“They put me in that sick old man’s house,” Royal says. “But he found me before the cops did.” He turns to the window and goes quiet, that brooding, sudden silence he falls into lately.
No, I think.Mabel found him. And she told her grandfather.
I can’t speak, though. I feel too sick. I swallow over and over, the only thing I can do to keep the bile down.
“That’s when they took him to the Midnight Swans,” Duke says, taking over from Royal. He leans forward to squeeze my twin’s shoulder. “That’s why we’re going to take the Swans and everything else from them. Just like they took it from him.”
“Who put you in Devlin’s attic?” I whisper.
No one speaks, but they don’t have to. I already know the answer. I don’t want to, but I do. I remember Royal whispering the words through his cracked lips.
Don’t make me move again.
That’s what he said. He called for Dad just before that. Dad, who found him almost dead, and instead of helping him, he kept going with his plan to frame the Darlings. Instead of getting Royal help when he so desperately, obviously needed it, Dad and probably my uncles used the time while Devlin’s dad was at a football game to move Royal to his house. He might not be responsible for the battered state we found my brother in, but he’s fucking responsible for plenty.
What if those few minutes, those few hours, had cost Royal his life? Would Dad have stopped then? Will he ever stop?
If he would sacrifice his own son in his quest for revenge, would he even blink before taking Devlin’s?
Before I can form into words the fury raging inside me, we pull up into a gravel lot beside a house I recognize. It’s the one where Devlin left me after that first party. Colt’s house. I beg my brothers to stop, but my pleas fall on deaf ears. They’re out of the car, slamming the door against me when I try to climb out. I fall silent, watching in stunned horror as they light the fuses, ready to torch the sixth house of the evening.
From the parking area at the end of the house, I can see both the front porch of the house and the back deck, where the wooden bar sits silent in the rain. There’s a patio set at the end of the bar closest to us, with a huge umbrella protecting it from the rain. I almost miss the figure sitting in one of the chairs. She’s so small, so motionless, she blends into the shadows. But a flash of lightning illuminates her tan coat.
Mabel Darling is sitting outside. She doesn’t move. She watches my brothers light the fuse and toss the first block of fireworks through a window. Before they can toss another, the front door flies open, and a far more imposing figure is framed in the light. A figure holding a gun.
I scream, diving toward them, trying to scramble across Baron’s lap. King shouts a curse and explodes out his door, sprinting for our brothers. I can’t hear the man yelling through the drumming of the rain on the roof, but I can see his face in the light from the windows. I can see the anger, the defensive instinct. And I can see the glimmer of raindrops streaking the barrel of the gun as he raises it. I can see the flash at the muzzle when he fires just as King jumps in front of our brothers.
I scream again, and Baron shoves me roughly back and jumps out of the car. I don’t care what they told me. My brother is hurt. That’s all I think as I leap from the car and run across the gravel. I don’t think about the rain or the danger, that I could be shot. I don’t feel the bite of the gravel as I fall on my knees beside King while two of my brothers vault over the railing and tackle Colt’s dad. I don’t care about him. I only think about King. My brother, my protector, my king.
He’s kneeling on the gravel holding his side. “I’m fine,” he grits out, his breathing shallow. “I just slipped on the gravel.”
“You’re shot,” I snap, grabbing his arm and draping it over my shoulders. “You’re not fucking fine.”
“It’s just a flesh wound,” he says through a ragged breath. Another shot sounds, and I freeze, my blood running cold.
I hear the sounds of fists hitting flesh, of bones hitting the deck as they roll around fighting. My mind is racing, but I try to stay calm. I can only do so much at once.
“Let me help you to the car,” I say to King, gripping his arm over my shoulder and lumbering to my feet.
“Come on,” Baron says, appearing beside us. “Let’s get out of here.”
Supporting his weight, I help King into the backseat of the car. By the time he’s in, the rest of them are, too, and the car skids in the gravel as Royal floors it. I glance up in time to see that Mabel hasn’t moved. She sits watching as we disappear behind the trees.
“Did anyone else get hit?” I ask, peeling King’s black sweater off over my head and handing it to him. He balls it up and clenches it to his side, doubling over halfway and holding it in place with his elbow.
“No,” Royal says from the driver’s seat. “He fired a shot when I was trying to get the gun, but it didn’t hit anything. I got his gun away before he could shoot any more of us.”
“Fuck,” Duke swears, rolling down his window and spitting out into the rain. “I think he busted one of my teeth in half when he hit me with it.”
“We need to get King to the hospital,” I say.
“No hospital,” he says. “It barely grazed me.”
“What?” I ask. “King, that’s crazy! Someone shot you.”
“Which is why it would be crazy to go to a hospital,” he says.
“We’ve got one more to do, and then we’ll go home,” Royal says.