Page 147 of Double Bucked

I adjust my posture, fix the crown back on my head, and turn my insides to ice. I move to the door, but Jade blocks my exit. She holds up the goblet from earlier.

“Drink first,” she says. “All of it.”

I blink. They can’t be this brazen. Can they?

“Why?”

Her green eyes don’t flinch. “Makes the medicine go down smoother.”

I hesitate. I want to toss the goblet in her face and run.

A radio chirps. There’s a security guard by the door. He turns to glance at us.

“Trouble, ladies?” he asks.

“No trouble.” Jade looks at me. Her eyebrows lift. “Right?”

I take the goblet. It feels cold and heavy in my hand.

Despite myself, despite knowing better, I recite the Belleflower Queen mantra in my head.

A Belleflower Queen must be perfect. She must understand that disobedience is unacceptable and a reflection of ugliness upon her character.

Well. Down the rabbit hole we go.

I tilt the goblet to the lips. It takes everything in me not to gag as the sweet-tasting liquid slides down my throat.

When I return the empty goblet to Jade, she checks the inside, seemingly to make sure I’ve swallowed every drop. Only then does she step back to let me pass.

“Escort her downstairs,” she tells the guard.

He takes my arm. I feel myself glancing back. “Aren’t you coming?”

Jade remains in her spot. Her mouth twists. “No wives allowed in this wing of the house. This is your night. Enjoy it.”

She takes my arm and pulls me into a small hug.

“They’re here,” she says suddenly. A low whisper in my ear.

My spine tenses. “What?”

“James and Ransom. Play the game.”

The guard pulls me back, separating us. Jade composes herself in a tight smile, and I have to wonder if I imagined the whole thing. Jade gets smaller and smaller as I’m whisked downstairs.

The party has kicked into full gear. The guard escorts me around the corner to the ballroom, where a folksy bluegrass band is playing. A wave of heat comes over me—the bodies on the dance floor, maybe, or the drink already catching up with me.

There’s a table on the other end of the room, stacked with food. My stomach pinches. I haven’t eaten all day.

But before I can try to make my way there, a hand grabs my wrist.

“Come, beautiful.” He smiles—Hank? Hughes?—his name has left me. He has to be twenty years my senior, but his cheeks are bright red, like a little boy’s, when he says, “Dance with me.”

I feel my body get pulled out onto the dancefloor.

I get tossed from person to person. Men whose faces have blurred with time. But it’s the women—the former Queens—who make my heart stop when they take my hands in theirs and spin me around. I hung their pictures on my wall. I worshipped them. And here they are. Smiling at me. Welcoming me. Loving me.

I’m getting swept up in again. The wave of it all. The want.

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