Zella looked straight into Toby’s wild green eyes. “I can’t tell you that.” She paused. “None of us wants this year’s Crucible to be deemed a failure. A wholesale failure.”
Calla had failed, and Calla was dead.A wholesale failure.Jameson felt like an iron glove was squeezing his heart.Not just one Candidate—but the whole thing. Avery and Eve and—
“Don’t ask me for that favor quite yet, Jameson,” Zella told him. “You might, however, consider asking the new Proprietor of the Devil’s Mercy for one.”
New.Jameson registered that—and the implication. “Rohan?He’s the Proprietor now?”
“I dare say you might find an ally in him, once you tell him who the Omega chose asherCandidate.”
“Nora,” Grayson said immediately.
Zella shook her head. “No, Grayson.”
Three Candidates, the dreaded chorus in Jameson’s mind was back.They have all three.
Avery.
Eve.
And…Jameson realized suddenly that there was only one person Rohan had ever given any signs of caring about.Savannah.
Chapter 72
ROHAN
In all his years growing up at the Devil’s Mercy, Rohan had never once set foot in its true inner sanctum. For more than two centuries, only Proprietors had been given access to this room.
Now, like everything else, it was Rohan’s.
The sanctum was more vault than study, its walls lined with numbered and locked metal boxes, none larger than a safe deposit box. There was but a single bookshelf in the room, and that shelf held thick, leatherbound tomes.
Ledgers.
Since the Regency era, powerful men had paid a levy to join the ranks of the Mercy—the same levy paid by the staff who called this underground palace home: a secret both terrible and true, leverage to be held over them.
A secret—and proof.Nearly an hour ticked by as Rohan read. Even as the Mercy had evolved with modern times, even as the lock boxes had come to hold USB drives and literal, taped confessions, the levies were still recorded in the ledgers, written by the secret-holder’s own hand in fountain pen, one page for every secret.
And now all of those ledgers, going back to the very first, were Rohan’s.Page after page after page.He’d started with the most recent and worked his way backward until only the oldest ledger remained. He started at the end of that one and made his way through it backward toward the beginning, but again and again, his gaze was drawn to the bookshelf and the four objects he’d placed on top of it.
A ballgown shredded to pieces.
A hairbrush.
A knife.
A rose made of glass.
None of which should have captivated Rohan even half as much as the ledgers—or, for that matter, the years’ worth of security footage archived and kept in the vault. The power of the Mercy was notjustthe levies. It was every secret spoken in its hallowed halls, every deal made, every bit of knowledge gathered by dealers and bartenders and jacks-of-all-trades.
The power of the Mercy was and always had been that of controlling the board.
Tell me, Savannah. What’s the board right now?Rohan pushed against the memory and so many others—of wagers made and rules broken and letters inked onto skin.
Fair warning, love: I want it more.He’d warned her. Right from the beginning, he’d warned her.What choice did I have? Right from the start, what choice did I have with you?
Rohan gritted his teeth and read on—on and on, centuries-old secrets, skeletons in every aristocratic closet, thealchemyat the intersection of power and wealth and the desire formore.
And all of it—all of it—was like sand in Rohan’s mouth. Room after room had been erected in the labyrinth of Rohan’s mind, and he felt nothing.
