But inside?
Inside, I was screaming for the boy who used to fight like hell.
And wondering why now… he wouldn’t.
The ballroom glittered like something out of a dream—champagne flutes twinkling in the hands of the elite, laughter echoing off marble columns, heels clicking across polished floors like clockwork. But underneath it all… a different kind of electricity buzzed.
I was still warm from the applause. Still holding onto that breathless high after my speech. Kannon’s hand rested lightly at the small of my back, guiding me onto the dance floor as the orchestra shifted into something slow, something swoony and full of sparkle.
“You crushed that,” he said low, leaning in so only I could hear.
I smiled but didn’t look at him. “Thanks.”
“You okay?” he asked, because he could feel it too—that I was here but nothere. That my skin was buzzing for someone else’s heat. Someone else's eyes.
Leo.
I spotted him across the room, leaning against a column with Tristan and Xavier. His suit was black velvet and fitted like sin. He had his tie loosened and his sleeves rolled just enough tomake girls dizzy. And he was watching me—burning holes into my soul, into this dress, intous.
And then he wasn’t.
He turned to a girl—Blair’s cousin, I think—and asked her to dance. Just like that. Tristan pulled another date from a power couple in the corner. Xavier whisked someone off before her date even noticed.
Girls with boyfriends. Girls already spoken for.
But none of them said no.
The whole ballroom was watching. Everyone pretending it was normal while walking on glass.
Because no settlement had been signed.
No truce officially made.
No blood spilled—yet.
And the sharks in heels and silk? They were waiting.
Bianca and her gaggle of pretty poisons stood near the ice sculpture, their perfect lips curled in tight smiles. Watching. Waiting. Keeping their claws sheathed—for now. But the way their eyes followed me said everything: the truce was temporary. Thin as spun sugar and just as likely to shatter.
Kannon pulled me closer, his grip grounding. “I know this isn’t easy,” he said. “But you’re doing the impossible.”
“I’m just surviving,” I murmured.
“Yeah. But you make it look like a revolution.”
I wanted to believe that. Wanted to believe that every step, every speech, every stolen moment was me taking back power instead of just faking confidence in heels that hurt.
But when Leo spun his partner in my direction and caught my eye mid-twirl, it was like my whole body forgot how to lie.
Because I wanted him.
Still.
Even if he wasn’t fighting for me the way I needed.
Even if his silence hurt more than Blair’s whispers.
I let Kannon guide me through the next song. I laughed at something he said. I smiled for the cameras and the whispers and the people watching like this was a chessboard and I was the queen finally learning how to move.
