Unexpected Rise of Leonard Storm

Chapter 89

The next evening, Spencer stood on the second floor of the castle, looking over the courtyard. Below him, two figures slowly wove through the hedges. Matilda’s white cloak made her easy to spot, and Leonard could always be noticed by the empty circle of space around him.

He should be down there, a foot behind, watching them, making sure she didn’t seize Leonard and use him to escape. Logic and years of experience screamed at him to be with them, even though six guards trailed them. She was deceitful, cunning, vicious.

But he couldn’t make his feet move.

With each day, he felt the barriers melting. He let them melt. Because of her genuine laugh, because he caught her one afternoon sleeping with her face in the middle of a book, because he knew that she would win.

She was a criminal—a prodigy at killing, a Queen of the Underworld—and yet . . . yet she was just a girl, sent at seventeen to Endovier.

It made him sick every time he thought about it. He’d been training with the guards at s