"Don't you recognize your best friends, Princess?" The nickname tastes like acid and honey as I sneer around it. "The boys you left behind like the gutter trash you fuckingsworewe weren't?"
Her face goes white. Those green eyes I used to draw all over my notebooks back when I thought she'd be mine someday—or at least one of ours—go wide with shock. Tears make those green eyes even greener, and for a second, she looksexactlylike she did that night at the overlook. That night she promised nothing would change.
Lying. Little. Bitch.
"Kade?" Her voice cracks on my name. "Oh my god, Kade, I?—"
She reaches for me, and something snaps in my head. I'm moving before I can think, grabbing her wrist before she can touch me.
"Don't." The word comes out more growl than speech. "Youdon'tget to fucking touch me."
"Let me explain?—"
That cracks me the fuck up, but there's nothing funny about this. "Explainwhat? How you traded our kingdom for a mansion? How you forgot we existed the second you got a taste of the good life?"
This has to be a setup.
Hasto be someone fucking with us. Our enemies know our weakness somehow, know about the girl who broke the Kings before we became them.
Someone's using her against us. There's no other explanation, because even fate isn't that cruel. Or kind. I'm too fucked to figure out which right now.
Cruel.Definitelyfucking cruel.
I spin her around and push her up against the one-way glass hard enough to rattle it. The dancers on the other side keep grinding, oblivious to the drama playing out inches from their drugged-out revelry. How fast shit can go sideways. My hand flies to her throat, not squeezing, just pinning her in place as a reminder we're not those starry-eyed kids anymore.
"Who the fuck put you up to this?" I snarl in her ear, pressing my body against her back. She's soft everywhere, curves fitting against me like she was made for me. "Who sent you here to screw with our fucking heads?"
Tank snarls behind me, a warning sound that would make anyone else piss themselves. But I know Tank won't touch me.
Then again,she'sin the mix now.
Eleanor's pulse hammers against my palm, quick as a hummingbird's wings. But she doesn't smell like fear. She smells like expensive perfume layered over somethingpainfullyfucking familiar. Vanilla and that floral shit she always wore that made me want to breathe in and never stop, because it washers.
"Kade..." Jinx's voice sounds wary. He's pulled his mask off too, and even in the dim light, I can see the conflict on his face. Part of him wants to rip me off her. Part of him wants to help for entirely different reasons.
"Nobodysent me," Ellie spits. That defiance that made me fall head over heels with her in the first place hasn't been completelyground down by the good life after all. "What the fuck is wrong with you? What are you doing? What is this place?"
I laugh against her neck and she shivers, her skin prickling with goosebumps. "You don't get to judge us, Princess. Not when you're the one crawling in here begging us to kill someone for you."
She goes rigid against me, and I spin her back around, ignoring Tank's increasingly threatening rumble. Keeping her pinned but needing to see her face. Needing to watch her realize what we've become.
Whatshemade us.
"Things not going so well in your perfect little world?" I sneer, taking in the designer clothes she tried to dress down. "What happened? Get tired of playing senator's daughter? Miss slumming it with the trailer trash?"
Her eyes flash.
And there she is. A ghost of the old Ellie.
"Fuck. You," she hisses.
"You already did that, Princess. When you left."
I let her go, stepping back because if I keep touching her, I'm going to do something stupid. Like kiss her. Or kill her. Haven't decided which. Tank might decide for me for all I fucking know.
"So. Tell us," I continue, gesturing at the three Kings in stunned silence behind me. "Who does the senator's precious daughter want dead so bad she's willing to crawl in the filth with the rats? The leading rival for homecoming queen? Maybe a trust fund jock who cheated on her with another debutante?"
She straightens her spine and lifts that chin the way she always did when she was about to say something important.
