Page 47 of Reign

My gaze slides back to a squirming Falyn. “I beg to differ. Not only am I your sister, but I’m next in line for the throne.” Falyn starts a garbled protest, but press harder, adding loud enough for our audience to hear, “But I think you knew that. With that in mind, I’d appreciate you backing off Eden, Emma, and me. Understood?”

Falyn’s nails, sharpened into manicured talons, dig into my skin, drawing blood. “You can’t possibly still want to be with us.”

I tip my head. “But I do.”

“After … after everything that’s happened?”

A glint forms in Falyn’s eyes; a shard of metal, a sharpened, cunning blade.

She knows the truth about Ivy.

Heat travels into my throat. I snarl into her face, “I’m not going anywhere, you fucking bitch.”

Heavy, unhurried footsteps sound out, amplified in a hall shocked into silence, until they stop at the base of my heels.

Breath skitters against my nape, goosebumps firing along my jaw. I know without looking that if I spear my elbow back, I’ll hit nothing but stone-cold abs.

“Screw off,” I say through my teeth, though my focus remains on Falyn.

“I might, if she’s worth it,” Chase muses at my back. “Is she?”

Heat crackles at the base of my spine. Chase isn’t close enough to touch, but he’s near enough to awaken the atoms between us, rippling the air as they electrify and pop with every exhale he makes.

If he breathes extra-hard, he’ll flutter pieces of my hair.

I keep my inhales steady. My eyes facing forward. “I don’t need any prince, and neither does she.”

Falyn cringes when I press my forearm harder into her neck.

Chase’s arm crosses my vision, his gold cufflink shimmering as he grasps my wrist and pulls me off Falyn. I don’t have time to cry out my indignation before he sends me into a twirl that has my back crashing against the wall, where Falyn’s once was.

He boxes me in, his bronze stare bearing down. Falyn gasps and sputters beside us, clutching her neck and running to her friends for cover. He doesn’t spare her a look.

“Causing quite the spectacle on your first day back,” he says.

“So what?” I push at his barrel of a chest, but he doesn’t move. “I’m sick of being pushed around by assholes like you.”

His eyes narrow. “Looks like you can add pissing me off to your first day to-do list as well.”

“It’s clear you’d rather I cower, or run, or cry whenever I come near you, but you know what? Winter break taught me the opposite.”

“And how’s that?”

“You can’t stay away from me.”

A chilled waft of air hits me when he straightens. “Come again?”

“I saw you,” I whisper through stiff lips. “Watching me. Stalking me. Unable to stay away from me in New York.”

Something flickers in Chase’s eyes, but he staunches it, his nostrils flaring. “Are those paranoid delusions bothering you again, sweet possum?”

I ignore the internal blade slicing through my chest. “You lied to me. Your dad wasn’t on some island vacation with Sabine. They were right here. In my city, likely watching me as much as you were.”

“Is it somehow my fault you can’t fly under the radar?”

“Stop it,” I hiss. “Don’t pretend you’re not concerned for me. You wouldn’t have tracked me down on Christmas Eve if you didn’t still have feelings—”

Chase draws away, pouting as his eyelids give a derisive twitch. “Hmm. Poor thing. I hoped you would’ve figured out your place while on break, if you decided to come back here, that is. Hasn’t enough been done to you? Run back to your fake uncle, or better yet, go live with your fake parents. Or, hey.” He points to my stomach. “Go have a fake baby. A little thing like that might actually love you back.”

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