by Hannah Capin
He says, “We’re running out of time.”
“Only if we’re careless,” I say. “I’ll talk to her tonight. Then we’ll know how to bring both of them down.”
He sighs. He says, “Soon.”
And I breathe it back to him: “Soon.”
Guilt
Patience wears us thin but doesn’t break us. I let the minutes slip through my fingers like sand. Let the rumors slide over my wings. Stare back when boys stare.
Let them talk.
I want them to know. But not until we’ve done everything we swore we’d do.
I wait until the day is almost over. Until the light we saw break outside the old theatre has died again and I’m safe in the dark. Until I’ve left Mack at the marina wrapped in promises.
Until I’ve made my plan for Piper.
I get ready at home, alone, in my room. My parents are out and the house looms dark and silent. I take the folded paper out of my pillowcase and smooth it flat on the vanity. Four ragged holes cut through the page.
I’m as ready as Mack is. Tonight, Piper will break. She’ll tell me where Duffy is hiding. She’ll tell me enough that by midnight I’ll be back home and planning his last breath and hers.
She’ll tell me the truth: Banks, or Malcolm. So at last I can rip the memory free—
—and then rip it apart with my bare hands.
Tonight I dress in white.
Mads had my fencing things ready for me when I drove up this evening, back from Mack’s. She met me at the gate and it slid open between us, striping black between our eyes. She held out the heavy white suit and the mesh mask and the sabre. I took them.
She said, “You’re ready?”
I said, “Yes.”
The gate slid closed and I drove home to dress for battle.
My armor waits on the bed while I comb my hair and fix my makeup. A ritual, the same as getting ready for a party. The same as getting ready for a murder. Watching myself, not looking away, until I know exactly who I am.
I take off my robe. My skin is smooth. The bruises are only shadows now.
The boys are nothing.
I fold the paper and put it away again.
I walk into my closet, to the very back of the very last row, and dig behind my long red homecoming gown. It’s exactly where I left it—the dress I wore to the party at Duncan’s house. Short and white and shining. A bad girl pretending to be good. A bitch and a siren and a party-crasher.
Sweet sixteen.
It’s washed clean, but the hem is torn and three rows of sequins hang dangling by a thread. They gleam bright anyway.
I put on the dress. It slides cold and heavy over my skin.
The girl in the mirror is defiant. She is merciless.
She is revenge.
My coven texts me from the secret number: Come to the combat room, dressed to fight. Or you’re next.
I fold the skirt close around my waist and put on my armor. The dress scratches when I tuck it underneath the heavy cloth, but I don’t care. When I’m ready I hold my mask in one hand and my sabre in the other. My face is carved from stone.
I drive to school under the high streetlights with the windows down and my sabre and mask on the seat next to me. I don’t think anything at all. Not about the boys. Not about that night. Not about their blood.
Tonight I’m only the queen.
I park in the darkest corner of the lot, far away from everything. The school shines bright. The spotlights pierce through the flowers and cast the stone rough and dangerous. Piper’s car is already here.
I walk the very edge of the lot, hidden in the shadows. Mask in one hand and sword in the other. My footsteps are cold and even. The fields and the court are shrouded tight in darkness, but I don’t need light. As soon as I pass the bleachers I can see a dim yellow glow at the window of the combat room.
She’s here.
I don’t pause outside the door. I push it open and walk in.
Piper stands ready in the middle of her favorite piste—the one farthest from the door. Her mask is already on.
I feel the thrill rising up in me again. I won’t kill tonight, but I’ll break her apart anyway. Turn her and her stupid second-rate boy against each other so when it’s time to kill again, they’ll both know they brought it on themselves.
They’re weak. Even Piper, standing strong on the strip with her weapon in her hand.
“Jade,” she says. I can hear the sneer in her voice. “I should’ve known.”
“Did they call you here, too?” I ask.
“‘They,’” she mocks. She takes a wired-tight step forward. “If there’s a ‘they’ at all.”
I’m on the piste now, walking straight toward her. Under my jacket, the sequins scratch at my skin like new feathers pricking free. “What do you mean?” I ask her, so innocent I know she’ll hate me for it.
And she says, “It’s you.”
I stare through her silver mask and into her eyes.
“I don’t know what you did at your old school, but you didn’t just fuck a teacher,” she says. “If you were even in school, and not some juvy psych-ward prison.”
I say, “Interesting story.”
Her hand shifts on the hilt of her weapon. She’s ready to fight. She wants to fight. “You’re a twisted bitch, and not just the way Banks talked about you when he wanted to fuck you for it.”
She says talked, not talks. She knows he’s dead as well as I do. But everyone knows, even if they wouldn’t say it out loud like she would.
“You’re twisted for real,” she says. “Like, god-complex twisted. Sadistic-twisted. You came in here and you saw what they did to Connor and you thought, here are some people I can play some good fucking mind games with.”
She’s all intensity. She wants her moment.
I slash it apart with a laugh straight out of a country-club dinner party. All silver and gold and breathy handmade cheer. I say, “Amazing. You’re twice as unhinged as your boyfriend.”
She shifts her weight back onto her heels. “Whatever,” she says. “Maybe I’m not right, but I’m close. You’re doing this. You’re playing us all against each other and it’s working so well you’re almost the only one left. You and your precious Mack.”
I step across the line so we’re toe to toe. “It’s not my fault you chained yourself to the weakest boy at St Andrew’s.”
She spins away. “Fuck you.”
And I say, “Likewise.”
She says, “There were never any girls in masks. You got Mack and Banks to make it up.”
“If you say so.”
“It’s been you this whole time. Texting us and laughing in our faces.”
“If you say so.”
She turns back to me. “You’re going down for this. Connor and Duncan and Banks, too. Their blood is on your hands even if you never picked up a knife.”
We’re so close my nose almost touches her mask. I whisper straight into the screen, “Is it on my hands, or theirs?”
We stay frozen. Deadlocked and deadly.
Then our phones buzz, mine in my hand and hers along the back wall below the heavy military swords. She springs away and darts for hers and I check mine, careless.
It’s the coven: En garde.
“Or maybe it wasn’t me,” I murmur.
But she steps back onto the strip and says, “They want us to fight.”
Now it’s my turn to mock her: “‘They’?”
“Whatever,” she says. “Maybe it’s Mack. Maybe it’s your bitch from the psych ward.”
Our phones buzz again: Prête.
I slide my mask into place. She turns silver and shining behind the woven metal.
“I’ll win,” she says.
I step back to my line and bring my weapon up.
Our phones buzz one last time. Piper reads the message out loud: “Allez.”
Her eyes spark bright behind her mask.
We let our phones fall to the side of the piste.
>
I pounce first, but she’s ready. She throws a lightning-quick skyhook and her sabre scrapes my waist just before my attack lands. She yells loud the way she did the day I watched her practice. Spins away from me with her chin thrown high.
She’s a better fencer, but I’m a better fighter. Tonight, the points that count won’t be won with sabres.
We step back to the line.
“You could give up now,” says Piper. She’s confidence and flash.
“So could you.”
“I’ll win,” she says again.
“Like Duffy won?”
“God, shut up,” she snarls. She lunges before I’m ready. I parry but she presses forward and then she yells again. There are no lights or judges to keep her honest. I let her gloat.
“They’re texting Mack, too,” I say. “The girls you think don’t exist. So I care because maybe they’re you.”
She laughs. I attack. I score and she shouts and I laugh back at her and say, “My point. You know it was.”
“Fine,” she says with her little concession-nod. Then, “We’re over. Duff and me.”
“Do you think that’s smart?” I say. I keep my weapon pointed at the floor. Keep Piper caged until I’ve said my piece. “A weak ally is better than no ally at all when someone’s killing everyone in your pack.”
“It’s not someone,” she says, angry enough that it makes her lie bright and bold. “Connor fell. Porter lost his shit and killed Duncan, and then he took himself out of the game. And yeah, your bullshit made them do it, but you won’t get to the rest of us. It’s over. You’re over.”
“What about Banks?”
“What about him?”
“He’s gone,” I say.
She has her sabre back up. She’s itching to lunge again. She says, “He’s hiding out. Like Malcolm and Duffy.”
“Hiding,” I say. “Because they have something to hide.”
“God,” she half-shouts. “Who the fuck do you think you are? The patron saint of stupid sluts who drink too much?”
I bring my sabre up fast and run for her. She hits my blade away and I lunge and miss and stumble almost into the far wall.
“They’re guilty,” I say, and I turn back to her. “Duncan and Duffy and Connor and Banks. They know what they did.”
She laughs angry and bitter. “They don’t care what they did. It doesn’t fucking matter. Everybody knows what happens at Duncan’s parties and you’re the only one who gives a shit. She sure as hell wasn’t the first.”
My blade flicks back up. We’re facing the wrong way and not even on the piste, but I don’t care. “But she’ll be the last,” I say—
—and it’s too far and I know it as soon as I say it and my lungs pinch tight—
—and she knows.
She pulls off her mask. Her eyes are wide. She’s twice as shocked as Duncan was when I leaned close over him while his blood drained out into the sheets.
She says, “You’re her. You’re her.”
She grabs at my mask and yanks it off and stares hard into my eyes. “You’re her,” she says again, slower, filling up with knowing.
I don’t lie. Not when it matters.
She springs back and brings her weapon up again. Like it’s instinct. Like she’ll slash the truth away.
I take three strong steps toward her. I drop my sabre. I don’t need it. We stand face-to-face, eye-to-eye, girl-to-girl. I say, “Fate’s a cruel bitch to girls like you.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” she says. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Exactly,” I hiss.
She steps back. Her face is the same color as her jacket. Her makeup is garish against the shock-white. “It was you. All of it was you.”
My plan is shattered. I’ve veered so far away from the path I carved out that there’s no way to claw back on. My rage is bleeding up through all the careful calculating and I’ve lost my edge, I know it, and all the sleepless reckless ruthlessness is rising up against me, but I can’t think about it—not now—
And I say, “Not just me. Mack, too.”
I’ve thrown it hard to pin her down. To make her mine again and buy me enough time to cage her up until I can call him or call my coven or scare her silent—
—but she doesn’t step back. She steps forward. Hard and fast and dauntless. She shoves me and I stumble back into the wall. She says, “So what’s your plan for him? Drag him along to watch his friends fall apart, and then get some JV asshole to kill him, too?”
“Of course not.” I’m half-shouting in her face. She has me locked against the wall and she’ll never back away. And she’s almost right, and she would’ve been right a week ago, but he’s killed for me and for her and he isn’t like them. Not anymore. “He’s the only one of all of you who doesn’t deserve a knife in his throat.”
Her eyes fill up slow and delighted. “You don’t know,” she says.
“Fuck you,” I spit, and I push her away.
She doesn’t lose her footing. “You don’t know,” she says again. And she grins damned triumph and says—
“Your golden boy is as guilty as all of them.”
You knew enough, I told Mack, and I was right. But he hated them for it. He killed them for it. He burned their kingdom down.
I stand my ground. “No, he’s not.”
“Jade,” she sings. “Poor little Jade. He’s the one who gave you the drink.”
It hits me hard in the chest, in the heart, in the teeth. The whole room glows searing and brighter until the lights explode and the ceiling catches fire. And I’m back in Duncan’s house with the music pulsing loud and the lights spinning. Back with the plaster masks of dead kings’ faces.
Back with the dazzle-smiled boy hidden behind the static—
And I know it as sure I’ve ever known anything.
She’s telling the truth.
Then I’m screaming and screaming and screaming. There’s a blade in my ribs ripping through me and spilling my blood, and I hate her so much that nothing in the world will stop it—
I push her so hard we both fall. She shrieks and I scream again—
and everything spins, everything flashes too bright—
and I see him in front of me, I hear him, and he’s saying, Elle—
saying, Pretty name—
saying, But not as pretty as you—
I struggle to my feet and I kick her hard, and again, and she’s shrieking and scrambling away and into the wall. The blood rushes in my ears, louder and louder—
and the dazzle-smiled boy says, They know everything—
and the dazzle-smiled boy says, They’ll ruin us—
And Piper pulls herself to her feet with one hand clutched against her ribs and the other grasping at the wall. She coughs. She gasps. She says, “It was him. It was him. It was him—” and she won’t stop—
and she said, fine, go fuck some roofied slut and she left me there—
and she says, it was him, it was him, it was him—
and my hands grab at the swords on the wall. Grab the top blade and pull with all my strength. The wires snap. I fall hard to the floor.
it was him it was him it was him—
I stand up and stagger with the sword hanging heavy and blunt from my hands.
it was him—
And Piper is still shrilling and scrabbling against the wall, grabbing at her stupid needle-thin sabre with its dull button end and she’s nothing, she’s no one, she’s helpless and hopeless—
I swing the sword with all my strength.
it was him—
The metal slashes against her side and cuts through her jacket like it’s nothing, like it’s ribbon, like it’s skin—
and she falls and the gash spits red—
I promise. I’ve never loved anyone more—
And I scream.
And I raise the sword.
And blood flies from the blade and paints the wall and even in my rage I see the beauty, and it’s devastating.
I swing the sword again with all of it, with all of me, straight for her neck.
I scream.
it was him—
I kill her.
Ruin
Mads finds me in the white room with the spinning lights.
She runs blurred fast across the floor and my vision twists and twists until the floor is over us and the ceiling is below—
My hands clutch the sword tight against my chest. The second sword hangs swinging over my head from one wire.
The floor is red.
Piper lies next to me with her amber bird-eyes fixed on the ceiling. Her right hand is still caught around the handle of her sabre. Her mouth is a shocked little circle.
Mads says, Jade.
Kneeling in Piper’s blood. Kneeling in front of me, in front of the splattered beautiful red arc on the wall above us, in front of the sword that hangs over me and the sword that killed Piper.
I say, It was him. It was Mack. The boy who gave me the drink—
—and my hands grip the sword so tight it almost cuts through my gloves.
I say, I lost control—I ruined everything—I’ll kill him, Mads, I have to—
Mads says, Jade, oh, Jade—
—and she is life but I’m death. I’m drowning in Piper’s blood, and in the wild and violent sea that carried Banks down. In what we’ve done.
And in what we’ve left undone.
I’ve lost control. I’ve lost myself.
My face is wet but I don’t cry. I don’t cry even when I kill, even when I’m locked in a room with four wolves, even when I drown in the truth and the ruin I built with my own hands.
I slash one glove across my cheeks and it comes away wet but red.
It’s Piper’s blood.
I don’t cry.
I say, He’s no one—
I say, They’re nothing—
I say, They’ll never make me anything I wasn’t before—
And then I’m crawling away from the wall, scraping long red gashes into the floor. Crawling to Mads.
I don’t cry.
My shoulders shake. My lungs wrack. I feel the horrible sounds that rip out of my throat and bury themselves in Mads’s shoulders.