Their Vicious Games(51)
She’s stopped pretending that she wasn’t listening. She leans forward, tilting her head, and I hold my breath, waiting for her to question my words, the code, meant for Toni. She doesn’t. Instead, she asks, “What’s changed?” That’s when I know she sees that the blinders are off. There’s no more pretending that the Ride wasn’t set up to push us together, to create violence. There’s no more pretending that death isn’t going to happen in the Finish this time, that I won’t have to kill or be killed to win. No denying that for the Remingtons, deaths are preferred, simpler, tidier, and baked into everything they’ve set up for us. “What’s changed?” is a stupid question with a simple answer.
In short? Everything.
“Me,” I say softly instead.
Leighton smiles a secret smile, and the way she looks at me is as if she’s looking at a very fond memory. “Adina, do you know what happens when one applies pressure to carbon?”
“Yes. It turns to diamond,” I say.
“It must be unpleasant for the carbon, but wouldn’t you say it’s worth it in the end?” Leighton posits, “Think of the Finish as a becoming, of sorts. What will you be when the end comes?” She doesn’t expect an answer. Instead, she leans back in her seat and tilts her head to the door, dismissing me.
CHAPTER 18
AFTER MY PHONE CALL WITH my mother, I return to my bedroom with a resolve to tell Saint we need to come up with a proper plan for the next event. But I return to a girl who doesn’t look altogether whole. She lies back on the bed and stares up at the ceiling, letting out a long, shuddering sigh, the kind I feel in my rattling bones. “I’m so tired.”
In that moment, that moment where she slips, she looks my age with all that entails. Young. Uncertain. Afraid. But then as usual, Saint seems to blink herself awake and she is steel wrapped in silk again, sharper than a knife’s edge. She’s so aware for someone higher than a kite.
“You should sleep more. Tomorrow’s your brunch. Maybe Pierce will slip and tell you about the Raid,” I suggest. Yesterday’s Ride was draining on everyone. Even Penthesilea.
Saint closes her eyes, and I think she’s fallen asleep when she says, “There are so few secrets when a person revels in their own wickedness.” And then she really is asleep.
Let it not be said that Saint doesn’t have a flair for the dramatic.
I settle in for the evening, curling up with a book I’ve stolen from the library, one I can barely find it in myself to pay attention to, my eyes sliding sightlessly over the words.
The silence makes time go by quickly, interrupted sparingly by giggles and soft chatter. Sometime around six, I hear a knock at the door, announcing that dinner has been brought to the common room for the evening. I don’t move, listening instead as the other girls congregate and then disperse. It’s nearly midnight before I decide it’s safe enough to show my face without the company of my ally.
The common room is stuffed full with different games, ways to pass the time. A half-finished game of Go, a Monopoly board dominated by someone’s little red hotels, and a game of Catan that someone has lost rather embarrassingly. Strategy games. As I thought, the games have resumed, mental warfare until the physical challenges start again with the Raid.
Esme and Hawthorne are in there alone. I know just how dangerous they can be without the eyes of others.
“I’ll just—” I start to back out, unwilling to put myself in the belly of the beast.
“No, come in, Walker,” Esme says. “You weren’t at dinner.”
“I was not,” I acknowledge. I sway forward onto the balls of my feet and then rock back hard on my heels, unsure how to move further. My stomach answers, gurgling noisily.
Esme smirks. She wants me to submit.
But the Ride is still fresh in my mind, and Jacqueline tried to do something to me after, too. Leighton’s condemnation of “The Ride has finished,” as she put Jacqueline on her knees, rings. This room is not a place for violence. To be a coward would just be another way of losing, and I can’t afford that.
I keep my chin high as I march forward to survey the buffet table. There’s more than enough left, an excess of food for the number of girls that remain. A platter of golden gougères, a tray of buttery brioche smeared with p?té, and the bloodied filet mignon on crostini decorated with goat cheese and shallot are just a few of the dishes on offer.
“I recommend the stuffed mushrooms. They’re to die for,” Esme says, so close that I’m forced to look up at her to meet her eyes.
“If you’re trying to intimidate me, you’re not,” I lie. “I know all your tricks. Remember we used to be friends.” The trick about lying, though, is that you have to believe yourself for anyone else to believe you. I don’t believe myself, and so neither does Esme.
“Were we?” Esme says flatly.
“I thought so,” I say. “As much as you can be friends with anyone.”
“Friends don’t spread rumors about each other,” Esme retorts.
I frown. “Friends don’t torment each other for their success, either.”
Esme grabs my arm, acrylics digging into brown skin.
“You humiliated me,” she snarls, neck craning forward. This close, all her features no longer look pretty. She is jagged, like the edges of her diamonds. I reverse, the small of my back slamming into the table, jostling it. “You and Charles’s bitch sister. After I took you in and made you somebody. Almost made you worth knowing.”