Tacet a Mortuis (The Elite King's Club 3)

“He’s throwing the party since it’ll be his birthday this weekend.”

“Oh,” was all I could answer with, now that it was just Nate and I, I felt like I didn’t need to hide behind a mask. “What day?”

“June 20th, he’s having it at his new condo in the city.”

“Wait, what?” He got a new condo?” I sunk into my seat, now deeply regretting ever going near Nate and Brantley. I was being a brat, and it wasn’t fair. So what if I was angry with Bishop, I should have handled it another way, not this way, because in all honesty, I didn’t want anyone else’s hands on me. Now learning that it was his birthday soon, I needed to find something to get him.

“Don’t get him anything,” Nate murmured, reading my brain.

“Why?” I asked.

He shook his head. “He’s not with it. Hates it.”

“Too bad.” I swallowed my guilt. “But what do I get the boy who has everything?”

“Easy,” Nate answered. “You get him nothing like I said.”

I sighed. My thoughts were strangling me with the help of my buddy guilt.

“Kitty…” Nate whispered, sliding his seat beside mine. “I know. And it’s okay.”

I shook my head, wiping a stray tear from my cheek. “It’s not okay, Nate. I fucked up—again. Royally.”

“Hey!” His finger hooked under my chin, tilting my face up to his. “We mess around a lot, it was a given because we had chemistry. Bishop knew it, everyone knew it…”

“But I shouldn’t have with you, Nate.” My eyes met his. “You and I both know who we really want.”

His face sobered, and he leaned back in his chair, silence now stretching out. Nate didn’t silence easily, but one mention of Tillie and he would clam up like a shell.

“Nate…” I urged.

His elbows came to rest on his knees. “There’s something wrong with her disappearing act, Mads.”

Mads, not Kitty. He was being serious.

I leaned closer toward him, my hair falling over my shoulder. “I know…”

He shook his head and then leaned into his chair. “I haven’t seen her since we were all out at the cabin. Feels like fucking years ago now.”

Wait. So he hadn’t seen her in that long, which means that when I saw her while I was in the hospital, he didn’t know. My eyebrows furrowed, and I pushed up from my chair.

“I need to, um, go for a second, I just need to see Daemon.”

“Kitty, you know he won’t see you.”

“I have to try, Nate. He’s my brother.”

I walked back into the house, ignoring whatever Nate was about to say and climbed the stairs, taking them two at a time. Heading down the long hallway, I stopped outside his door, resting my forehead against the cool wood.

“Daemon?” I whispered, banging my head softly against it. “I could really do with you right now.” Daemon hadn’t spoken to me since the incident out in the woods, and the handful of times I had seen him, he seemed distant, reserved, and confused. Even more than usual. I grasped onto the metal door handle, and just when I thought about twisting it and opening the door—basically invading his privacy, I exhaled, turned and rested my back against it.

“Well, if you’re not going to open for me,” I started anyway, sliding to the floor, still in Brantley’s shirt and booty shorts that I slept in. “I guess I’m just going to talk and tough if you don’t want to hear it.” I really shouldn’t be testing him. “It’s Bishop, Daemon. I don’t know what to do. I can’t talk to anyone else about him because they all have bias views on him.” I paused, hoping that would have worked. It didn’t. I carried on anyway. “I messed up, he messed up, we’re both sort of just messed up, and I don’t know how to get through our bullshit. It seems whenever we finally start to get things back on track, something else interferes us, and we’re back to square one.”

A ball of emotion rose in my throat, threatening to surface. “I feel too much for him, but he doesn’t feel enough for me.” Before I knew it, a tear had dropped down my cheek. I swiped it away angrily, then chuckled. “So I found out last night that he had slept with my mo—Elizabeth”—I stopped, then corrected myself—“who I thought was my mom, as part of his initiation process, and if that wasn’t bad enough, I also found out that he had been keeping Khales alive all these years, for god knows what reason. I don’t even want to ask him because I already know what he’s going to say.” I sucked in a breath. “Secrets are weapons, and in this world—” Suddenly I was falling backward, my back hitting the floor and my eyes now in view of—“Daemon?” He was standing over my body, the door handle still grasped in his hand. I leaned up onto my elbows and pushed myself up.