Sweet Like Revenge

45 - The Masque of Queens

The fresh evening breeze was warm on my cheeks, lifting wisps of my hair so they danced about my face. I swirled my untouched glass of pink punch for a moment or two, then placed it back down on the cool concrete step.

I had to tell him. But I was so sure he'd hate me.

Cameron Miller was the most honorable person I knew. The most dignified, the most benevolent, the most principled. He was honest to a fault and always saw the best in the people around him. Even if the people around him were bloodthirsty demons poorly disguised in Dolce & Gabbana.

He'd made it through everything that I had in Irvine Falls—everything and more, in fact—and he'd come out of it with his virtue intact.

Staring out into the tall mountains that framed our town, his black blazer draped around my shoulders, I wasn't sure whether I could say the same about myself.

"We have to stop meeting like this."

A dark angel dripping in diamonds sauntered towards me, her hair so black that it faded into the shadows of the night. Sienna's lips were pulled into an amused, lopsided grin, but I didn't miss the flicker of reluctance in her crystal blue gaze.

As soon as I saw that infuriatingly perfect face, my heart pricked with poorly-repressed resentment. Every word that Ryan had said about her crashed and clambered in my mind, every image of her and Nate spinning about on the dancefloor mocking me behind my glittery eyelids.

I hated that I had to pretend not to know about their scheme. I hated even more that I had to pretend to be happy about their phony reunion. I was so tired of being the only one who knew everyone's secrets, who knew how screwed up our town was beneath the plated glamor.

"Are you okay, Elle?" Her Louboutins landed next to my punch, the red from underneath intermingling with the latter's pink hue. She considered my still face for only a moment longer, then pulled up her dress and crouched down beside me, lacing her legs together over the ledge.

"Of course," I answered apathetically, surprised that the queen had joined me on the ground. "Why?"

She pursed her ruby lips, lifting a careful hand to untangle a lock of my windswept hair. "Because you're not speaking to me."

"I'm talking to you right now—"

"You know what I mean."

Her bluntness should have frightened me. It should have pierced my cloak of composure, punctured my nerves, or at least caused them to falter. But it didn't. Because even though she was questioning me, and even though we were alone, Irvine's queen hardly looked intimidating at all. Rather, she looked sad. It could have been wishful thinking, but I even thought that her porcelain face masked as much exhaustion as mine.

"I'm just tired, Sienna." I peeled back the raw edge from my tone. "School's gearing up, college interviews are around the corner, it's all getting quite full-on—"

"I know that you know about Nate."

Her breathy voice was mere air on the wind, but her words soared towards me like a billowing typhoon. My lips opened and closed all on their own, the anger I felt melting down into something far, far worse.

Panic.

"Know what?"

She stared back at me coolly, a sly smirk appearing on her mouth. "The same thing that I know about Ryan."

That saying, about blood draining from your cheeks—I never thought that it was a real thing, not beyond pretty words on a page. But when Sienna continued to eye me knowingly, her words floating above us like a bomb about to drop, I truly felt drained of my life source.