Their Vicious Games(75)

Again, Leighton surprises me and does nothing of the sort. Instead, she declares that we will have a day of rest before the final Repartee, and then the Royale thereafter. There is to be no advance warning or training. Presumably, we have nothing left to learn, and that is a signal to us all.

This is the endgame.

She dismisses us like she doesn’t have any more time, and we are too tired to protest. We are marched upstairs to a gluttonous feast in the common room that none of us is up to eating.

Instead, I sleep. There’s no time or room to continue my interrogation of Penthesilea or to hear Esme’s crowing about her first placement around her yawns, or even to ask Saint what happened to her. I put her, trembling, exhausted, to bed—and then myself.

I sleep a long time, through the night and into the morning, without dreams. No nightmares, no sugar-spun fantasies. And when I wake up, there’s a moment, just one, where I forget what I’ve been through. In that moment, between waking and the world, I am just a girl, in a beautiful room, in a soft bed, on a summer morning. Then the stale scent of old sweat and terror rises from where it’s stuck to my bed, and I feel the urge to scream.

When I finally find the will to turn over in bed, Saint is awake, staring at the ceiling too. We ignore the comings and goings in the corridor of the only three other girls left. Only when I’ve had enough of my own stench do I get up.

Breakfast has been delivered, sitting outside the door, but I’m not all that hungry.

I spend an hour in the shower. The first twenty minutes I use to sob, the sounds of my grief overpowered by the pounding of the four shower jets, water swirling down the drain with the rest of the sweat and grime on my body. I weep for what feels like forever, without a single tear falling from my eyes. The rest I spend washing my hair.

First, I detangle, dragging a brush through the matted hair, working each curl until they hang stringy straight in a halo around my face, then I shampoo slowly, lovingly, slathering my scalp, scratching the grit up with my bare fingernails. I wash everything out. Finally, I deep condition and I stand in the steam, staring at nothing until I go hot and woozy and have to force myself out.

With nothing to do, we are discarded dolls in the prettiest of dollhouses, and that feels like another mind game—we are without use until a Remington picks us up and decides to play a game. When I step out of the bathroom, I see Saint has pulled herself free from her cocoon, but not particularly far. She’s now crouched by her bed, near her trunks, talking to herself in murmured Mandarin interwoven with the odd English or French curse word.

I kneel in front of her, holding my towel tight to my body, and grab her hand. “Saint?” I whisper. “Breakfast is here?” My nose wrinkles at the congealed oatmeal, long gone cold, the soupy yogurt that looks half melted, and the curling leaves on the fresh strawberries.

She doesn’t respond, at least not to me, but her whispering grows louder. It’s like she doesn’t hear me, doesn’t even see me. It’s too painful to look at confident, untouchable Saint like this, so I give her space and go to work on my curls, applying the pudding and gel in a methodical fashion. It’s been years since I taught myself to do this; now I don’t even have to think about it, which is good because I can’t think about anything. I’m halfway through when there’s a knock on the door.

Uncaring about my state of undress, or anything at all anymore, I stalk toward the door and wrench it open with a snarled “What?” Fear is such a constant now, I barely feel it.

Pierce holds up his hands in surrender. He is so perfect looking, so absolutely golden, but his joy dims into what I’m sure he thinks is honest concern. “I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

Again, he asks. I laugh viciously and don’t bother with answering because I’m past being able to lie. My hand tightens around the top of my towel, and Pierce’s gaze drags down, over the top of my breasts, and then flits up again, like he’s been caught.

“Do you need something, Pierce? I’d like to keep my peace for the rest of the day, before the Repartee,” I say. There’s nothing about his perfectly coiffed hair or his perfect smile that can muster up anything other than thinly veiled contempt anymore. Resentment is a hell of a relationship builder, and we don’t even have foundations.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m supposed to have lunch with Esme,” Pierce says, his nose wrinkling with distaste at the thought, “but I wanted to see how you were doing.”

I squint at him. “How… do you think I’m doing?” I ask. An awkward beat of silence passes between us, where he doesn’t even try to answer. “If there’s nothing else—”

“Wait, I also brought you something for tonight. Here,” Pierce says, and I finally realize that he has a garment bag slung over his shoulder. I take the offering and lean against the doorframe, looking up at him, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but he just says, “You were brilliant. With the Esme bit, turning the others against her.”

“So you were watching,” I say with a sigh, because I’m over the flattery. That’s what it’s always been. Empty flattery, meant to placate me into continuing.

“Of course,” Pierce says.

“Was Graham?” I ask.

Pierce frowns like why am I asking about his brother when he is standing right in front of me.

“I only wonder because he wasn’t there, at the end.” I say quickly.