“I don’t hate you anymore, Nina.”
Nina stared at Daphne, who seemed just as shocked by her own words. Daphne hurried to recover. “It’s really not worth the effort, hating you. I’d rather focus that energy on taking down Gabriella.”
I don’t hate you anymore either, Nina could have said. But she didn’t say it, because she wasn’t sure whether it was true. Instead she matched Daphne’s lighthearted tone.
“I’m sure you’ll go back to hating me with a vengeance once we get rid of Gabriella.”
“Almost certainly,” Daphne agreed.
They both looked down at the remains of their taco platter, which was rapidly getting cold. Nina felt disoriented. She had no idea what to do with this new version of Daphne, whose sharp edges had been softened by something—vulnerability, and maybe loneliness.
“Nina—I know you think I’m wrong for Jefferson, but I really care about him. We have a lot of history,” Daphne said softly.
“You really care about him,” Nina repeated. “You don’t love him?”
She doubted anyone had asked Daphne that before. But Daphne didn’t seem offended; she just looked pensive.
“There are a lot of ways to love someone, you know? I do love Jefferson. Maybe not the same way you did, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t love.”
The same way you did. Daphne had used the past tense, as if Nina’s feelings for Jeff were long since over—and they were, Nina reminded herself. She and Jeff were just friends now. Totally platonic.
Her mind cut to that charged moment the other day, when they’d been fencing, and the shiver Nina had felt at his nearness.
Nope. That was nothing. She had definitely imagined the whole thing.
“Look, Daphne, you don’t need to explain your relationship to me,” she replied, trying to change the subject. “It really isn’t my business.”
“So you’re not trying to break us up?”
“What?” Nina let out a disbelieving laugh. “How would that even work?”
“You know, keep your enemies close.” Daphne spoke as if it were obvious. “I wasn’t sure if that was the reason you agreed to help me with Gabriella, because you wanted to break up me and Jefferson.”
The way you broke up me and Jefferson when we dated? Nina could have asked. But for some reason she didn’t.
“I care about Jeff as a friend. Things between us were so messy, I wouldn’t want to go there again,” Nina said firmly. “So, no, I’m not trying to break you up.” She repeated the words with a sarcastic tilt, to emphasize how ridiculous this whole conversation was.
Daphne nodded, satisfied. “Then we need to refocus on Gabriella. Should we try again next weekend?”
“I’m busy next weekend.” At Daphne’s look, Nina rolled her eyes. “I know this will shock you, but I do have some semblance of a social life. I’m going to a party.”
Daphne brightened at the word. “Who’s throwing this party? Does it have a theme? Where is it?”
Her questions were as rapid and precise as a round of artillery. Nina tried to match her speed: “The school, decades, Arbor House.”
“Arbor House?”
“There are parties at King’s College that aren’t thrown by the sororities or frats, you know.”
Arbor House was the dorm farthest from the center of campus, so far that it literally fell in a different zip code. Years ago it had been a hotel called the King’s Arms, where students’ families stayed for parents’ weekend and graduation. When it went out of business, the university bought the property and converted it into student housing.
Perhaps because they felt sorry for everyone who got stuck living there—it was at least twice as long a walk to class as the other dorms—the university allocated Arbor House a much higher “student activity allowance.” Naturally, the residents of Arbor House spent it all on a single epic party.
“I’ll come with you. I love a good theme,” Daphne decided. “And we can keep brainstorming about Gabriella.”
“At a party?” Nina pursed her lips, skeptical.
“There’s nowhere better to scheme than at a party. It really gets the creative juices flowing,” Daphne said solemnly. “Besides, I want to see these mythical non-fraternity parties. It’ll be fun.”
Had Daphne really just used the word fun to describe a night out with Nina?
“I…um…okay. You should come, if you want.” It came out like a question, since Nina still wasn’t sure Daphne was serious.
But then Daphne smiled. It looked somehow different from all the other countless times Nina had seen her smile: it was tentative, as fragile and gossamer as a butterfly testing its wings. Because, Nina realized, it was genuine.
As strange as it was, she felt an answering smile on her own face.
It had been a week since the breakup. Sam didn’t feel any better, but on the bright side, she was wearing a costume and in the capital, on her way to see Nina.
Reflexively, she glanced down at her phone screen, then wished she hadn’t. There weren’t any new messages, at least not from the person she wanted to hear from.
Mercifully, the breakup hadn’t yet made the tabloids. Sam suspected that Marshall’s family was waiting out of politeness, letting the palace be the one to make the press announcement. Or maybe Marshall hadn’t even told his parents yet.
She missed him so much. She missed the sly smile he gave her whenever he’d made a particularly silly joke, the way his eyes danced when she called him out on it. She missed their text thread, the way he would randomly send a single emoji, the dinosaur or perhaps the octopus, as if it held some hidden meaning.
When Sam had asked Beatrice for a night off from the conference—and for a plane, so she could fly to Washington and see Nina—she’d been surprised by how readily her sister agreed. Beatrice seemed to understand how much Sam needed a night with her best friend.
She’d immediately called Nina to share her plans, and Nina had explained that she was going to a party on Friday. “We can stay in,” she’d offered, but Sam had adamantly refused. A theme party sounded like exactly what the doctor ordered.
The car pulled up outside Arbor House, and Sam hurried out of the backseat. The building still looked like a hotel, with its gabled roof and stone pillars, and iron balconies on some of the higher rooms, the ones that used to be suites. But no hotel would have music blasting this loud, or costumed students flooding eagerly up the stairs.
Sam spared a glance over her shoulder, where her Revere Guard, Caleb, walked a few paces behind her. At first he’d refused to dress up, but after Sam dug through one of the palace’s storage closets and found a Hawaiian shirt covered in teddy bears, Caleb had muttered a gruff “fine.” Sam suspected that he was secretly thrilled to wear it.