“YOU TRIED TO DROWN ME, I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU, WALKER,” Jacqueline screeches, her voice distorting into something demonic.
Someone blurs past me, soft blue linen and perfectly curled blond hair, and Leighton grabs Jacqueline by the wrist and twists so hard that Jacqueline screams in pain, dropping the gun. Leighton releases her, just as quick, and Jacqueline stumbles back, cradling her wrist to her chest and whimpering.
“Miss Moriarty, you are embarrassing yourself,” Leighton says coldly. “The Ride has finished.”
Jacqueline lets out a cracked sob, eyes welling with tears. She looks around, first at Leighton and then at the other Remingtons, willing them to understand her rage, all this rage. Graham is still watching me, but Pierce looks at her, his upper lip curled, his nose wrinkled. It’s an easy look to read—disgust.
“But she tried to drown me. She wanted to kill me,” Jacqueline accuses, which is ironic given the gun she was brandishing. But Leighton lifts her chin, looks at me, and deliberately says, “Good girl.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t want to hear that. I don’t want to look at her. I don’t want to be called good for doing something so fucking awful that I never wanted to do.
After that, we wait in silence for the rest. Reagan Mikaelson comes across only five minutes later.
We wait twenty more minutes. No one else comes.
And I know what that means.
* * *
The bruises along my side look like a bouquet of flowers, blooming roses and deep moon-purple carnations rippling along my skin. I never thought skin as deep brown as mine could bruise like this. My bruises have always been dark, violent things, but these bruises are almost beautiful. Like the smell of the Ride, floral and gore.
I hide them beneath satin, and suddenly, it’s like they were never there in the first place. Except, with each ginger step, the pain zips over my skin, stinging and sending flashes in front of my eyes, and the aching exhaustion burns in the arches of my feet, stretched thinner by the heels I’m wearing.
Saint looks over at me, grim faced. All her good humor from before has drained away as she shifts back to stare into her vanity. She pops open a fluorescent bottle of painkillers, takes one dry, and flexes her hand again.
“How bad is it?” I ask, my voice a little too accusatory.
Saint doesn’t look at me, focusing a little too hard on securing the brace on her wrist. “It’s a sprain. Or something. This is just for the next day or so. Then it’s Advil for me,” Saint says. “We were getting close to the end. Hawthorne and Esme blocked me in. Spooked my horse. Esme swung a branch at my head. Knocked me straight off but over the finish line. I don’t think she foresaw that.”
I can’t say anything to make this better. To make her feel better. But I have to try.
“We just have to make it through dinner. And then we can pass out. We can sleep,” I say, just as much for my benefit as for Saint’s.
“Yeah. But sleep isn’t going to fix…” Saint trails off, looking at her wrist, but then she shakes herself hard, as if she’s trying to wake herself from a nightmare. “This was a calculated risk. A good risk. I knew what I was getting into, wading out front. I needed top three. I need face time with the family.”
For a moment I think she’s talking to me, before I realize that she’s staring into her own reflection, reassuring herself that she’s in control. I don’t have the heart to tell her that she isn’t anymore.
And then she deflates, and I realize that she already knows.
Saint declares. “I… I should’ve let you run. I should’ve run with you.”
I want to leave too. I want to tell her, Let’s run now. Let’s run when they don’t expect it. And then I think about the threat against my parents. Saint has money to protect her from the threat of ruin or retribution. I don’t. My parents don’t.
So instead, I try to smile.
“The day is almost over and we are so beat, we couldn’t walk, let alone run. We’ll try again tomorrow,” I say, careful and measured.
Saint—dependable, never-bothered Saint—reaches for me this time instead of the other way around. It’s one thing to witness violence. It’s another to be in the thick of it. I grab her hand and squeeze hard before I let go, leading us into the common room as the other girls hurriedly slip in as well. Esme pettily steps on our heels just to remind us that she’s right behind us.
Leighton is already there.
“Ladies. Finally,” Leighton says. Her calm smile contrasts horrifically with the tension that racks through each of us, a collage of exhaustion and pain. “Are we ready for lunch?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “All right. Line up in order of rank.”
I bite my tongue to stop the vitriol I want to spit.
Instead, we do as we’re told. Reagan Mikaelson heads to the tail of the line. She keeps her head down, in hopes of her dark brown hair covering the livid cut along her jaw, jagged and newly stitched, but it’s clear as day. She’s pathetically lonely without her allies—friends, maybe. From what I gather, one’s facedown in a mud pit and the other lies broken in the Taxis Ditch. Gone, like Hannah R.
Jacqueline lines up right in front of her. Then Hannah G, myself, and Hawthorne.
I’m surprised when Esme is called third and not Saint. I guess she really did fly off ahead of her. Saint flinches when she’s called for second place, like it has cost her something.
And finally, at the head of the line, having “demonstrated resilience and ambition,” in the words of Leighton, or as I would put it, “years of experience as a horsewoman,” is Penthesilea Bonavich.
The first-place prize is one that Penthesilea is long used to—private, one-on-one dinners with Pierce nightly until the Raid, when her ranking might shift. Second place comes with a private brunch with Pierce and prime seating during common meals. Third, to Esme’s chagrin, comes with nothing but the pleasure of not being dead.
As we’re shuffled along the halls, I keep my eyes on the back of Hawthorne’s head. I find a strand of hair to focus on. I try to get myself to move on. My stomach feels hollow, but I know I need to eat. To act as if nothing has happened.
As if three more lives weren’t suddenly snuffed out for the Remingtons’ egos. I know not to ask about the dead girls this time. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. I won’t let them drive me crazy too.
We enter the dining room to Mr. Caine’s self-important proclamation of “Dr. Leighton Remington and the Ladies of the Finish—”
Pierce is right next to Mr. Caine, and he offers his arm to Penthesilea with practiced ease. She takes it. For once, they look like a proper couple, heads tilted toward each other, whispered words passing back and forth between them. For once, Penthesilea looks real instead of the hazy version of herself that she’s been since the start of the Finish.
He leads her to the seat immediately to the left of the head of the table, and we fill in behind.
Esme and Hawthorne sit next to Penthesilea. Saint sits far away from them, at the other end of the table, where Third sits, and I’m quick to find a place next to her. I try my best not to look directly at Graham, who sits beside me, or at Pierce. I will never put another target on my back.