I pull out of his caress, though every ounce of heat remaining in my body begs to draw closer to his flames. Instead, I change the subject from one of pain to tactics. “The Winter Formal. Sabine’s ordered me to go.”
“It’s a mandatory event for us. We dress up, make good face on behalf of Briarcliff Academy, and then attend the real ball underground.”
My brows squish together.
Chase smiles indulgently. “The dance continues in the Nobles’ ritual room, sweet possum. That’s what you’re being ordered to attend, and you can’t do that until you show your face at the formal.”
“And what’s the point of it?”
Chase tips his head, his brows furrowing with over-dramatic contemplation. “Elitism? Privilege? Entitlement? All the things the rich and powerful do to separate themselves from the commoners. It’s one of the only functions we have together as Nobles and Virtues.”
“I wonder why Ivy didn’t tell me that when she begged me to go?”
“Probably because her mouth is claimed by the queen, and Ivy bends to Sabine’s rules because she’s afraid to break them.”
Chase says it like it’s a bad thing. “She’s scared. Ivy doesn’t have any sort of fallback like you do if she betrays the societies. Her dad’s a disgraced member, her family’s broke because you Nobles love your payback.”
“Is that what you think?” Chase’s tone grows hard. “That I’m only doing this because I have a cushioned life for my ass to land on if things go south? I assure you, if I’m caught, there will be more hell to pay than landing in Hell itself. I’m not doing this for kicks.”
“That’s not what I meant.” I squeeze his bicep. “I’m not trying to lessen your risk. God, Chase, I’m just so scared. I don’t want you hurt. I don’t want Ivy punished.”
Chase leans in for another kiss, this one tender and slow. He pulls away once, twice, stroking the escaped hairs from my hat off my face, then pressing his lips to mine again. After one final stroke of his tongue, he draws away, but keeps his hand on the back of my neck. “Trust me.”
“I want to.”
“Allow me to earn it, then. The Virtues’ temple will be deserted during the Winter Formal, and the dance itself will be crowded, all of us, even faculty, wearing masks. If we can time it right and have enough decoys, we can slip into the temple and find the documents relating to Rose Briar that Piper was trying to uncover for my sister.”
My heart swings like a pendulum. “Will it work?”
“It has to. This is the only chance we have before school ends for the holidays.”
A reminder flickers in the back of my head, remembering my time in the chem lab when I thought it was deserted. “Aren’t there cameras? Motion detectors? Something to alert them?”
Chase sets his jaw, staring off over my shoulder.
“Chase. What is it?”
His eyes scrape back to mine. “Tempest. I’ve given him my father’s passwords. He’ll log on and put a video of the empty tomb on a loop.”
“You brought Tempest into this?”
Chase clamps a hand over my mouth. “While I said we were safe here, I didn’t mean we were safe if you shouted.”
My response comes out muffled, but I make sure the features he can see are carved with a stony glare. “Sorry.”
He removes his hand. “How’d you say it last time? Our ‘Bonnie and Clyde shit’ can’t work. We need more people.”
“Eden, Emma, and Ivy are more than enough.”
“Can any of them mess with a top-notch security system?”
“I didn’t know Tempest could.”
“How do you think Eden’s photos got buried so quickly?”
My skin tingles despite the numbing cold. “I assumed it was Briarcliff’s fickle rumor mill. Eden was horribly humiliated by the same tactic years ago. I figured the lack of originality bored most students and they forgot about it.”
“Think again.” Chase settles back in his seat, interlacing his fingers between his thighs. “We’re like vultures. We’ll pick at dead meat until it’s nothing but old bones. Tempest got in the way of that by intercepting your dummy account, deleting the pictures, and doing other techie stuff I can’t even begin to describe to scrub the photos from the internet.”
I pause. “He did all that? For Eden?” Then I frown. “Why? He hates people.”
“He did it for me. My boy’s temperamental, but his loyalty is unmatched.”
My voice is soft. “Thank you. For asking him.”
“Don’t thank me or make assumptions about every member of the societies when you’ve been part of our fun, secret club for all but a few weeks.”
“It’s hard not to, with the types of members I’ve been lucky enough to meet.” I turn forward, sucking on my teeth. On the night my dorm room was broken into, the photos of Piper’s diary were deleted off my laptop and my cloud without my knowledge.
Was Tempest the Cloak that did it?
Chase speaks before I voice my thoughts. “My beat-down was Tempest putting on the same act I did, assuring the Nobles that his loyalty is intact. But he has his own reasons to bring them to heel and force my father out.”
“And Riordan and James? How about them?”
The line of his jaw almost cuts through his skin. “They’re loyal to my father. There’s no act about it, although Rio less so.”
I pull my scarf over my nose and mouth, staring into the dense copse of trees. “My trust is wearing thin.”
“Mine, too.” He grabs my hand, and though we’re both gloved, his grip is firm and stable.
It’s nice, a pocket of peace in an otherwise unyielding amount of stress, and while I’m stiffened with cold, I wish I could find more moments like these with him.
As if he can read my thoughts, Chase gives my hand one last squeeze before switching to the steering wheel.
“We’d better go,” he says. “I’ll drive you closer to the dorms.”
Nodding, I cross my arms, reclaiming warmth where it’s been lost. Soon, we’re rocking and bouncing over the uneven forest path, the golf cart’s quiet motor thrumming beneath us.
Chase pulls to a stop near the back exit of Rose House. “It’s safe for you to walk from here. Any closer, and we’ll be caught.”
We spend a long moment staring at each other. I find the courage to say, “We can do this.”
Chase cups the back of my head, bringing my forehead to his. “Do whatever they ask. Keep calm. I support you, regardless of how I act during the day. We’ll win and take them down. For Piper. For my sister and Eden. For us.”
I pull my scarf away from my face and risk another sweet, icy kiss. When I pull away, my lips brushing against his, I say, “That question you asked, about me trusting you.”
He nudges my nose with his. “Yeah?”
“I do.”
Smiling, Chase kisses me again.
I leave him in the dense thicket of trees, my boots crunching against half-frozen, decayed leaves and branches, peering over my shoulder a few times before I round the corner of Rose House and cross over to Thorne.
At each pivot, he’s in the same spot, his eyes brilliant but his lips grim, and I find myself hoping that my white lie will eventually turn into the truth.
That I can trust him with my life.
14
The Virtues leave me alone for thirteen days.
Whether or not that number will end in an unlucky consequence remains uncertain.
I’m not about to sit around and wonder, instead focusing on my neglected schoolwork as well as our plans to enter the Virtues’ temple on the night of Winter Formal. Emma was the first to agree after I outlined my meeting with Chase—out of everyone, she’d be the person to keep my continued association with her brother to herself. Then, we folded Eden into the idea, without mentioning Chase. Once we included Ivy, the only aspect I explained to her was the threat of Sabine, and what she said to me after she pulled me out of class. Sadly, I wasn’t sure I could trust my b
est friend with my secret meet-up with Chase. Ivy has her own bonds to fight against, without enduring mine, too.
With all the piecemeal information I’m feeding to each friend and the different sized holes I’m leaving behind, on the afternoon of day thirteen, I feel more like Swiss cheese than a person. That is why I take the time to sit with Ivy, Eden, and Emma at lunch—Emma, who we coaxed out of our dorm with the assurance that nothing has gone wrong for almost two weeks, and she’d be safe with us.
Famous last words, right?
“Has anybody had time to think of finals?” Ivy asks, pushing her bibimbap rice dish around her bowl with her chopsticks. “Amid all this … stuff?”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me.” I press my fingers into my temples, not so much feigning a headache as preventing one. “I don’t think I’ve had a worse semester. Ever.”
“Isn’t it easy to get A’s in public school?” Eden asks. I search her face for sarcasm, but surprisingly find none.
“Not always,” I say, but I’m distracted by commenting on her sheltered Briarcliff-living when there’s motion at the front of the dining hall, Falyn, Willow, and Violet waltzing into lunch late.
The room transforms into a stuffy, cloying environment as they wander through the tables and to the buffet at the back. These girls command the dining hall in a fashion entirely opposite to their male counterparts.
When Chase and his crew walk in, students go quiet, but not out of intimidation. Every move of those boys’ is watched by admiring, heart-filled eyes and unrequited hearts. It’s hard not to when Chase, Tempest, Riordan, and heck, even James, are carved from beauty, their movie star faces mixing with pro-athlete bodies.
In most schools—including public—there’s usually only one guy who claims those kinds of looks. Here? There’s at least ten, with Chase Stone being at the top.
Falyn, however … she and her besties shush the room through fear of reprisal, stealing their throne through opportunity and deceit. Falyn reminds us all of that fact as her gaze sweeps through the room, grazing over heads and landing on nothing, until she reaches me.
“Incoming,” Emma mutters. With a few flicks of her fingers, she’s holding her chopsticks like weapons. “I knew there was a reason I didn’t want to come down here. I thought you said they were independently training?”
Ivy shrugs at the question. “Independent being the buzz word. We don’t always have to train at lunch.”
Emma curses the closer Falyn looms, and I don’t blame her. Here I was, hoping for a predictable, average lunch after almost two weeks of being ignored.
Falyn must’ve sensed the weakening of my walls. I meet her eye, and her lips slink into a smile.
“So nice to see you all out in public,” she simpers when she draws near. “I’d thought you’d have claimed your own misfit island by now.”
“It’s our school as much as it is yours,” Eden retorts.
My eyes flare at her unexpected retort, but I shouldn’t be surprised. With the release of her photos and the lack of torture that followed, she regained a small amount of confidence. One side of her hair is even tucked behind her ears, as if she’s half-willing to show her face around school again.
I switch my focus to Falyn, watching her carefully, ready to strike if she so much as bats an insult Eden’s way.
Falyn laughs at Eden’s remark, full and throaty. “My memories at this academy are going to be so much sweeter than yours, since I don’t have lard coating my fat, pimply ass—”
“Those are big words coming out of a mouth so recently filled with an extra-large, silicone cock.”
My gaze pings to Emma. Ivy’s breath squeaks with sound.
Emma cants her head. “Wasn’t it you in that sex video James circulated last year? Yep. It definitely was. Those lips of yours blowing a fake dick while James stuck his up your ass was verified by Riordan, since he was the one holding the dildo for you.”
Falyn sucks on air.
“You’re such a wasted bitch,” Falyn says, tipping her chin up as she stares at Emma down her nose. “Did you rub one out to the video when your daddy had you locked up in the basement? Was it conversion therapy? Were you so obsessed with Piper, your daddy had to show you amateur videos with dildos and James to make you horny and straight?”
“Enough,” I say, rising from my seat. “We were eating our lunch in peace before you came along. It’s time for you to leave.”
Ivy nods, standing with me. “The public spectacle isn’t worth it, Falyn.”
I note the attention cast in our direction, some mouths gaping, most whispering, and a lot holding up their phones to record. Their interest doesn’t capture me the way Ivy’s does, though. She’s staring at Falyn like she’s imparting a silent message, one I’m coming to decipher as retribution.
These girls can’t do anything without Sabine hearing about it, and either punishing or rewarding them.
With that thought, I wonder how Piper’s cornering me in this same dining hall went over with her mother, accusing me of stealing her boyfriend, then ending up dead that night.
It was Addisyn who killed her, I remind myself. Case closed.
In a rush of memory, a few of Piper’s last words encircle my mind. I’m doing you a kindness…
Was Piper warning me away from the Virtues? Or was it really about stealing Dr. Luke from her?
“Did you hear me, possum?”
Ivy elbows me, and I glance up from the section of table I’d been vacantly staring at, lost in thought. I say to Falyn, “No, what?”
“I’m not leaving until you come with me.”
I recoil. “Why?”
Falyn smiles but hides her teeth. “You sit with us now.”
“But Ivy never has to.” I gesture to Ivy, who gives a minuscule shake of her head, like I shouldn’t have said that.
“She isn’t starting at the beginning like you are,” Falyn says. “Come join our crew, Callie.”
Ivy’s whisper touches my ears. “Do it.”
“But—”
“Go,” Emma says from across the table. “I don’t want this table further stunk up with Falyn’s presence, anyway. Good luck trying to be popular, possum.”
I gape at her, but my brain makes up for my stunned body, assuring me that this is part of Emma’s act, that no one can know we’ve teamed up for anything.
It’s better if we look like enemies forced into proximity, nothing more.
“Okay…” I say, and tentatively pick up my tray. My stomach sinks at the obvious answer to my next question. “Is this a permanent thing?”
“More permanent than a tattoo,” Falyn says with a succulent, dire undertone.
“Great,” I mumble, but after a last, entreating look to my friends, who subtly nod with encouragement, I follow the Wicked Witch of Briarcliff to her lunch table.
Willow and Violet are seated with their food when I arrive. Willow undercuts me with a glance, but Violet pulls out the chair next to her and gestures for me to sit, the cerulean blue of her eyes vulnerable and friendly.
“Welcome,” she says.
I perch at the very edge of the chair, ready to bolt if a piece of Falyn’s lunch so much as lands on my side of the table.
“Is this really necessary?” I ask the group. “You guys don’t like me. I’m not sure why we all have to endure this quality time.”
“Coach’s orders,” Willow says, the hue of her eyes matching the auburn of her tied-back hair. “Like with any new trainee, we have to make them part of the team. Even the ones we think suck.”
I lick my lips, parsing through her clues until I reach the conclusion that their rowing team and the title of coach is public code for the Virtues. It has to be, because there is no way I’d ever join—
“You guessed it.” Falyn’s lips stretch wide as her searching gaze centers on my face. “As part of this bullshit charade, you have to join our rowing team.”
I blurt out my response without thinking, “No way.”
&n
bsp; Violet frowns, her small voice somehow coming through the white noise of the crowded dining hall. “It’s not that bad. You can join me as the other half of the bow pair.”
“Addisyn’s absence has to be filled,” Falyn barks. “In more ways than one. Stop being so fucking difficult, Callie.”
I jolt at her venom but keep my expression calm. I could figure out a way around this. There’s no immediate need to be out on a boat, in the middle of bottomless water, without a life jacket or a clue. They’re no longer training on water—it’s winter, so a lot of their practice is in their weight room or that crazy hydraulic thing they have in the boathouse that simulates a race. I could handle that.
I think. Better to change the subject.
“So, Winter Formal,” I segue, stretching my smile until it’s sincere. “Are you guys excited?”
Falyn makes a sound of disgust, then picks at her rice bowl. Willow rolls her eyes, but Violet bounces in her seat.
“Absolutely,” she says. “Falyn chose the theme this year. Well, it was meant to be Piper, but … um, you know. We’re honoring her with the theme of Snow White.”
I push my brows up, but they quickly come down when I recall the ending and the princess encased in a glass coffin, for all the world to see, beckoning her prince with her cold, waiting corpse…
I find my voice again. “That’s … a heck of a way to remember her.”
“Relax,” Falyn says. “It’s not like we can display her. She fell off a damn cliff. We want to remember the idea of her, so we’ll put a glass case out, fill it with her favorite flowers, and have the rest of the ballroom be winter-themed, including our outfits. Get it?” Falyn waits for my nod. “She’ll be the only bright, spring center point in a room full of snow.” Falyn settles back in her seat. “I’m a fucking genius for thinking of this.”
“You are,” Willow assures, but her gaze slides to mine with an eerie, practiced movement. Her red-painted lips curl with a grin. “Everyone will love it, especially after the last dance, when Chase opens the case, picks a flower, and makes a speech as the Winter Court King, pledging his everlasting love to Piper.”
Fiend (Briarcliff Secret Society Series Book 3) Page 12