Page 38 of Forsaking All Others

I follow reluctantly, my feet feeling like lead.

Eventually he stops, sitting down on an ornate mosaic bench and motioning for me to do the same.

“I’m not going to bite you, Catriona,” he says quietly, moving slightly further away from me as I sit near him. “If that’s your real name. I just want the truth. Who are you? Who wants you so badly they’d risk royal wrath to get you back, and why?”

I gulp and consider how much to tell without revealing the whole truth.

“I’m the daughter of a Machiavellian monster.”

‘This much is true.’

“Anyone I’ve heard of?”

I keep my expression neutral and shrug. There’s no way I’m revealing who, or what, my family is.

“The attack on the limo opening night, the disappearance of Regina…”

“Yes,” I admit reluctantly, “my fault.”

“Mmm. I would have thought you’d be all ponies, cotton candy and pink princess dresses. At least, that’s my experience of little Italian mafia daughters.”

“I never said mafia. But you’re not far wrong,” I laugh half-heartedly. “Although it’s more like ponies, pink dresses, and blood-stained fingers.”

“Is Catriona your real name?”

“It’s what I’ve always been called.”

‘Oh please, please don’t ask if my last name is real.’

He gives me a measured look but doesn’t suggest I’m lying and doesn’t ask the question I’m silently praying over. I came on this game under a false name, true, but I don’t intend to outright lie to him. The truth will eventually come out, of course, when I win, but now, right now, my cover needs to remain intact.

“Why are they chasing you?”

I meet his steady gaze.

“I didn’t fulfil an obligation, and now I’m being pursued to answer for that. I’ve been on the run for three years. This is the first inkling they have of my location.”

‘Technically true.’

“I see.”

‘No, you really don’t. But you can’t. Not yet. I’ve said enough.’

“So what really prompted you to enter The Games? The truth. You could have continued running. You’ve obviously done a good job of it up until now for a young woman alone in the world.”

I shake my head, but the words come out as I know they must if I’m to gain his trust and stay in the Game.

“Well,” I shrug, “I not only want to evade retribution for my failure. I also want to kill someone. Someone who did me a great wrong.”

“Ah, ha.” He nods as though now he’s finally getting to the bottom of the matter. “Go on.”

“I was twelve,” I scowl, looking down at my hands and digging my fingernails into my palms as I recount my dark past without revealing any hint of who I am, my words coming out in a whisper, “he was twenty-five.”

‘And he said he wanted to ensure no other man took what was his before he could formally claim me. But you can’t know that.’

My words fade away. I can’t actually voice what happened that day at my birthday party, as all the guests played games on the lawn, unaware I was upstairs at the mercy of a monster. My throat constricts, and the words simply won’t come.

“You don’t have to tell me more,” Jag says quietly.