Page 85 of Gilded Fake

He turns away from her, his blue eyes like storm clouds as they sweep over the crowd. At last, his gaze comes full circle and lands on me, the fury there taking my breath.

“What did she do?”

I swallow, my pulse fluttering like a swarm of moths, sticking in my throat and silencing my voice. Fear rises inside me, the old familiar shadow that’s hidden me so many times. It reminds me that being seen always, always leads to consequences, and consequences are never good. Silence keeps me hidden, keeps me frozen, camouflaged in stillness, like prey that has no chance of escape once the predator sees her. Silence is protection. Silence is safety.

But I’ve never been safe, no matter how still and empty and quiet I made myself. No matter how limp I made my ragdoll body when they pounded into it with bruising force, no matter how hollow I made my numb heart when they shattered it with casual cruelty, no matter how silent I stayed while a thousand screams tore me apart inside, it never saved me.

Maybe I can still save me, though.

If silence isn’t the answer, then maybe my voice is.

“She told Royal you were hanging out with Harper that day,” I say, my voice a scratchy croak, as if it hasn’t been used in years. “That’s how he found out.”

“That’s why Royal almost beat me to death.”

“I told you that’s why,” Dixie shrieks, pointing at Harper. “It’s because of her!”

His jaw clenches, but his gaze never flickers in her direction. Sharp and remorseless as a surgical instrument, it holds me pinned like the butterfly he calls me. “You knew?”

My heart stops, and fear tightens its grip again, screaming for me to shut my mouth tight and endure, that we will get through. Or maybe it’s not the voice of fear, but the voice of my mother, the mantra she hammered into me as hard as the walls of the iron fortress she built around us while she told us it was a golden castle.

“Everyone knows,” I whisper. “It was on Rumor Has It.”

He inhales sharply through his nose, the muscle in his jaw ticking, his teeth clenched. His gaze is the white-hot of the blue part of a flame as it blazes over the crowd. At last, it settles on the girl on his other side. Harper’s mouth presses into a tight line. For once, she doesn’t have a smart comeback. She’s as silent as I am, as Colt is when, without a word, he turns and walks away. The crowd parts for him, a shadow of fear in every eye as it refuses to meet his gaze. The students shuffle backwards, then stitch themselves back together behind him, swallowing him as if he were never there at all.

Pain pierces through me, a corkscrew of cold steel dragging me after him like a cork being pried from a wine bottle. I can’t let him walk away, can’t let him hold the pain I saw in his eyes by himself. It’s not just Dixie who betrayed him. It’s all of us.

I take a step in that direction, but before I can part the crowd, a thud to the center of my back sends me stumbling forward.

“You bitch,” Dixie screams, her fist ramming into my spine again.

The pain pierces through my body, throbbing in my belly like a punch to the solar plexus. I turn back, rage slowly churning inside me, building like a tidal wave.

“I thought you told him everything he missed when he lost his memory, Dixie,” I say through clenched teeth. “I guess you left out what you did to make it happen.”

“I didn’t!” she snarls, her face red with fury as she jabs a finger at Harper. “It’s her fault!”

“You put it on your stupid gossip account,” I snap. “I shouldn’t be surprised that you’d throw your boyfriend to the wolves for a few minutes of fame. How many likes is Colt’s life worth to you?”

“They didn’t take his life,” she points out. “And how was I to know Royal would lose it like that?”

“You knew,” I grit out. “You knew exactly what he was like. You knew better than Harper at that point, probably even better than Colt. You can stop playing dumb now. Colt’s not here to see it, and I know you’re as far from stupid as you are from innocent. A queen always plays up her best assets, Dixie. Why not let the whole school know how manipulative and conniving you really are before they graduate and it’s too late? Don’t you want them to worship your brilliance?”

“I am brilliant,” she snaps. “I beat you, didn’t I?”

“Interesting choice of words,” I say. “Is that what you think you’re going to do now? Condemn me to the same fate as Colt? Royal’s gone, and even if he hates me, he wouldn’t hit a girl. He always thought you were a pathetic little worm anyway. But Duke’s still here. How are you going to turn him against me, convince him to kill me?”

“You act like I did it on purpose,” she says. “I was just posting gossip. I didn’t know Royal would try to kill him. You think I’d do that to my own boyfriend?”

“But he wasn’t your boyfriend, was he?” I point out. “He broke up with you, and you just couldn’t stand that, could you? He had to be punished. Maybe you didn’t know Royal would try to kill him, but you knew he’d give him a good beating. Put him back in line for you, like he did all those other times, so you could swoop in and prove your loyalty again.”

“I did prove my loyalty,” she screeches. “I sat by his bed all that time! It’s not like I wanted him to lose his memories.”

“No, you couldn’t have predicted that,” I say. “But you sure as hell took advantage of his amnesia to spin the story you wanted him to hear. You waited to pounce the moment he woke up so you could make sure he saw you as a doting girlfriend and never found out what you did.”

“I love him,” she snaps. “I would never hurt him.”

“Oh, no, of course not,” I say. “You let other people do your dirty work. You knew Royal’s buttons, knew which ones to push and where to aim him to get the job done when he was in a blind rage. Maybe you didn’t want him to kill Colt, but you sure as fuck were willing to risk it.”

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