by Hannah Capin
Next is Piper.
All day she’s been chained to her phone, double-texting me every chance she gets even though next-in-line Piper never texts first unless it’s to Lilia. But today Lilia was nowhere, and Lilia didn’t text back. So Piper chirped and chirped at me: Did you hear from her, Did anyone say anything, Shut them up, Tell me everything. I texted back often enough to keep her interested, but I waited long enough to make her hate herself for begging.
She’s silent now, finally, as I walk down to the athletics building on the other side of the tennis courts. The plaque over the second door says COMBAT.
I prop the door open and watch without stepping in.
The room is long and half-lit. There are two of them on the strip farthest from the door. They’re white-armored with masks on. Their sabres flash too fast to see.
It’s almost an even match. Piper has her back to me, honey-gold ponytail bouncing with every lunge. She’s shorter than the boy she’s fighting but she attacks first every time. She’s grace and ferocity. Springing and slashing toward the end of the piste. Finally her blade slices across the other fighter’s chest and she shouts a pure wild scream that fills up the narrow room and pushes around me and out the door.
She spins and throws her mask down.
“New girl,” she says, strung tight. She gleams and paces. Behind her, two real sabres—the kind that win blood, not points—hang in an X against the white wall. A trophy from a war where someone’s great-great-grandfather cut other men’s throats and earned medals for it. A warning for anyone who faces St Andrew’s on the piste.
Piper quits pacing. “Are you here to fight?”
I say, “No.”
“Why not?” She presses forward: another attack. Now that I’ve seen her fight, I can see her next word in the air before she says it: “Afraid?”
I let the silence say, You know I’m not.
Her smile fades half a shade.
I say, “When I’m here to fight, you’ll know.”
I let the door swing shut before she can answer.
Next is Mack.
They’ve been texting me about him all day, Jenny and Summer and Mads. As fast as Piper, but not as thirsty.
Stay in control, Jenny said.
And I said, I am.
And she said, We don’t fall in love.
Summer said, before I could say anything, Why not?
And Jenny said, It’s a fucking rule, okay?
Then Mads said, There are no rules.
That ended it.
We’re meeting again tonight, in Jenny’s father’s library with its floor-to-ceiling legal books and three giant monitors blinking at one desk like department store mirrors. We’re meeting because I called it.
I want Duncan dead before it’s been a week.
They think I’m too impatient. But they won’t stop me if it’s what I want, because they’re mine and I’m theirs.
That’s a rule. That’s the only rule.
I cross the tennis court where Mads stood guard yesterday. Come out by the bleachers and climb the steps to the very top. The field is alive again. The wolves run drills and crash hard against each other, on the kill even in practice. The coach shouts and Duncan shouts back.
There isn’t a missing space for Connor. Someone else is in, some hungry second-rank boy who knows enough not to ask questions.
Mack is all glory. Better than before. Better than ever. Duncan sees it—I can tell by the way he tries not to look.
Duffy sees it, too. I can tell by the way he stumbles.
They play—
they fight—
—and it’s beautiful from up here, circling high enough to understand everything. Banks yells so loud I can see it in his throat—both hands tight on his crosse, smashing fearless into the boys who trust him. And then laughing just as loud a second later when he throws one hand down to pull them back up. Duncan flies smooth and unstoppable, so it looks easy. Duffy reads Duncan with every step.
They’re power and boasts. Invincible.
But everyone can break.
When the coach sends them in I sit taller. Today I don’t need to stand.
Mack sees me—
puts one hand up to shade his eyes—
slows down without thinking—
—and Banks looks where he’s looking and laughs. Mutters something into Mack’s ear and claps him on the shoulder and jogs off.
Mack climbs up to where I’m waiting. Each step sings out on the metal.
He smiles. “Jade.”
“Mack.”
He drops his helmet and gloves and crosse and sits down next to me. We kiss, just hello, but still warm enough that I almost forget again.
When we sit back he says, “I’m glad you didn’t get here even one day later.”
I laugh. “I wouldn’t have wanted to miss yesterday, either.”
He remembers to look ashamed. By the time Duncan is dead, he won’t remember at all. “No. God, you know I hate that you had to see that.”
“I can handle it.”
“Yeah. I can tell,” he says. The light is in his hair and in his eyes. He’s more golden than he’s ever been. “You seem like you can handle anything.”
I smile for him. “I’m glad you noticed.”
He looks out at the field. Green and perfect, like there’s nothing to hide. “I mean,” he says, “these days. Today and yesterday. They’re my best days this year even with Connor. Because of you.”
“Connor’s nothing,” I say. “Connor was always nothing.”
“See, that’s what I mean.” He ducks his head. “It’s not just, you know, I played well yesterday, I played well today, I’m falling for this girl the way I thought was just movie bullshit.”
I look down, flock-girl shy, but only for a second, because if Mack is who he needs to be he doesn’t really want a flock-girl. He wants the queen.
“It’s because you’ll say that. You only knew Connor for half a day but you could see who he was, and you’ll say it. You won’t step around it because his dad’s important.” He leans back against the railing. He smells like mud and sweat but I don’t care. It’s a battle smell. A winning smell. “You make it so nobody can pretend things aren’t the way they are.”
“I don’t believe in lies,” I tell him. And I’m hidden so deep—
behind the murder-bright flowers, under the wood and the stone—
—that I almost believe it.
Mack says, “Neither do I.”
I kiss him again. This time I let it last. When our lips are still close and everything is still washed-out, I whisper, “This entire school is going to be ours.”
“Next year?” he asks. His eyes are all I can see.
“Next month,” I say. “Next week.”
“Dunc’s not going anywhere.”
“You didn’t think Connor was going anywhere, either, did you? And now—” I run one nail across his throat.
“Jade!” His face is all terror.
I swallow down a scoff. He’s weak. The boy who runs swift into the fray. The boy who took his almost-brother’s place before he was cold. The boy with vaulting ambition that burns in his eyes—
—but not a wolf like the rest of them. Still human. Still kind, or close enough that it’s dulled his teeth.
I’ll change him. He’ll be wicked, too. Like we’ll need to be to burn St Andrew’s to the ground and rebuild it from the black ashes, new and ours.
“Jade,” says Mack, one hand on mine.
I turn my hand palm-up and clasp his the way I’d hold a sabre. “Connor will fall,” I say. “You’ll take his place. That’s what they said, isn’t it?”
His face changes again. He turns away so I won’t see it, but I do.
He isn’t as weak as he wants to be.
“They were just girls. Just messing with Banks and me.”
Just girls, says the boy with teeth that won’t cut. Just girls, about Mads with her foot slamming the accelerator all t
he way into the floor, hands that know how to fight, nerves that know how to kill. Just girls, about Summer’s poison lips, about Jenny’s whiplash temper that could destroy anyone before they even knew she was swinging for them.
Just girls, like me, and without me noble Mack will never even pick up a knife.
“That’s what they said,” I say again, and the s hisses through my teeth. “Isn’t it?”
He turns back to me. Challenge and uncertainty.
“Isn’t it?”
He nods.
“Connor will fall.”
He nods.
“You’ll take his place.”
He nods.
I wait. The words claw against my throat.
“And then I’ll take Duncan’s,” says Mack.
I can feel my eyes blazing too bright—wildfire galloping up the hills and choking the sky. I should put it out or look away. But I don’t, because that little second of hating him is over and right now he’s everything I want.
“You believe them,” I say.
“Of course not.”
“But you think they’re right.”
He waits this time. And then he says, “They made it come true, with Connor.”
I breathe it in. “What do you mean?”
“You were up there on the roof. You didn’t see him with his phone out, either, did you? He didn’t post anything.”
Pride swells up in me, dark and glowing. “You think it wasn’t him?”
He doesn’t answer.
“You think it was those girls, and not him, and you let Duncan—”
“Stop,” he says, stranglingly urgent. “You can’t say it.”
I stand up, all wings, looking back up the hill to the school. The sun throws my shadow so long that I don’t look like just a girl at all. And I laugh for him, a stinging whetted laugh he won’t understand. He’s innocent, innocent, innocent without even trying, except he isn’t—he just thinks he is.
I know better.
I touch down on the metal seat, so close my rolled-short skirt pleats over his leg and I can feel his heartbeat through his skin. “I’m not scared of Duncan,” I say.
“You should be.”
I kiss him, to stop the warning I don’t need. To stop the spinning white and the good-king’s voice, that little whore with the jade-green eyes—
And I pull away and whisper, “You’re scared enough for both of us.”
He says, out of breath, “I’m not scared.”
I say, “Yes, you are.”
He says, “I’m not scared. I just don’t want them hearing you say that—I don’t want them thinking you want something to happen to Dunc, too—”
I laugh him blind and snake my arm around him and up his neck, into his hair. “God, no, that’s not what I meant.”
“I know,” he says, and he doesn’t. Not at all. Golden-boy Mack with his faith in fate. “But you know how far Dunc will go—”
“Duncan is nothing,” I say, just air.
“I’m not scared,” says Mack.
“Prove it.”
He kisses me the way he kissed me when Connor fell. Everything fades and it’s only Mack and me high up above the field, above everything, flying into the sun, shadowing St Andrew’s and LA and the whole fucking world to nothing under my wings.
Nightfall
Dark comes faster today.
Yesterday it was sunset forever, hanging on until the very end. Tonight one minute Mack is climbing the bleachers to sit with me and then—
before I can even blink—
—it’s night. The sky is clearer than I’ve ever seen it: true black, not dirty and buzzing. The stars shine diamond-bright on the empty field.
It’s just us, Mack and me, at the top of the bleachers and on top of the world. Talking about everything and nothing. Lies and truths and the line between is blurred so gray I’m not sure which is which.
I told him, Everything’s different for me here.
(Truth.)
I told him, It’s because of you.
(Lie.)
I told him, I’ve never met anybody like you.
(Truth. I think.)
We’re curled together now, leaning against the railing, looking up.
“Are you sure we never met before?” says Mack.
I say, “Never.”
He says, “It feels like I’ve known you for so much longer than a day.”
“It was a day that mattered.”
“Yeah.” He pulls us closer. “But it’s more than that. It’s like you already knew me, too. Better than anybody. Better than Banks, and we’ve been best friends since we were kids.”
“Maybe I did,” I say.
(Truth.)
“Maybe it’s because we’re the same,” he says.
“Maybe,” I say.
(Lie.)
“I know what I want,” he says. “So do you. Together we could be great.”
“We will be,” I tell him.
(Truth. Truer than anything I’ve told him all night.)
“Partners in greatness,” he says, so bold and stupid and right that I grin into the starlight.
“We’ll take what’s ours,” I say.
Now that it’s dark, he doesn’t blink it away. “Yesterday,” he says, “when you said Connor didn’t deserve what he had—”
“He didn’t. You did.”
“You think—” He hesitates. “Do you think I deserve what Duncan has, too?”
“What does he have?” I ask, and I trace a C for captain over his heart. “A letter on his jersey? Duffy kissing his ass?”
“It’s not just that,” he says. “It’s power. He decides what’s right and wrong. He decides who they are—who we are.”
He leaves it there on the line, raw and too honest.
“You deserve it,” I tell him. “More than anyone.”
His eyes stay uncertain.
“I don’t know why it isn’t already yours,” I say. “I don’t know why you weren’t one of them before, or why all of it’s even his at all—”
“They do terrible things. Dunc and Duff and Connor and even Banks, and everybody knows.”
“Like what?” I ask.
He looks away.
“What do they do?”
He shakes his head, and he’s a coward, and I hate him for it. Everybody knows, he said, and he knows, too. But instead of the truth, he says, “You saw what Dunc did to Connor.”
“Connor deserved it.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t make it right.”
I watch him. “You let him do it.”
“Nothing I said would’ve stopped him.”
“You let him do it, and he let you in.”
It’s the truth. I know it and he knows it.
“You could’ve stopped him,” I say, and the dead-dark sky skips bright.
It digs into him, the thing he still won’t say out loud, but he swallows it back. “You can’t just kill someone because they have dirt on you.”
I let my head rest against his chest. His heart beats steady and strong. “If he didn’t kill Connor, Connor would’ve ruined him.”
Mack’s face flickers darker. “He ruined himself,” he says. “They all did. They think they can get away with anything—I mean, they can, that’s the thing.”
“So can you.”
“But I don’t,” he says, and I see it again, like I did yesterday. A little shift—
a twist nobody else would notice—
—another glimpse of the king he’ll be once I’ve finished whispering everything to him. Pouring the fearless ruthless spirit he needs straight into his ears and his blood.
“I’d never do what they do. I want a future, Jade. Not just the things we were already going to get because of our parents. I want to earn it. Be better than any of this. Not just use it to get away with—”
He stops.
“Get away with what?” I say, and I sweeten every syllable. Honey and light.
Mack is stil
l staring at the sky. Like it’s not just me that knows everything about him. Like it’s the stars, too.
My fangs scrape against each other and prick my lips. I taste blood again. “What happened on Friday?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying. You said you don’t lie.” I pull away.
“I don’t know. Not everything,” he says. He takes my hands in his. “I’ll never lie to you, Jade. Never.”
(Truth. I think.)
“They won’t tell me,” he says. “But—”
“You know,” I tell him.
It’s on his face, all of it. “There was a girl,” he says. “They won’t tell me what happened. But Dunc and Duff and Connor—even Banks—”
My claws dig into his skin, but he’s holding my hands as noose-tight as I’m holding his.
“They did something. They hurt her.” His eyes are darker than yesterday. Summer-green hardening to first frost.
And it’s there, in words, real.
The truth.
“Duncan doesn’t deserve any of this,” I long-s hiss. “You’re the only one who can change anything.”
He pulls me close again. For half a second the dark flashes white and I grab for his arm to slash him away—to scream into the empty battlefield—
Then the night is back and the little silver daggers on my hands stop before they tear him apart.
“The sky’s too dark tonight,” says Mack. “It’s never this dark.”
“We don’t need light,” I say.
“It’s just—the stars.” He looks up, straight up, at everything he wants. “It’s like they can see what I want. And—”
I hold my breath so I won’t speak. So I won’t scream.
“You’re the only one I’d tell,” he says.
I know.
He looks at the stars and then into my eyes.
He wants what I want.
“Maybe I’m not good,” he says. “Maybe I’m worse than any of them.”
Sworn
The drive home is perfect. Dark and stars and the wind in my hair, and the cars fly fast and I weave through the glowing lights. Cutting too close.
Just once, I scream into the stream of red and white—
scream for Connor’s broken neck—
scream for the dagger we’ll slash into Duncan’s throat—
