LUCIEN

  Lucien felt the stares the moment he stepped onto the grounds of the Polo Club. Boys paused mid-conversation. Someone actually whistled under his breath. For a second he wondered if he had walked in with the wrong jacket or if there was some rule he had unknowingly broken.

  Then he saw the horse.

  A sleek, burnished creature stood tethered near the paddock, its coat gleaming like poured bronze. Even Victor Vandercourt, who pretended not to be impressed by anything that wasn't his own reflection, stood there with his mouth halfway open.

  "Bloody hell," one murmured. "That's a Harrowhal thoroughbred. An Olympic champion."

  Lucien watched the recognition ripple through the crowd. This wasn't just a horse. It was the kind the noble stables kept locked behind three gates. The kind that never showed up anywhere without an entourage.

  And it had arrived for him.

  The groom stepped forward with a bow that felt too respectful, too rehearsed, and handed Lucien the reins.

  "Mr. Green," he said. "She is yours."

  Victor recovered first. He draped an arm across Lucien's shoulder and said, "Henrietta seems taken with you—enough to gift you... whatever this costs."

  That wicked half-smile. Elegant and cruel. Victor could lace poison into courtesy better than anyone.

  "So proud of you, really," he went on. "Our little baron-in-the-making. Sugar baby to the Harrowhal crone. Just what the club needed."

  The boys laughed, loud enough for the sound to carry. Lucien forced a thin smile and let it pass through him.

  It was just noise. That was what he told himself.

  The groom offered a sealed card. The envelope smelled faintly of pear. Lucien almost frowned, struck by how closely the pear scent echoed the sponsor's usual jasmine-and-pear cards.

  This was missing a note.

  He opened it anyway.

  Dearest Lucien,

  Her name is Jasmine. Don't fall.

  —Sincerely, Henrietta

  For a moment he just stared. The handwriting was elegant, with curves and loops that suggested someone who knew the weight of words.

  He almost laughed at the name 'Jasmine'. The coincidence was nearly absurd. It felt like someone had tugged a string he didn't know was tied to him.

  It couldn't be her. Henrietta couldn't be the sponsor. She liked Corin. She looked at Corin with something close to devotion. Why would she want to take her down?

  He folded the card and tucked it away. There was no point thinking in circles. Not now.

  He mounted Jasmine. She was steady, eager, trained to respond to microscopic cues. He was a good rider. At least, he always had thought so. But knowing the rules of polo in theory was nothing like trying to coordinate a horse, a mallet, and a tiny, stubborn ball while a dozen pedigreed athletes thundered around him.

  Victor watched from the fence. His grin sharpened with every mistake Lucien made.

  The first few days were a series of humiliations strung together like beads. Every time he tried to swing while galloping, everything fell apart.

  Too high, too low, too late, too early.

  Some of the boys laughed behind their gloves. A few didn't bother with the gloves. One nearly fell off his horse trying not to double over.

  But Lucien stayed polite, nodding at their jokes, thanking them when they muttered corrections. He had learned long ago that people disarmed themselves around a boy who smiled. So, he kept smiling. And he kept practicing.

  Long after the others had gone to shower and dress for dinner, he stayed on the field, repeating the same strikes until they stopped feeling foreign. He remembered the English Sporting Club, the hours at the shooting range he took more seriously than the boys who inherited the place. He remembered how practice bent the world into shape.

  Slowly, painfully, the ball began to go where he meant it to go.

  By midweek, the sneers softened into grudging comments.

  "He's getting better."

  "Actually better."

  "Give him two more weeks and he could play at the tournament."

  That one startled him. He'd laughed it off, flushed and embarrassed, but he heard the sincerity beneath the teasing.

  Then someone said it—the careless remark spoken just loudly enough:

  "At this rate he might even surpass Victor."

  Lucien felt the air in the field shift. He turned, and there was the captain himself, leaning against the fence with a lollipop tucked at the corner of his mouth. He wasn't grinning anymore.

  Their gazes met for half a heartbeat before Victor turned away and barked at the boys to resume drills.

  Lucien told himself it was nothing. A joke. A stray comment. He didn't even want Victor's position. He was only here for the points it could give him for the ranking.

  But he'd grown up around boys who could be stung to violence by far less.

  He felt it in his bones: something dark had lodged itself under Victor's skin.

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  The end of practice that day he showered thinking about nothing in particular—class schedules, the ache in his shoulders, whether Jasmine liked the apples he'd brought her. He reached for his towel, water still dripping from his hair.

  Then the lights flicked off. The door slammed open and footsteps rushed in, faces covered with black cloth. He barely had time to register the mallets in their hands.

  The first strike cracked against his ribs.

  He dropped to one knee, breath knocked out of him. Another blow hit his side. Then his face. They didn't speak, not even in mockery. It was worse that way—silent, methodical punishment.

  Lucien didn't fight back.

  He curled in, arms over his head, and took it.

  A final hit landed across his shoulder. The boys stepped back, breath ragged under their masks and disappeared as fast as they had come.

  Lucien leaned against the cold metal of the locker, chest heaving, and wiped the blood off his lip with the back of his hand. He knew not with certainty but with instinct, that old animal instinct that had always kept him alive, that the hit wasn't about hatred.

  It was about fear.

  They attacked because someone had decided he needed to remember his place.

  Lucien hadn't meant to pass out. He'd only meant to breathe for a moment on the cold tiles, to let the ringing in his ears fade. By the time he woke, the rest of the club was dark, the building empty. He moved slowly, limbs heavy, skin stinging where the mallets had found bone.

  He didn't bother with the infirmary. A bruise was a bruise. And this wasn't his first time stitching himself back together.

  He looked for the first aid kit and dabbed ointment across the split in his lip. As he was pressing cold water to the swelling on his cheek, he noticed the floor. Someone had cleaned it. There wasn't a drop of blood anywhere. Not a stray smear. Whoever did this wasn't sloppy.

  He glanced up at the corner of the ceiling.

  No camera.

  They even knew this was a blind spot.

  He ran a hand through his damp hair, grabbed his coat, and stepped out into the night. The air snapped cold against the wet strands, threading through the bruises like needles.

  Lucien was almost thankful it was late, away from prying eyes.

  He didn't expect to see anyone. Least of all, Corin Clarendon—walking straight toward him.

  He considered turning off the path. But that would look like he was avoiding her, and he couldn't stomach giving her that impression. So, he lowered his head, praying the shadows hid the worst of it.

  He heard her steps slow once she recognized him.

  "Evening," Lucien whispered as they passed each other. He didn't stop until he felt fingers hook into the back of his uniform, tugging him sharply to a halt.

  "What," he asked, gentle out of habit, still not turning, still hoping the dark could keep his face for him.

  "You missed dinner."

  He almost laughed. The idea that she kept track of his mealtimes was ridiculous. Almost... touching. In a sharp, uncomfortable way.

  "I wasn't hungry," he murmured.

  He angled his face away, but she stepped in front of him anyway.

  She didn't speak. Didn't demand. Just placed her hands on his chest and shoved.

  His back hit the lamp post.

  The halo of yellow light pooled right across his cheek.

  She was looking. Really looking.

  "I thought I saw something," she said quietly. "Did you hit your face in someone's fist?"

  He swallowed hard. Sometimes she really was exceptionally offensive.

  "No."

  He tried to sidestep. She caught his jaw before he could move. Pain thundered up his cheek, a flinch he couldn't hide.

  She leaned in, examining him like an object she wasn't sure she wanted. "Are you a coward?"

  His breath hitched, more from humiliation than pain.

  "Or do you just love taking a beating? Because I can do it for you, if you want."

  He yanked her hand away. Harder than he should have.

  "Goodnight, Corin."

  He didn't wait to see her expression. He turned and walked, forcing each step to stay steady, refusing to look back.

  By the time he reached the dormitory room, the pain in his ribs had settled into a steady, punishing throb. But what hurt more, what sat under his skin, was her voice.

  Are you a coward?

  Corin Clarendon didn't know how sharp she was. Maybe she did. Maybe she liked it.

  It shouldn't have bothered him. Boys at Billard had called him worse—bastard, charity case, provincial little nothing. But hearing it from her sounded different. Felt different. Like she'd reached inside his ribs and pressed on something he'd buried.

  Maybe because she said it like she expected better from him.

  He wasn't a coward. He knew that much. He just didn't see the point in swinging back at shadows wearing Billard uniforms. Fighting back would make everything worse.

  Because stopping them would put a bigger target on him.

  Because sometimes doing nothing was the only kind of power he had left.

  He hated that she didn't understand that. She saw the marks and immediately assumed he'd let it happen.

  Maybe that was what bothered him most, because she looked at him.

  She looked and saw something bruised, small. The version of himself he kept tucked away where it couldn't embarrass him.

  He didn't want her pity, her anger or her... attention.

  Yes, that.

  She'd noticed he missed dinner.

  Corin Clarendon, who didn't look twice at most people, but he noted his absence on some stupid evening meal.

  And he didn't know what to do with that.

  Don't fall.

  The words echoed out of nowhere, a sting starting in his chest.

  He can't fall.

  Not to her.

  He was thankful to Sinclair for barging in when he did.

  "Is that a new look you're trying out?" He asked, staring at his bruises. "You do know you're poor right? You're already pitiful, no need for whatever this is."

  "I didn't do it on purpose." Lucien barked back.

  Sinclair disappeared for a second. Lucien closed his eyes head back against the couch. Rest at last.

  Then, something cold and solid smacked him right in the cheek—right on the bruise—and he jerked awake with a sharp inhale.

  "Ice that up, pretty boy," Sinclair drawled from somewhere near the door.

  Lucien groaned and sat up, pressing the ice pack to his face. "I'm going to strangle you one day."

  "Mm-hm," Sinclair answered mildly, dressed not in his uniform, but something more formal. "I knew it was only a matter of time before someone like you pissed people off."

  Lucien gave him a flat look over the ice pack. "Someone like me?"

  "Smart mouth. No pedigree. A genius." Sinclair shrugged. "Half the academy loves that type. The other half wants to beat it out of you."

  Lucien shifted the ice toward the ugly bruise near the corner of his eye. It was blooming deep blue now, almost artistic in its spread. His lip had dried stiff with a thin crack of red.

  "Do people usually attack others in the shower here?" he asked.

  Sinclair tugged his tie into a perfect Windsor knot. The movement was smooth, practiced, almost graceful. Old money always carried itself with a kind of unconscious elegance. Lucien had only ever worn ties to funerals before Billard—rentals that never fit right. He was probably going out to some dinner with an heiress his family had set up for him. He'd been going to a lot of those lately.

  "Whoever did it," Sinclair said, checking the lie of his collar in the mirror, "was either brazen or pretty stupid. Bullying is not allowed in Billard."

  "You're the second person to tell me that," Lucien muttered. He still didn't quite believe it.

  Sinclair gave a short laugh. "It isn't. At least, not officially. The administration's stricter than most boarding schools. Too much scandal, too many important families. They keep things clean here."

  Lucien pressed the ice harder against the bruise. It still throbbed.

  "But," Sinclair added, tone shifting as he walked over and stole a look at Lucien's injuries, "if I had to guess?"

  Lucien waited.

  "It's probably one of the top boys."

  Not the golden boys—Sinclair's circle, the gilded sons of old families, elegant and untouchable.

  The top boys were different.

  Elite, yes. But also, hungry. Competitive. Favoured by the Chairman. The one with not only the wealth but the rankings.

  Lucien let out a long breath, he had the same theory. There were only three, and he had a feeling which one ordered the hit.