt guilty about how things had turned out for me, so once his position was secure, he told me I could sell the only property he owned in Western Australia- which we no longer used anyway- and then use that money as a nest egg.’ His lip twitched. ‘Turned out though, it was very valuable land, so I made a killing, and managed to buy two townhouses with the profits. I chose carefully, and had a lot of luck, so by the time I was twenty-five, I’d bought and sold twelve properties, and had started looking into commercial stuff as well.’
‘Sounds a lot like you were playing Monopoly…’ Finn murmured, and Amory chuckled, taking another sip from his glass.
‘Indeed I was, but dammit… I was good at it Finn- still am.’ He sighed and gazed down into his glass while Finn smirked, thinking of how little distinction there was between someone with a large real-estate portfolio and a king anyway. ‘Unfortunately though, I was originally as unlucky in love as my father has proven to be. My first wife, who I married just two years after my father married his second wife and had Liam- thought I was obsessed with my work, and ended up leaving me when the kids were still young then moving here to Queensland. I followed her so I wouldn’t fall out of touch with them the way I had with my mother, or the way Liam had with our father after his mother had left our dad too, and my dad followed me shortly after, and got a better job in the mining industry here- a promotion that dad had sorely needed by then because his second wife had cleaned him out as thoroughly as his first had.’ He shrugged. ‘Dad was incredibly proud of us both for having made our family name a powerful one again, as was I, but Liam never had our luck or our drive. He’d stayed over there with his mother, and rarely had any contact with our father at all, but when he did, he’d lash out at us, raging how unfair it was that my father had followed one son across the country, but had abandoned the other. We didn’t understand why he was so mad, because he’d been the one to blow off most of his visits with dad, but when he was
thirteen, it came out that his new step-father had abused him for about three years by then, so Liam was just mad at the world in general- and understandably so.’ Amory blanched, as did Finn. ‘I felt sick for the poor kid, so we paid for him to move here, so he could be with our dad while his mother went through with her second divorce- but he never recovered from it, Finn, and has been using gaming and pot as a crutch since.’ Shadows passed behind Amory’s eyes. ‘I always wondered if maybe he’d been damaged in a sexual way, but he ended up going through a lot of girls, and they were the ones doing the chasing, so I figured he’d be fine and that sooner or later, he’d find a nice girl like Mimi to settle down with and finally turn his life around, you know? But only after he’d had the time to distance himself from his personal tragedy.’ He drained his glass and then put it back down on the table. ‘But then the Strike happened, and I guess it was one tragedy too many for him, so he’s gone downhill again since- mostly due to grief over his mother, who we’re pretty sure is dead, given where she’d lived at the time.’ Amory unbuttoned his top button. ‘It’s no secret that he’s always resented me, but we knew he was lonely for kids his own age out at the mines, and because we knew having a solid peer group had helped my two to deal with the loss of their own mother, dad and I decided to move him here for a while, to see if a change of scene might cheer him up, and in the hopes that he might finally take an interest in school.’ Liam sighed. ‘He’s shown me attitude, of course, going on about how unfair it is that I’m a king and he’s a nobody just because our father gifted me the only asset he had once…and gives me a hard time over the fact that my bride to be is closer to his age than she is to mine all the time. But aside from the pot-smoking, he’d given me no reason to question his conduct. And truthfully, I was relieved that it was Georgia’s crowd he fell in with, because I thought they’d be a good influence on him.’