Private School Kings

The Prince Lies

There are rules. This is something I have known for a long time. There are rules, and you might be able to bend them, but they don't break. They just don't. Here are some of the rules I know: 1. Certain people just aren't supposed to be together, 2. Visiting with a mean girl is always a mistake, 3. Murphy Monroe was never supposed to be happy.

"You came!" Like usual, Heather was drunk. I was starting to understand why. After the car thing, I was starting to realize there was something really wrong with her. More than just the fact that she was an asshole. There was something twisted inside her. There was something rotten. It was the reason she drank so much. It was probably the reason she had fired so many lacrosse balls at my head. It was definitely the reason she had tried to kill Fletcher. That's what it was, attempted murder, but it was so hard to think of it that way. Murder. That word was too raw, too real. I didn't want it to be real. "You know, Murphy, I wasn't sure you would." We were alone in the room, Talia was nowhere to be seen. I wondered where she went at times like this. Did Heather banish her whenever she wanted to have a one on one intimidation session? "You're always surprising me." Heather continued. Her head lolled ever so slightly as she gesticulated, sloshing whatever was in her glass out onto the floor. "Sit, have a drink," She gestured towards her mini-bar. I ignored it, staying standing and sober. Her gaze held on me for a long moment, but then it slid away. "So surprising."

"Hey, Heather," I let all the annoyance I'd ever felt for her come out in my voice. It had turned icy and cold, almost unrecognizable even to me. "Can you get to the fucking point? Why did you ask me to come here?"

Her mouth opened in a surprised sort of smile. "God, you must really be in deep."

"What?"

"You sound just like Highguard, all that hothead machismo." Her smile thinned to something barely human. "It's cute on him, but a bad look for you." I tightened my jaw, trying to hold some part of me together. "You're fucking him, aren't you?" Her tone stayed the same brand of nonchalant, but the words hit me like a wrecking ball.

"No-" I didn't know why I was trying to protest. I mean, I wasn't doing exactly what she said, but I had made it pretty clear that I cared about Fletcher the night before.

"Murphy, it's fine" She said, cutting me off. "You can fuck whoever you want. I just think you're entitled to know certain things about him if you do."

I knew I shouldn't let on to the fact that she'd hit a nerve but something on her face, that grim I know something you don't smile, made me do it. "What are you talking about?"

"Fletcher Highguard..." She paused, milking it, or maybe she was just drunk. "Fletcher Highguard killed my brother."

The only people who can really disappoint you are the ones you believe in, and I didn't realize how much I had believed in Fletcher until that moment. He was the moral, unflinching heart of Pruitt, so good and so just. Until he wasn't.

"What are you talking about?" I asked again with a robotic repetition.

"Oh, you don't need to take my word for it." She pulled her phone from her pocket and held it towards me. "There's a video."

This is the video:

There are three boys in the common area of the Pruitt ruins, surrounding them is a group of Lords and Ladies, some of whom I recognize and others I don't. Each of the three boys stands on one foot on top of a rickety looking chair as younger boys hand them beers. I know immediately, this is a Lords challenge. Not only that, it's the lords challenge, the one that Fletcher described the day he told me about Magnus.

It struck me then that I had never seen a photo of Magnus. I had just trusted that everything Fletcher told me about him was all that I needed to know... that it was all there was to know. Had I pushed a little further, had I ever questioned his word, I might have stumbled upon an image of Magnus earlier. I would have seen it instantly, as I did when I watched him on that chair, he was so entirely a McCoy. His feathery blond hair, his icy blue eyes, all the curves and edges of his beautiful face, it was Heather. They were Heather's. He had been Heather's as much as Charlie was mine.