I grinned. "You know me so well."
"Fuck yeah, I do." Mattie hip bumped me, and I snickered.
"So, Zach's getting under your skin, huh?" I waggled my eyebrows at her, and she gave a melodramatic groan.
"Oh mygod, where do I even start? Let's order food up to your room and chat there. He's got a terrible habit of lurking in the shadows and popping out when I least expect it, like some kind of fucking stalker." She rolled her eyes, but there was a blush to her cheeks that told me she didn't totally hate it.
"Who's a stalker?"
Mattie let out a small scream, whirling around to smack herbetrothedin the chest. He really had just appeared out of nowhere, or so it seemed. Most likely he'd just come from around the corner and heard us talking.
"What the fuck, you psychopath! You could have given me a heart attack," Mattie snarled, parking her hands on her hips.
Zach ignored her outburst, instead meeting my eyes with a curious stare. "Violet," he said, "nice to see you made it back in one piece."
I scowled at him. He’d probably known something would go down that night, and he’d said nothing. I didn't think for a fucking second that it was a coincidence he’d managed to get Mattie safely out of the room right before the quake struck.
"No thanks to your friends," I replied, my voice acidic. "They almost killed Jordan. Did you know that? They tortured him for almost an entire month. Somethingyouprobably could have prevented if you'd given us a heads up."
Zach's face blanched. "I didn't know. I'm not allied to Uriel's faction."
"Right," I said with dripping sarcasm, "of course you didn't. Come on, Mattie, I have some new swimsuits to show you that Jax bought for me." I shot Zach a sneer. "I hope that doesn't make you insecure... You do know Mattie bats for both teams, right?"
Looping my arm back through hers, I dragged my friend away from her playboy fiancé and hurried up the stairs to the girl's dorm wing.
"Sorry," I muttered to her when I was sure we were out of earshot. "I didn't mean to—"
"No apologies needed," Mattie cut me off, her voice bubbling with laughter. "The look on his face right then was fucking priceless. Oh my god, I wish I'd caught that on camera. Arrogant son of a bitch... It's about damn time he got a taste of his own medicine." She was positively gleeful, skipping ahead of me down the Persian rug that lined our corridor. "I've totally been playing this all wrong with him."
I rolled my eyes. "Don't count on me to be your fake girlfriend, babe. I'm all for helping you make him eat his mistakes, but I have a couple of princes who might get bent out of shape if I start sitting in your lap at lunch time."
Mattie gasped in mock horror. "Um, excuse me? It'd totally bemeinyourlap, but you have a fair point. I definitely don't want to end up on Rafe's bad side."
We ended up in Mattie’s room, and she called our in-room dining order to the kitchens. It was the weekend—thank goodness—so none of us were expected to show up to classes for another day and a half. It would give us a chance to settle back in and get the lay of the new hierarchy.
Claudette was gone, along with her parents, which left her little sister Victoria as the ruler of the Britains. Drake's parents had been killed, making him king of Denmark. But the best news? The king of Siberia had been killed in a totally separate yet coordinated attack from the bad-resistance. I shouldn't have been happy about any murders, but after learning what they'd been doing with their forced-breeding programs? Yeah. I was glad for that death.
We had to hope his wife—who inherited the throne—wouldn't continue his policies.
"King Felipe truly believes they might have the support now to bring about a council for the people?" Mattie asked, shaking her head as she leaned back on her elbows, looking every inch a princess with her perfect hair and designer clothing.
I shrugged. "Felipe and Wainwright were confident.”
She mulled that over. "What exactly will this council entail? How will it even work? I mean, it would be cool to see some change, and while I’m not sure if my parents will vote yes or no, they definitely aren’t happy with the constant state of turmoil. This might be a nice compromise."
Hitting me with the hard questions. “Basically, the part I understood anyway, was that there would be a council for the people incorporated into each royal kingdom. In doing so, it would be the tipping point to stop the resistance from… resisting. It sounds like the monarchy won’t lose too much power, more of, as you said, a compromise. There’s no guarantee, though… not when it comes to power. People always think they're happy to share it right up until the moment fantasy becomes reality."
"So true," Mattie said with a sigh. "But the good news is that a lot of the new monarchs haven't had time to play with their power yet. So maybe they'll learn how to share before it's too late."
"I fucking hope so," I said, feeling tension settle in my chest. "Just the thought of dealing with Uriel ever again makes my skin crawl. We need to remove the resistance as a beacon of hope and instill a different system."
Mattie was out of her slouched position now. "Tell me everything about this Uriel."
Over the next hour I spilled my entire life to her—every single, horrible moment that led to my kidnapping, including the sex and rejection. "The thing is, if I hadn't won the ballot," I said with a dry laugh, "I would have been much more open to the idea of destroying the monarchy. In hindsight, it was legitimately the worst move the resistance could have made."
"They didn't expect you to find us," Mattie said confidently. "They thought the assholes here, like Alex and Claudette would increase your hatred."
I nodded, having come to the same conclusion. "The resistance was never going to let the Alex thing happen; they already had ways to get around that. But even if I had ended up marrying into that family, no doubt they'd have used me to take them down."
