21. Two Days Until Bonding
Chapter twenty-one
Two Days Until Bonding
Laurel
I’m not sure how much time passes, only that sweat gathers at the base of my neck. I excuse myself from the latest conversation and head outside.
The lawn is more crowded than inside the house.
Guests fill the terraces and gather beneath the white tents.
They cluster around linen-covered tables or wander candle-lit paths with drinks in hand.
The mansion has enough land to hold them all without feeling cramped, allowing the party to extend farther into the darkness than I can see.
No one looks my way as I slip into the shadows, needing a minute alone to regroup.
I start to lean against the stone wall but quickly straighten, afraid I’ll muss my dress.
I adjust my neckline, making sure the brand is covered.
The light touch sends a sting through the raw skin, and I snatch my fingers away.
A voice carries from around the corner.
“She’s not even pretty.” Whoever is speaking has a drawl like Carrson’s, but hers has more twang. “How could he pick her over Samantha? I don’t get it.”
I quirk my head, listening hard. They can’t be talking about me. Can they?
“I know,” another girl exclaims, a slight slur in her voice. “Samantha’s gorgeous. I’d die if I looked like her.”
I sidestep to the end of the wall and peer around the corner. Three women about my age stand in a circle. The smell of weed wafts over as the glowing tip of a joint moves between them.
They’re beautiful, all three of them. Slim, with long hair and sleek dresses in shades of lavender, pink, and silver.
“She thinks Carrson chose her over Samantha,” the girl in lavender says. “He didn’t. He chose a fight with his father, and she happened to be standing there.”
The others laugh, the sound high and mocking.
I brace one hand against the rough stone and lean farther out. Carrson cares about me. I know he does. But affection and rebellion can exist inside the same choice. What if choosing me gave him both?
“That’s why he keeps an eye on her,” the girl in silver says. “He knows she’s weak.”
“Exactly,” the girl in lavender says. “Samantha would’ve stood beside him. Laurel’s just another person he has to protect.”
My fingers find the necklace at my throat.
The girl in pink takes the joint and glances toward the mansion. “Did you see him tonight? He used to walk into a room and everyone watched him. Now he walks into a room and all he does is watch her. You saw it too, didn’t you, Gillian?”
“Of course I did.” Gillian, in lavender, gives a disgusted laugh.
“He’ll figure it out once choosing her has cost him enough.
He’s already losing power because of her.
Did you see all the Fathers paying court to the Beaumonts?
Mother says they’re backing Jackson for the White House now.
Not Carrson. Can you imagine that half-breed as First Lady? ”
The White House? Carrson as president? Apparently Carrson has a future he forgot to tell me about. One that even these girls getting high behind the house know. One they can’t see me in, but can Carrson? Can I?
I don’t know the answer to that.
I only know how convenient it is to call me half-breed. They use my father’s blood to pull me into their world, then my mother’s to push me back out.
“It’s not fair.” The girl in silver stomps a foot clad in a heel so high I’d break my leg if I tried walking in it. “She didn’t go through the trials and tests like we did. She hasn’t bled like we have, but she gets to waltz in here, raggedy and half-assed, and snag an Ashford. What the fuck?”
She takes a deep drag, holds the smoke in her lungs, then releases it in a thick plume.
Gillian takes the joint. “Remember Melanie, Renee, and Jodi? The Death Trials?”
Death Trials?
All three women lower their heads.
“I left flowers on their graves the last time I went to the cemetery,” says the girl in pink. “I put flowers on the other girls’ graves too.”
Whatever the Death Trials was, more than three girls never came home from it. Their resentment isn’t only jealousy. The Order taught them pain was the price of belonging, and I walked in for free.
“That was nice of you, Steff,” Gillian says. “She doesn’t deserve him. That’s all there is to it.”
The joint has burned down to a stub, so small that Steff yelps when an ember catches her fingertip. She flings it into the grass and grinds it under the tip of her shoe. Then she digs through her purse and removes a tiny glass vial.
“I got more DD after brunch yesterday. Before Pilates.” Steff holds the vial toward the girl in silver. “Want some, Alexandra?”
DD. Devil’s Dust.
“Fuck yes.” Alexandra grabs for it. “Gimme.”
“Thank God.” Gillian crowds closer. “I thought you said your supplier was out.”
“He got a new shipment and called me first.” Pride lifts Steff’s voice.
“What did you have to do for that, Steff? Give him a blow job like last time?”
Steff elbows her in the ribs. “Shut up, Gillian. I told you not to tell Alexandra.”
“Oh my God, you didn’t.” Alexandra laughs. “You dirty little slut.” She dips her pinkie nail into the vial, brings it to her nose, and inhales deeply.
The three of them fall silent as they pass it around. Within seconds, their bodies loosen. Gillian tips sideways and catches herself against the wall.
“Shit,” Steff slurs. “This DD is fire. It always makes me want to fuck.” She fumbles for her phone.
The screen casts a pale glow across her face, sinking her eyes into dark hollows.
“Did either of you see Braxson tonight? I’m going to text him.
He’s a good lay.” Her long nails tick against the glass, fast and precise while the rest of her sways.
“Maybe someone should knock her down a few steps,” Gillian says dreamily.
Alexandra laughs. “Who, Laurel? In those shoes, she’d break her neck.”
Gillian stops moving. “Exactly.”
Alexandra goes silent. They all do. Even Steff’s nails stop tapping against her phone.
“Wait.” Alexandra looks between them. “You’re serious? You think we could take her out?”
“Who’s going to stop us?” Gillian dips another fingernail into the vial and inhales. “A shove down the stairs. Something in her food. Mother says girls used to do it all the time. Get rid of your rival and call it an accident.”
The hand I have braced against the stone goes numb.
Carrson warned me that I was in danger. He told me again tonight, and I accused him of using a worst-case scenario to justify the necklace.
But Gillian isn’t describing a worst-case scenario.
She’s describing tradition.
All those mornings Carrson woke me to spar weren’t paranoia. They were preparation for moments like this. My fingers close around the gold letters at my throat. The necklace is still a claim, but now I understand it better. Carrson hadn’t invented the threat.
He’d only failed to tell me how ordinary it was here.
“Hi.”
The voice comes from beside my shoulder. I jump, my hand flying to my chest, and turn to find Sam standing there.
“You said to rescue you after one lap, but you neglected to mention you’d be outside. I’ve been searching everywhere. Abbie and Cicley are here. They want to see you. I—”
“Shh.” I press a finger to my lips.
Gillian’s talking again. I need to know whether this is only drug-fueled cruelty or if she actually intends to follow through.
I check on them again. Sam leans in beside me.
“We should do it.” Gillian nods, the movement sluggish, as though her brain can no longer communicate properly with her body. “Fuck Laurel up.”
Sam snaps upright. “Those bitches. Are they talking about you?”
She moves to sweep past me, but I block her with one arm.
“You have to let me handle this,” I tell her, although it’s the last thing I want to do. “You and Carrson can’t keep saving me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Record everything.”
I don’t look back to see if she realizes what I mean. Sam’s smart. She’ll know what to do.
I step toward them, pulling every insult they spewed close like armor.
Maybe some of what they said is true. That doesn’t make it theirs to use against me.
They called me weak. Insulted my heritage. Discussed my murder as if deciding what to order for dinner.
Carrson told me to establish my dominance.
So that’s what I’m going to do.
I approach the girls like a gathering storm.
“Hey,” I chirp, making my voice loud and clear.
It’s their turn to be shocked. All three stare at me as though they conjured me by speaking my name.
“I’m Laurel.” I offer my hand and hold it steady, daring them to refuse.
Like most cowards who whisper behind other people’s backs, they’re less brave when I stand right in front of them. They accept it one by one, their grips delicate and brief. When I reach Gillian, I have the sudden urge to squeeze until the bones grind together.
I don’t, obviously. That would be wrong.
I still think about it.
“So.” I paste on a smile. “Whatcha doing?”
They look at one another, eyes unfocused and pupils constricted. Confusion gives way to panic. Up close, I can smell DD on their breath, the same strange sweetness I noticed on Jackson more than once before Silas gave it a name.
“Uh,” Steff says. “Nothing. Just, you know, girl talk.”
I clap my hands together hard enough that all three flinch.
“Oh, good. I love girl talk.” I sling an arm around Gillian’s shoulders and pretend not to notice how rigid she becomes. “Who are we discussing?”
Now I know Carrson is getting to me because I’m starting to have fun. To bask in their discomfort. I’m being a mean girl by pretending to be a nice girl, and the contradiction makes me want to giggle.
“Um, our friend…Lauren,” Steff says.
I put my hand on her arm and squeeze harder than necessary. “She sounds wonderful. Tell me all about her.”
And they do.
For the next several minutes, the three of them construct an imaginary Lauren who volunteers at hospitals, remembers every birthday, and has never entertained an unkind thought in her life.
Each lie becomes more elaborate than the last, but I keep smiling and asking questions, forcing them to praise a woman who sounds suspiciously like me with one letter changed.
By the time they declare Lauren the sweetest person they’ve ever met, Gillian is visibly sweating.
I tilt my head. “And is she pretty?”
The three of them exchange panicked looks.
I give Gillian’s shoulder a friendly squeeze. “Well?”
“She’s pretty,” she mutters.
“Sorry. I didn’t hear you.”
Her nostrils flare. “She’s beautiful.”
“That’s what I thought you said.”
I hook my arm through Gillian’s, then link my other through Steff’s. She stiffens but doesn’t pull away.
“Alexandra,” I say, nodding toward Steff’s free side.
With obvious reluctance, she links herself to her friend.
“Let’s go back inside.”
Gillian tries to slow us as we leave the shadows, but I pull her forward. By the time we reach the terrace, all four of us are walking arm in arm.
I grin brightly, and the girls have no choice but to do the same. Anyone they complain to later will remember this instead: us returning to the party together, close enough to look like friends.
Behind us, Sam films the entire procession, exactly as I instructed.
As we reach the doorway, I catch her eye.
Sam pops out like a jack-in-the-box and raises her phone. “Cheese!”
These girls have been trained since toddlerhood to respond to that word with a smile. Like Pavlov’s dogs, they react before they can think. Their lips stretch into three identical grins.
The flash blinds us.
Sam checks the screen. “You look gorgeous! I’ll send it to everyone.”
They blink at her, stunned into silence.
I lead them into the ballroom with me in the center.
The bestest of friends.