“Welcome to the Royale.” Third’s voice booms through the space, interrupting our strange standoff and drawing our attention back to him. Leighton opens her mouth to speak, but Third steps forward, effectively cutting her off. “Today is the finale of the Finish. You have proven to us that the young women of today, for how much they lack polish, are amenable to being formed and completed. Do you feel complete?”
He doesn’t mean for us to answer. So we don’t.
Instead, Leighton takes advantage of the silence, wresting back control, noticeably perturbed by Third’s takeover. “After last night’s… events, the rankings have shifted. In first place, we have Penthesilea Bonavich. In second, we have Hawthorne Harding. And finally, in last, the incomparable Miss Adina Walker.”
Leighton’s lips curl around my name, her favor evaporated, but I stand taller, refusing to flinch under the glacial weight of her stare.
“I will not sugarcoat this,” Leighton says. “The Royale is… a game of Assassin.”
A game for elementary school students. It’s insulting and infantilizing and exactly right.
“The aim of the game is for players to track down and subdue their targets, by any means necessary. You may defend yourself, by any means necessary. When a player eliminates her target, she will continue and acquire her victim’s target. When one player remains standing, the game is over,” Leighton says carefully. “As the Game Mistress, I will assign each of you a target. Hawthorne, you are assigned Adina.”
Hawthorne is breathing so slowly that it’s almost like she’s not breathing at all, like a predator that is so close to her feast.
“Adina, your target will be Penthesilea,” Leighton continues. “And finally, Penthesilea, you are assigned Hawthorne.”
It doesn’t take a genius to see past Leighton’s veiled language.
“Pierce, anything else you’d like to say?” Third prompts.
Pierce claps his hands together. “Not anything particularly. I did want to thank you for your participation. And I wish you the very best luck.”
Leighton nods. “Very good. I will now count down from ten. Ten, nine—” I can’t look away from Pierce and that small half smile, the forlorn look in his eyes like he regrets this. It is practiced, fake, exactly like that smile in the woods, and those words at breakfast, and everything about him.
“No,” I say, remembering my plan.
“？‘No’？” Third repeats as if he doesn’t understand the meaning of a two-letter word.
“I said no,” I continue. “I have… something important to say. To all of you.”
“Miss Walker, this is very irregular, but I’ll allow it,” Leighton prompts in spite of Third’s outrage.
I take a deep shuddering breath.
“We can’t begin, because not everyone who’s supposed to be playing is playing.”
CHAPTER 32
MY DECLARATION IS DEFINITIVE AND damning. Graham looks confused. Pierce is watching me with that stare that I can’t discern, like either he’d like me dead after rejecting him a second time with the dress or he wants me to live, to see what I will do next.
The tension in the hunting parlor can be cut with a knife, so stiff and muffling that I would’ve once suffocated on the taste of it.
“What do you mean, Miss Walker, when you say that not everyone is playing?” Leighton asks. Leighton is looking for clarity, but not for herself. I know that she knows exactly what I mean. She casts a quick look over at Third, whose gaze doesn’t waver from my face as he moves to sit down in the winged armchair. I bare my teeth in a grin.
“The Finish is essentially… a game, is it not?”
“No, it is a time-honored tradition,” Third growls, “begun with my great-great-great-grandfather, at the dawn of Edgewater’s founding—”
“First, didn’t a woman start it? Matilda Remington or whoever? Second, it’s a competitive event that is played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, and luck,” I insist. “That’s a game. You’ve all been making snide little references about it the whole time.”
Leighton takes a sip of her mimosa, long enough to nearly finish it, except for the tiniest pool of topaz at the bottom of the glass. “It’s a game,” she agrees flatly, impatient for me to get on with it. She looks back at Penthesilea and Hawthorne, who have now both moved to stand behind me, pressed up against the wall to better witness.
“In every Repartee, the person who is challenged picks the game. That’s the rule, right?”
“Yes, it’s the rule,” Leighton agrees, and she leans in, swaying closer, eager.
“Well… then we should pick the game. We should set the rules. Because Pen and Hawthorne didn’t challenge me and I didn’t challenge them. We were challenged…，” I say. I glance back at the two girls. Hawthorne is holding herself taut, any kindness, any soft border gone. Penthesilea stares back, a peculiar tilt to her mouth. I turn back to the group. “By you. The Remingtons. But you’re not playing. It’s our game and you have to play.”
My words waver in the air and then Third lets out a barking laugh. “Us? You can’t be serious.”
“Mr. Remington, I’ve never been more serious in my entire life.” The laughter stops after I say that.
“How dare you?” Third booms, his voice thunderous as he squints at me through narrowed eyes. I nearly take a step back. “Little girl, do you know who you’re playing with?”
“Do you?” I shoot back. “Are you afraid, Mr. Remington?”
He scoffs, unconvincingly.
“I thought you were all about rules, Third. I know I’m not your ‘choice,’ but I’ve made it this far. By playing by the rules. Your rules,” I say, smirking at the Remington patriarch. I turn back to Leighton, who looks thoughtful. “But it should always have been our game. My game. And we can play Assassin, but you have to play too. No set targets. Two ways to win: you’re the last one standing.”
“Or?” Leighton asks, quirking an eyebrow.
Third sits up taller. “You can’t be seriously considering this, Leighton.”
“I’m the Game Mistress,” she warns.
“I am the patriarch of this family,” Third says. His jaw clenches so hard that I hear it crack on each word.
“And I won the right to this title. I shed blood for this title. You would never understand what that means. What it is to be in their places. So I will hear her rules and I will determine if we accept,” Leighton says, and when she looks back at me, she is considering again. “The other way to win?”
“You get out that front door. After that, you leave us alone. No money. No connections. No nothing. We walk away, and we never see each other again. We won’t talk. No one will ever know. You never come after us. Accept the rules or don’t. I’m playing the game this way anyway, and at least this time… the playing field will actually be even.” I look at Pierce now, and he stares back, his face full of horror at the reality of what he’s claimed to want.
“No,” Pierce finally blurts out. He shakes his head frantically. “Aunt Leighton, you can’t be serious. This is… this is absurd. Tradition states—”