Chapter 8
"Hold still or I'm going to smudge this all over your face," Luce warned, her hand steady as she applied the final touches of gold shimmer to my eyelids. I tried not to squirm as the cool brush tickled my skin.
"Sorry," I grumbled, forcing myself to remain motionless. "I just don’t get the point of all this if we are going to be covering it up, anyway." Luce rolled her eyes at me before stepping back to examine her handiwork with a critical eye.
"There. Perfect," she said with a bright smile.
I turned to look at myself in the full-length mirror and barely recognised the woman staring back at me.
The floor length red dress the guys had chosen for me clung to every curve of my body, the silky material shimmering with each breath I took.
The slit up the side reached almost indecently high on my thigh, revealing more skin than I was normally comfortable showing.
My very faded purple hair had been styled into loose waves that cascaded over my shoulders, and the gold makeup Luce had applied made my blue eyes look bigger, more mysterious.
"Holy shit," I whispered, turning to see how the dress dipped low in the back, exposing the delicate line of my spine. "I look..."
"Absolutely stunning," Luce finished for me, a genuine smile lighting up her face. "Those Regents won't be able to take their eyes off you."
That was exactly what I was afraid of. The memory of Ryder handing me the dress yesterday rushed back, his words echoing in my mind as clearly as if he were standing beside me now.
"Red and gold, Poison," he'd said, his fingers tracing the material, though he was really tracing the outline of my body beneath it.
"The colours of Covenant House. You'll wear them tomorrow to remind everyone who you belong to.
" His normally playful blue eyes had darkened as he leant in, his breath hot against my ear.
"The red symbolises that you are the lifeblood of our cold, dark hearts.
The gold is the light you bring to our darkness.
" His words had unsettled me, maybe even frightened me a little. But they'd also sent an unwanted thrill through my body that I couldn't quite suppress. It wasn’t just the usual games though. There was something different about all three of the guys in the last couple of days. I wouldn’t say they had been avoiding me, but their full on approach from earlier in the week seemed to have almost stopped. Even when giving me the dress last night at dinner, Ryder had seemed to be the only one who was excited. Cole wouldn’t meet my eyes and Logan seemed all too consumed in his own world.
"Earth to Cade," Luce said, snapping her fingers in front of my face. "Where did you go just now?" I shook my head, banishing the memory.
“Nowhere,” I said quickly, plastering a smile on my face. “Just thinking about how different this Halloween is from last year.” Luce let out a laugh.
“I’ll say,” she said as she looked in the mirror and smoothed down her own ice blue and silver gown.
“It’s a damn sight different from holing up in my room with cheesy horror movies and enough junk food to last a year, right?
” I smiled at the memory from last year.
We have made our way through three movies with obvious fake blood and plenty of jump scares, ignoring the obvious party energy that radiated on campus.
If someone had told me last year that I wouldn’t just be not avoiding the annual Halloween party, but was one of the organisers of such a ridiculously lavish event I would have suggested they needed to get their head checked.
I met Luce’s eyes in the mirror and sighed. This year was definitely not what either of us was used to.
“I know why I am all dressed up,” I said, “But I know you are not the party type, why aren’t you hiding from the masses tonight?” Luce rolled her eyes again and matched my huge sigh.
“Well, apart from the fact that my best friend has been stolen away from me, and sitting in a darkened room watching movies by myself just sounds kinda sad,” she shrugged with a grimace.
“But for some reason Ryder was very insistent that I wasn’t alone tonight.
He’s even arranged for one of the housemen to accompany me for the evening.
” I could tell from her scoff that she wasn’t too impressed by the gesture.
I smiled sympathetically at her. I was getting used to the inconvenience of being ordered around all the time, I often forgot that Luce had already been a part of this world pretty much her entire life.
Still, it hadn’t been an issue before. Being Luce’s friend obviously meant that I knew who Ryder was before this year, being her cousin, there had been minor interactions, but again something seemed to have changed recently and it felt like it wasn’t just me being unwittingly drawn further into this world.
A knock at the door made us both jump.
"Cadence?" Cole's voice came through the door. "Are you ladies almost ready? Logan's getting grumpy." I rolled my eyes to Luce in the mirror and she shook her head with a smile on her face.
“Yeah, we’ll be a couple of minutes,” I called out as Luce turned to pick up the gold skull mask from my vanity to hand it to me.
"This is gorgeous, though," she said as I ran my fingers over the delicate metalwork of the mask. It was beautiful, I had to admit, a golden skull with intricate filigree patterns etched into the surface. The eye holes were lined with tiny crystals that caught the light and sparkled.
"The boys have matching ones in red," I said, fitting the mask over my face and securing the ribbons at the back of my head. "And the rest of Covenant House will be in black masks with white skulls."
"And the cloaks?" Luce asked, her voice carefully neutral. I nodded, swallowing hard. The black cloaks were too similar to the ones they'd worn during the Hunt. Every time I saw them, I was transported back to that night in the forest, running for my life before being cornered and claimed.
"Yeah, the cloaks too." I turned back to the mirror, examining my reflection with the mask in place. The effect was both beautiful and eerie. "Ryder says it's tradition."
"Since when do you care about their traditions?" Luce asked, coming to stand beside me in the mirror to fix her own mask in place. In her pale blue gown and feathered white mask, she looked like an ice princess beside my fiery appearance.
"Since they own my life," I replied bitterly, then immediately regretted my tone when I saw Luce flinch. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap."
"It's okay." Luce squeezed my hand. "I know this isn't easy for you."
That was the understatement of the century.
Nothing about my life as the Covenant's Consort was easy. But I would be lying if a part of me wasn’t coming to accept it.
It scared me knowing that my resolve to escape seemed to be getting smaller.
I could tell that something had changed in the fragile dynamic that I held with the guys.
My mind flashed back to the other night.
I had been so relieved to know that the guys had some plans or something and would be gone for the evening.
After spending a little time working on the maths work that Cole had set me, promising a “punishment” with an infuriating smirk if I didn’t have it finished by the time he was back, I had gone to bed.
It had been harder to fall asleep for some reason, part of me wondering that I had got used to Ryder’s almost nightly hot chocolate drinks, but I remembered waking up at some point to see Logan standing in my doorway watching me.
I couldn’t see his face, but still it was like I could feel his eyes burning into me.
Before I could find the words to ask him what the fuck he was doing he had already turned away and left my room.
The next morning all three guys seemed different, subdued somehow, for reasons more than a late night.
Even Ryder’s incessant touching was distinctly absent.
A loud banging brought me back to the room, making me jump.
“I swear to god, Princess,” Logan’s loud voice boomed through the door, “If you are not down those stairs in the next thirty seconds I will come in there and drag you down myself.” Luce glanced at the door with wide eyes as I picked up my black clutch bag.
I handed Luce her silvery one and took a deep sigh.
“Come on,” I said, “Before the almighty overlord has a meltdown or something.”
I opened the bedroom door, and I nearly collided with Logan's broad chest. My breath caught as I took him in, the black fitted suit and shirt moulded to his form like they'd been crafted exclusively for him, showing the breadth of his shoulders and the lean strength of his torso.
His dark hair was styled back from his face, emphasising the sharp angles of his jaw and cheekbones.
The red skull mask dangled from his fingertips, somehow making him look even more dangerous.
"Holy shit," I whispered before I could stop myself.
His hazel eyes flashed with something primal as they swept over me, lingering on the high slit of my dress where my thigh was exposed.
The intensity of his gaze left me momentarily breathless, heat blooming across my skin despite my determination to remain unaffected.
"What was that, Princess?" Logan's voice was a low growl, his jaw clenched tight as he stepped closer, invading my personal space. "Something about an almighty overlord having a meltdown?" I swallowed hard, fighting to regain my composure.
"You heard me." I lifted my chin, refusing to back down despite the way my heart hammered against my ribs. "That was the intention."
"Always so fucking defiant," he murmured, his breath warm against my face as he leant in. "Even when you're dressed in my colours."
"They're Covenant House colours," I corrected, though my voice didn't sound nearly as steady as I'd hoped. "Not yours." His lips curved into a cruel smile.