“Come on,” Adelaide snaps from the other side. “Get out already. Everyone’s waiting for you.”
I exhale, grab my bag, pull on my boots and jacket, and open the door.
Adelaide stands there with her dark curls loose around her shoulders, luggage at her feet and her LV bag slung over one arm, dressed down in a burgundy tracksuit.
We head downstairs in silence. Our bags aren’t especially large, since we don’t keep ski gear at the academy, and we’ll buy everything once we arrive.
When the lift doors open, I step out and glance around, registering immediately that the space is empty.
“So everyone was waiting for me?” I ask, arching a brow at Adelaide.
She smirks.
“You’re the one who said we should be civil,” I remind her. “And yet here you are, doing the exact opposite.”
Before she can respond, Piper appears with her bag draped over one shoulder. She’s wearing a short skirt paired with an oversized jumper, knee high heeled boots completing the look, a faux fur jacket thrown over it all with a scarf wrapped loosely at her neck. Her ginger hair falls in soft waves, framing her face.
Piper has a way of dressing that never fits into a single category. There’s something doll like about it.
She loves corsets and dresses, short and long alike, and most of them look like they’ve come straight out of the books she’s always reading.
Even when she wears jeans, there’s inevitably a corset involved, paired with those exaggerated, Bratz style heels she loves.
It’s a strange balance, modern and old fashioned, but on Piper it works.
“Hi,” she says softly, offering me a small smile.
Adelaide’s expression changes when she looks at her, concern passes over her face before it’s gone again.
And once again, I find myself wondering what happened to Piper that night.
I saw her at the party, she was fine, or at least she seemed to be. By the following day, she was anything but.
I didn’t ask, because if her recent distance is any indication, she wouldn’t have told us anyway.
My sister finally comes down the stairs, and Adelaide’s mouth curves.
“Oh,” she says. “The princess finally graces us with her presence.”
I feel my eyes narrow, but Ophelia is already ahead of me, rolling hers and brushing past Adelaide without so much as a glance.
We leave the building together. Outside, a car waits at the curb. The driver takes our bags and stows them in the back, and we climb in. By the time the door shuts, I am wedged between my sister and Piper.
The drive passes quickly, and the flight is uneventful. Once we land, Switzerland greets us with snow and cold.
It is so damn cold here.
Another car awaits us on the tarmac. This one clearly belongs to Adelaide’s family. A man stands beside it, his tie perfectly in place, his eyes fixed straight ahead, with no emotion on his face whatsoever. A gun is visible at his holster, worn openly, and I know immediately that he is part of the cartel.
We head straight into the village.
What is meant to be a quick stop for ski suits stretches into an entire day of shopping.
By the time the sky darkens, the car turns onto a private road, and the chalet comes into view ahead of us.
Something in my chest tightens as I hope we can maintain our so called truce for the days we are about to share in such confined proximity, and my thoughts drift, inevitably, to Markev.
A few days away from him should do me well, because since the first of September I have not escaped him once, and there has not been a single day in which he has not crowded my space.
