Chapter Text
Titus comes to… somewhere. His thoughts are thick and sluggish, every attempt to move punished by a sharp flare through his neck and chest. There’s a brutal pressure lodged between his shoulder blades that makes him swear that goddamn goat horn is still buried deep in his back. The air around him is cold and damp—no breeze, no light, no sound beyond his own uneven breathing. Maybe a cave. Maybe something more sinister. It’s too pitch black to tell.
A sudden flash of light makes him turn sharply toward it. He is in a cave after all—vast enough to seem endless, jagged rock formations stretching impossibly high above him. The shifting light throws long shadows across the cavern walls, making the stone seem crowded with silent spectators. There’s someone standing at the center of the glow. While Titus has never actually seen Mr. Le Bail himself, it doesn’t take a genius to realize who’s standing in front of him.
“Titus Chester Danforth. It is unfortunate that we should meet like this.”
“You don’t fucking say.”
“The dissolution of the High Council was, admittedly, the least desirable outcome of the Game.”
“What do you mean, dissolution?” Titus’s voice sharpens. “Who dissolved it? Are you saying—”
“Your bride rejected the High Seat and removed herself from the Council. The rest failed to reach a mutual agreement before dawn, and, disappointingly, all perished.”
Titus grits his teeth so hard his mouth fills with the taste of chalk.
“She wasn’t deserving of it anyway, the seat belonged to my family.”
“Inheritance is not possession. And you failed to protect it.”
The truth behind the words stings more sharply than the memory of the pen being driven into his chest.
Le Bail is right. The Danforth bloodline ended because of Titus’s recklessness. Because he allowed weakness to take root in him and failed to do what his father expected. There is no excuse for the lapse, for the guard he let slip. He should have been more careful—at least until the coronation was complete. He should have killed Grace well before she had a chance to bargain for her life.
If only he could have another shot at it.
“Fortunately for you, your failure is also mine,” Le Bail says. “Yet I am not one who accepts defeat so easily. You will be given the chance to correct the outcome of the Game, and you will repeat it until the desired outcome is achieved.”
Hope and excitement begin to brew in Titus’s chest, dark and intoxicating. His lips spread into a predatory smile. He won’t fuck this up, not again.
“Be warned,” Le Bail quickly adds. “What first appears a blessing may soon reveal itself to be a curse.”
With that, the light gutters out, and the apparition vanishes.
Before the darkness takes Titus again, he manages to croak, “Hail, Satan.”
_____________________________________
The first few blinks reveal that he’s in his own bedroom.
Then the warm, albeit unwelcome body beside him stirs and confirms the rest: he is reliving the same day.
Titus throws the blanket off and is on his feet before the woman can manage a word. One of the resort employees whose name he didn’t care to learn. She served her purpose for the night.
“Get out.”
He goes straight to the bathroom, not bothering to wait for her to acknowledge his command, let alone act on it. If she knows what’s good for her, she’ll be long gone by the time he finishes his morning routine.
Now is the time to focus. He needs a strategy for the day.
Granted, he still doesn’t know what the desired outcome actually entails. Staying alive is his immediate priority. But surviving the night without the High Seat ring on his finger by dawn would be nothing but a technicality. He needs to win this time, and there can’t be any negotiations.
For a minute, he contemplates telling Ursula everything. Wonders if she would believe him. If she would help him, or sabotage him the moment she understood what was at stake. The thought of facing her now unsettles him more than he is willing to admit, even to himself. Not after knowing how easily her neck had snapped under the lightest pressure of his forearm. Not after watching how swiftly her body sank to the floor once he released her. Not after feeling the bright, sickening exhilaration of finally freeing himself from her control.
The memory should trouble him. But the rage beneath it is louder, its presence more familiar. And much easier to cling to.
Fuck her.
The High Seat is his. And if he needs to kill Ursula again to claim it, so be it.
_____________________________________
The rest of the morning unfolds exactly as it had before.
Chester is smothered. The second time is easier—so much easier that even Ursula looks faintly surprised by Titus’s eagerness, by the absence of emotion on his face as he presses the pillow over their father’s.
Together, they greet the families. The girls are brought inside. The Lawyer explains the rules of the Game. Titus demands to be the one to knock Grace out. As he approaches her, she shakes her head and begs him to stop—and suddenly, treacherously, the memory of their kiss at the altar flashes through him. The taste of her. The softness of her lips against his own.
Grace notices the hesitation. Mistakes it for mercy. She is looking directly into his eyes when she whispers one last, “Please.”
Then he drives the syringe into her neck. No more slip-ups.
Ursula is only mildly suspicious when he leads her straight to them in the woods. He shushes her before she can speak and motions for her to wait, taking his position behind the tree nearest to their hiding spot. This time, when the girls duck behind the log, Titus goes straight for Faith. Her skull gives beneath the force of the blow. Grace screams herself raw with horror, grief, and fear. Too distraught to react properly. Too devastated to defend herself. By the time Titus straddles her and gets his hands around her throat, half her breath is already gone.
Moments later, she joins her sister as dead weight on the cold ground.
Ursula is practically vibrating with joy. Titus only stares at the two girls at his feet.
The color has already begun to drain from Grace’s face. The dark purple impressions of his fingers are the only things marring the pale skin of her throat. Her lips remain parted from that final, useless attempt to draw breath, her ocean-blue eyes fixed blindly on the sky above them.
The urge to kiss her one last time comes over him too quickly to resist. His mouth is on hers before his mind can catch up. The similarity between the two kisses they have shared is not lost on him. Except this time, at least, her lack of enthusiasm has an obvious explanation.
Somewhere in his periphery, Ursula makes a low sound of disgust. Titus ignores her.
He really does wish there was a world where he didn’t have to kill Grace.
_____________________________________
He slowly opens his eyes as the world around him sharpens into focus.
The memories come rushing back: the hunt, the Ceremony, Grace dead on the ground. He pulls his hand from beneath the covers, ready to admire the ring he had fought so hard to claim—
Except his hand is offensively bare.
Titus turns it over once. Twice. Stares at his empty fingers in shock before throwing the covers off and searching the sheets for a flash of gold, still clinging to the pathetic hope that the ring has only slipped from his finger.
There is a woman sleeping in his bed.
Is that—
What the fuck.
“You?” His voice comes out hoarse with disbelief. “What are you doing here again?”
The woman has enough sense not to engage. She gathers her belongings as quickly as possible and flees the bedroom before Titus can find a suitable target for his rage.
He sits up straighter, rubbing hard at his eyes, trying to drag the events of last night back into order.
Grace was dead. The Coronation was complete. He had won the High Seat. This cannot be happening again. Surely that was the outcome Mr. Le Bail had wanted?
His phone’s ringtone interrupts his thoughts.
“You slept in. Get dressed & meet me downstairs. Father wants to see us.”
Fuck.