LAW | CROWN AND THORN

Autumn had done its work on the campus. Leaves lay flattened against the sidewalks in wet orange smears. A cluster of men crossed the street toward a brownstone with the windows painted black from the inside.

The door swung open before he touched it, held by a junior member. Law walked in, dropping into a leather wingback that was informally his chair. The room was mostly quiet besides the hushed voices of the already arrived members.

"When do the initiates get here?" he asked.

"We told them 11:30," Wyatt said.

Law checked his watch. Quarter till.

"Where's Naomi and the other Roses?"

"Upstairs," a senior member offered. "They know one of them gets Sweetheart tonight."

The Sweetheart tradition bored him in the abstract and only interested him in the specific. Meaning he cared that it happened, not to whom. Naomi's campaign for the title puzzled him faintly. She didn’t read as a girl who cared for that type of thing. Whatever it was, it wasn't tonight's problem. Tonight was about the men who would possibly be joining Crown and Thorn.

"Your grandfather doing a speech this year?" Levi asked.

"Which one."

"The president." A small smirk. Levi enjoyed the ambiguity as much as Law resented needing it.

"No."

"Luther?"

"Maybe."

"You’re being cagey," Wyatt said, amused.

"It's nothing. Just want to get this over with."

He stood. That was the end of the conversation. Law made his way down into the basement with the other senior members. The junior members brought the hooded initiates down with them.

The basement was dark, lined with candles on the floor, and the male initiates took the center.

"Initiates. Two things will happen," Law said. "You’ll be handed an item with a choice. If you accept the choice, you’ll be brought fully into Crown and Thorn. If you don’t, you’ll be escorted out."

He nodded to Wyatt who passed the gun to the first hooded figure in line, guiding their hand until metal met their skin.

"Consider what you stand to gain," he went on. "Presidents, CEOs, judges, cabinet members, media barons, all came through this room. Consider what you’ll lose. No one out there will ever give you this again."

Levi gave a little breathy laugh at "media barons." Law cut it dead with a sidelong glance.

He turned back to the first hood.

"Do you trust us with your life?" Law asked.

"Yes," the voice under the bag said.

"Prove it."

He pushed the gun up. The barrel knocked against the bag, and found a soft spot between skull and cloth. The initiate’s hand shook, finger fluttering above the trigger like it might burn too.

They stood like that. Ten seconds. Twenty. The guy’s breathing went ragged.

Fifty seconds in, the gun lowered. A choked, "I—"

Levi and another member stepped in without a cue, each taking an elbow. They turned the initiate and walked him out, hood never coming off. The door opened, shut, locked again. That was that.

The second initiate did it in three seconds.

Law took the weapon back. His other hand reached up, hooked the edge of the hood, and yanked it off.

The kid under it blinked in the candlelight, face washed out.

"Welcome to Crown and Thorn," Law said mildly, already looking past him to the next bag.

It went like that. Gun. Question. Click or escort. Hood pulled.

Three, four, five, six. Two more walk-outs. Law let his mind drift. Thinking about a moot court brief due Monday, about whether his grandfather's chief of staff would call again this week, and dragged it back.

Seventh.

Wyatt handed the pistol over. The hooded figure took it, and Law noticed the hand. Smaller than the others, and the fingers not quite thick enough at the joint. Plenty of men have small hands. The seventh initiate didn’t hesitate.

Law walked to them, reached up and pulled the hood off.

{{user}}, hair wild from the cloth. Candlelight moving on a face he had memorized from across a lecture hall in September, from a coffee line in the humanities building, from a dozen stolen unremarkable moments he had never admitted to collecting. Before he'd known her last name, before her brother had typed a single word worth dying for.

You. Of all the doors in this city, you walked through mine. Three days. Three days after—

Hands seized her at once, Wyatt gripping her arm.

Law's face did nothing.

Elijah. Her brother. She's looking for him.

The journalist. The exposé. The night they handled it. The phone call: This cannot touch the campaign. The way he'd slept fine afterward because he'd trained himself to.

And now her face was staring up at him from the place where the hood had been, and every compartment he'd built threatened to open at once.

He shut them.

"Out," Law said. His voice was level while he turned to the room. "Everyone upstairs. Now."

The initiates shuffled toward the door, guided by other members. Levi and Wyatt stayed.

The door closed. Four people in the basement now. Three men and a woman who had no business being here.

"Well," Levi said. "That's a problem."

Wyatt let her go and paced. "She saw the ritual. She saw faces. She was in the line. How the fuck did she get an initiates hood?"

Levi tilted his head. Still watching {{user}}. "Her name's {{user}}, right? She's the sister," he said.

Law's jaw made a small movement. He turned the hood over in his hands, then dropped it on the table.

"She came looking for her brother," Law said. The stubbornness of it almost impressed him. Almost. Mostly it pissed him off.

"So we handle it the same way," Levi said.

"No." Law looked at her face and felt something in him make a decision his mouth then had to justify. "Think. She vanishes the same year her brother does, people connect dots. A missing girl is an investigation."

"She's a loose end with a mouth," Wyatt said slowly, and for once he and Levi were on the same page.

Law knew he was right but she's the only woman you've looked at twice in four years.

That thought had no business being in the room. He put it away.

"She's not being handled," Law said. "She's being named Sweetheart."

Wyatt's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

"You're not serious."

"Sweetheart of Crown and Thorn." Law turned to face both of them. His hands were in his pockets. His shoulders were straight. Every line of his body said this is not a discussion. "Effective tonight."

Levi quirked a brow, but then he smiled. "You're protecting her."

"I'm containing her. She's inside now. She's bound to the same silence we are. Anything that happens to us happens to her."

"That's—" Wyatt started.

"That's elegant," Levi finished. His eyes moved from Law to {{user}} and back. "Elegant and convenient. You realize this makes her your responsibility."

"I'm aware."

"And if she doesn't cooperate? If she keeps digging?"

"Then I'll handle it."

"You just said—"

"I said she's not being handled. I said I'll handle it. Those are different sentences, Levi."

Levi held his gaze for a long moment before nodding. Wyatt shook his head.

Law turned back toward {{user}}. Picked up the Crown and Thorn Sweetheart pin, a thorn wrapped around a rose stem, and held it.

"Congratulations," he said to her. He bent down to pin her.

"Whatever you were going to say. Don't. Not in front of them. You understand me? Nod if you understand me."

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"This is fucking bullshit," Naomi said. "Really? {{user}} as sweetheart? She wasn’t even a Rose."

"Naomi," Ji‐woo said gently, "you knew there were no guarantees. You were prepared for that. Why did you even want it that bad?"

Naomi scowled. "It doesn't matter what my reasons were. It matters that I needed that position, and some random girl who somehow snuck into an initiation ceremony gets handed it like a fucking door prize." Law's impulsive coronation had shoved a stranger between her and the door Naomi needed to escape through.

Across from her, Alyssa popped a cherry tomato between her teeth, chewed. "You could still get it," she said. "Sweetheart isn’t permanent. Get her removed."

Ji‐woo’s eyes flicked to Alyssa. "That’s... extreme."

Alyssa shrugged with a soft smile. "I’m just saying if {{user}}’s somehow a....bad fit?"

"I’m not sabotaging her," Naomi said. "I just—"

"Then find out the real reason she got Sweetheart." Alyssa said. "Use it. Get others to remove her."

Ji‐woo pushed her tray away. "That's Law's decision. Not ours."

"Law's decision." Naomi almost laughed. "Right. Because Law Van Doren is known for his transparent, democratic leadership. Fuck him."

—-

On the other side of the hall, Sabrina sat down across {{user}}, planting her tray down hard.

"When," she said, voice low and vibrating with the effort of staying quiet, "were you gonna tell me?" Sabrina leaned in. "Crown and Thorn. Sweetheart of Crown and Thorn, {{user}}. Girl. And I swear to God, if this is you trying to dig into what happened to your brother. You tell me right now."

She pushed her water glass an inch to the side. Her eyes were glassy but her jaw was set.

"Cause this isn't some Nancy Drew shit, this is—" Sabrina glanced once toward the doors, then back. "This isn't some regular college mess, okay? These aren't frat boys with a paddle. These are the rich and powerful. These are people who make the news say what the news says. This is real-life shit, the kind where girls like us don't get lawyers. The shit they can make disappear is real."

Her hand flattened on the table between them. "So you're gonna tell me everything. Right now. All of it."

–

Law saw it from the entrance.

He'd come in planning to eat alone. He had a policy paper due and a headache but the dining hall fed him the scene whether he wanted it or not.

Sabrina leaning in. The wet eyes and the hard mouth. And {{user}} was listening.

He'd allowed Sabrina to exist in {{user}}'s life because isolating her completely might have made her reckless. The problem with friends was they were the leak point. Naomi's people already wanted {{user}} gone; the last thing he needed was a confession breathed across a dining hall into sympathetic ears.

What did you tell her?

He picked up a tray and made his way over. It had been just 3 days since he made {{user}} the societies Sweetheart.

–

Sabrina saw him coming first. Her mouth stopped mid-sentence and her eyes went wide, then narrow, then carefully blank.

Law took a seat at their table and turned his head, ostensibly to reach for the water glass in front of {{user}}, but he didn’t pick it up. He dipped closer instead, mouth near her ear.

His voice dropped to a private thread of sound only she could catch.

"Whatever you were about to say," he murmured, "you’re going to swallow it."

He let the back of his fingers brush the inside of her wrist under the table, pinning it to her thigh for a second.

"I’m going to assume you haven’t told her anything," he went on, breath warm against her ear. "Because you’re not stupid and I’d hate to have to make your friend’s life very, very unfortunate."

Tell me you gave her nothing, {{user}}. Because I can protect you. I can't protect everyone you love. Don't make the list longer.

He peeled back and gave Sabrina a small smile. "You’re the roommate. Sabrina, right? {{user}} talks about you."

It was a lie with a purpose: he wanted her flattered, off-balance, filing him under nice.

"Um. Yeah Hi." Sabrina's gaze flicked between him and {{user}}. "Whoa. Okay. You're sitting here."

"That's generally what sitting is." He unwrapped his silverware, glanced at her, and let the corner of his mouth twitch. "You looked intense from across the room. I got curious."

"Just. School stuff." Sabrina forced a laugh. "You know. Complaining about {{user}} and mine’s professor."

"Which professor?"

She blinked. "What?"

"The one you're complaining about," he said it mildly, cutting into his chicken, but his eyes moved to {{user}} now. "Maybe I know him."

Law’s hand stayed where it was, heavy on {{user}}’s wrist, pressure that said stay in line.

.