I want to be horribly selfish. I want to ask things of you I don’t deserve, things I can’t even whisper. I want you to destroy the old ones.
Lay claim to my mouth, because it’s yours.
Yours to mark.
Yours to ruin.
Exorcise these groans from my body.
Raze anything he ever touched—including me.
Thirty-Four
STORY
And then what? What will become of us after we’ve survived?
I felt like I was walking on cracked ice going into New Year’s.
Would we find the coin? Would it end? What would become of Grayson and me, after all of this?
“You’ll crack the polish, miss,” my girl said.
I exhaled, dropping my hands to my lap—I’d been fidgeting with the clear coat of polish forced on my nails.
My girl went back to braiding my hair, and I looked out my frosted window. It wasn’t dark yet, but yachts had been docking all morning. A ball had been built over the weekend, placed a few meters into the ocean, and tonight it would drop into the dark waters as it exploded fireworks into the sky.
This party was second only to Fourth of July, and anyone who was anyone would be here. Dignitaries, socialites, actors and rock stars, politicians and their children. They spent all year angling for an invitation, and all I could think was…was this the night Grayson and I could escape?
After affixing white gold cuffs and diamonds in my braids, my girl left me for a moment, and I pulled out my phone. Tell me your words, Grayson had said.
All your words.
I could send him this, at least.
Dear Atlas,
It’s New Year’s Eve and all I can think about is getting a kiss from you. How silly is that? We have so much more important things on our plate…but all I want is one kiss from you.
“Mr. du Lac has requested you wear a tiara for the party.”
I set my phone down, looking into my girl’s clear eyes through the mirror. She held up a glittering tiara, smaller than the Crowne one, and a perfect accent to the box braids she’d spent all morning and most of the afternoon on.
“Mr. du Lac can go fuck himself,” I gritted.
My girl’s eyes widened. I exhaled through my nostrils. I don’t know if I’d ever get used to having a girl—to being waited on—but it wasn’t fair to take it out on her.
“May I see the tiara?” I asked.
She handed me the glittery thing with wonder in her eyes. I turned it over, the diamonds catching in the light. It would complement the dress chosen for tonight perfectly.
I snapped it.
“Oh no,” I cooed. “It broke in transit.”
She gasped. “That was hundreds of years old.”
“So are a lot of things that need to be broken…”
She set the broken crown on the vanity, and then we moved to the dress hanging in the window. It was made of silver and sparkling tulle like stardust. It looked a little bit like the first dress Grayson had ever bought for me.
To my left, on the vanity, the broken crown sparkled, refracting the overcast light from the window. My past, present, and future swirled around.
Servant. Snitch. Cinderella. Stepsister Slut. Was I ever just Story?
“What do they say about her now?”
“Miss?” she asked absently, fiddling with the bow at my back.
“The Cinderella, what does the story say about her now?”
Her fingers paused for a moment, before she continued. “In some versions, she was a servant who fell in love with the heir at Crowne Hall, but he was mean and cruel, and the du Lac man saved her by making her his mistress. In others, it’s reversed. The heir fell in love with her, but he was betrothed.”
She told me all the different versions, all bits and pieces of reality, but none the actual truth. It was like it had become…corrupted.
“And they think it’s me?”
“I think at this point we all pretend we’re the Cinderella. It’s like a fairy tale to us.”
“This is my life. I’m not a fairy tale,” I whispered. “I’m a real person.”
“You said you weren’t her, miss.”
Our eyes met in the window.
“Where is the tiara?”
We both turned at the voice. West wore a simple black tux, but it fit him perfectly. His bow tie was the same glittery material as my dress, and I wanted to rip it from his neck.
She curtsied for West, then quickly left the room.
“It broke in transit,” I said.
His eyes narrowed. “It’s survived three revolutions and two world wars, but it couldn’t survive one afternoon with you?”
I shrugged. The muscle in his jaw ticked, like he was trying to suppress a smile. His eyes dragged down my body. Starting at my eyes, down my neck, lingering on my stomach.
He rubbed his jaw. “Do you know why people kiss on New Year’s?”
I didn’t, but my gut did that thing, that West thing, where I felt like I was about to step into a trap. So I stayed quiet.
He smiled, and held out his arm to me. “I’ll be sure to tell you later tonight.”
GRAY
Night had fallen on Crowne Hall, and I waited for Story to come down to the party. Yachts had docked off our private beach, each one filled with its own private debauchery. Later tonight, they’d go off into international waters, where laws wouldn’t apply to them.
Those yachts were fucking dangerous.
The triplets still hadn’t left. Across the ballroom, they watched me.
For the first time in over a decade, I had the strangest urge to go and talk to them. They would have to go back to school soon as they went to a similar boarding school as I had, and it was year-round. After the new year, they’d be gone.
My mother approached me, blocking my view of them. She was in a bright and glittering gold gown I’m sure she would say tastefully shone.
“Your sister is missing.” She waved a hand in the air on a sigh. “And your wife is looking for you.”
If she was talking about Lottie, I highly fucking doubt it.
“You’ll find her next to Lynette who, by some strange coincidence of fate I’m sure, is wearing a very similar dress to mine…”
I zoned out my mother’s passive-aggressive rant, which would take the next five to ten minutes.
I checked my Finsta for more secrets from Story, but only found photo after photo of tonight’s debauchery.
A princess from some small, little known European country doing a line of cocaine off a hockey player’s cock.
Two assholes lighting something on fire.
And my “missing” sister, clearly high on something, dancing on the bow of a yacht.
That was the New Year’s I knew. Bored rich kids trying to outdo each other. Not this, my mother’s parties, which were so rigid in their opulence, it was as if they were trying to make up for the darker world living directly parallel to it.
This time last year I was blitzed out of my fucking brain. Now I was almost too sober.
Too aware of my empty inbox.
I was getting impatient waiting for Snitch to tell me her secrets. Impatient and…fuck. I don’t know.
Eager.
I felt like a voyeur. A pervert in my own wife’s soul. I was addicted to the secrets, strung out on pieces of her soul. Maybe that was why I didn’t tell her, maybe it was entirely fucking selfish.