Page 52 of Lovely Deceit

“Are you kidding me? You did teach them, love. They were eating out of the palm of your hand. Since when has that happened?” I take a flyaway strand and tuck it behind her ear. “I saw nothing but a show of strength out there. Alaric almost jizzed on Leo’s back. That’s how focused he was.”

She bursts out laughing. “That would’ve been epic.”

Relief floods my veins. “Come on.” I help her move up the bed. After she’s settled, I stand before undressing down to my boxers and then lie next to her, pulling the sheets over us both. She snuggles into the crook of my arm. There’s nothing better than the feel of her chest expanding and deflating against my side.

“So, don’t get mad, but Alaric knows why I’m here.”

I freeze, my grip tightening around her.

She hurries to explain. “Did they tell you what the Deceit Test was?”

I’d figured it was most likely a lie detector test, but I didn’t know Alaric would know to ask the right question. Asshole.

“They put six suction cup things all over my chest and torso. If I lied, I got a little shock. The more I lied, the worse it got.”

I turn toward her. “You’re fucking kidding me, right?” I make some space between us and peer down. There are small, red circles dotted along her chest and stomach that I hadn’t noticed before. “How much did you lie?”

“Not a lot because it obviously didn’t matter. He knows, Oliver. He fucking knows about Delilah and everything.”

I close my eyes, wondering what the hell we’re going to do now. “This is—”

She places her hand on my arm. “I don’t think he’s going to tell,” she whispers. “He has a sister. An older sister that his parents gave away because she wasn’t a boy.” She keeps her voice low, and I have to struggle to hear her. “He found out the day Dee died, and the whole thing has just forced him to act. It’s possible we’re here for similar reasons. He wants to find out what happened to his sister, and I want to find out what happened to mine.”

I take her information in, my stomach squeezing. After all the things I know of that the Knights have done, this shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. Shock ripples through me. The same kind of horror I felt when Eden told me about the talk she had with her dad. He’s genuinely worried for his life if he doesn’t give Leon Forbes what he wants. But that’s not even the worst of it. He told her that Dee was going through her final assessment the evening she died. Whatever happened, she didn’t make it. Sure, they told him it was an accident, and unfortunately, he believes them.

Everything surrounding the Knights is so fucked up. “Do we trust him, then?”

She lays her head back down on my chest. “He said he arranged the Deceit Test so I wouldn’t have to doubt him. He wanted me to know that he was telling the truth.”

“So…”

“So, yeah,” she says, heaving out a sigh. “We trust Alaric Barclay.”

Uneasiness settles in my gut, but I have confidence in Eden’s judgment. She’s always been savvy like that.

“We’ll trust him until he gives us a reason not to. Oh, one more piece of the puzzle slid into place. You know the flowers with the note and magazine pages Dee got? Alaric delivered them…for Leon Forbes.”

That asshole. I wish I would’ve been there when he slapped Eden. I would’ve cracked his skull open on the floor.

I take in a few calming breaths. Anger won’t help me right now. The note that was delivered to Dee said something about her big day and how he memorized every part of her body. “The assessment,” I blurt out. “I wonder if that’s the big day the note was talking about?”

Eden’s head careens back. She locks eyes with me. “Shit. Probably. Which means he was at the assessment.”

“Of course he was. He’s not going to tell us anything, though.”

“But we have our first viable suspect,” she says. “Instead of just saying the Knights, now we actually have one guy who was there. We might be able to figure out all of them. They must keep records of this shit, right?”

“Possibly, but it’s not like they’re going to have written down somewhere that this Knight killed this Fledgling. They’re way too careful for that.”

She deflates. “We’re still so far away.”

I kiss her forehead. “We’re closer than we were. We should try Keegan again. If he loved Delilah like he says, then he’d want to know that his father was sending his fiancée stalker notes.”

Eden shivers next to me. “It’s disgusting the way he always looked at her.”

“At the both of you. No wonder the note mentioned every inch of her body.” I stare up at the ceiling. I feel better knowing that Alaric gave her that piece of information. He easily could’ve hidden it from her since it doesn’t paint him in a very good light. Then again, the note was in an envelope. It’s not like he knew what was in it. He could’ve thought it was from Keegan, but he must’ve been suspicious after the fact since he brought it up now.

All of this is more convoluted than my family history, which includes cousins going to war against each other. Literal war. As in World War I.

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