Bianca Harlow lived in a house that didn't look like a home.
It looked like a hotel. Three storeys of glass and arrogance, floor-to-ceiling windows that put her family's wealth on display like a museum exhibit. The front garden had been manicured by someone who clearly got paid six figures to make the grass look "effortlessly" wild.
I stood on the pavement for thirty seconds, the bass from the house vibrating in the soles of my cheap sneakers.
Then I breathed in, tightened my ponytail, and walked into the lion's den.
The interior was worse. High, echoing ceilings and minimalist furniture shoved against the walls to make a dance floor for the elite. The air smelled like expensive gin and desperation. The music was loud, but Bianca had calculated the decibels perfectly that you could still hear the gossip, still catch the sharp edge of a whispered insult. She wanted people to be heard. That was the point of a trial, after all.
Ace found me within two minutes.
"You actually showed," he said. He looked genuinely relieved, his eyes scanning my face with a warmth that felt dangerously un-Crestwood.
"I said I might."
"When you say 'might,' it usually means 'watch me.'" He handed me a bottle of sparkling water. "Come on. I'll show you the safe zones."
"The what?"
"The places where you can breathe without some asshole performing for an audience. I've been coming to Bianca's staged executions since Year Ten. I know where the blind spots are."
I followed him. He moved through the crowd like water; nodding, joking, never letting himself be swallowed by the noise. I watched the way he navigated the social hierarchy and filed it under my "Essential Intel."
He led me to the back terrace. It was wide, lit by strings of Edison bulbs, and mercifully quiet. A few groups were draped over outdoor sofas, actually talking instead of posing.
"See?" he said, leaning against the stone railing. "Safe zone."
"You're more cynical than you look, Ace."
"I'm a pragmatist. People just assume I'm a golden retriever because I don't bite their heads off immediately." He looked at me, his gaze dropping to the way I was holding my bottle. "That pisses you off, doesn't it? Being underestimated."
I looked at him without a word.
"Yeah," he said softly. "Thought so."
We stood there for a while. He filled the silence with low-stakes talk, and I listened, my internal alarm system slowly losing its red-alert status. It felt easy. I reminded myself that Tessa had probably felt the same way once.
Then, the air in the room shifted. That familiar, heavy gravity.
I turned around. Zane was standing there. He clocked Ace first, a brief flicker of something passing between them, then his eyes locked onto me.
The people near the door stepped back, not because he asked, but because Zane Calloway simply required more space than everyone else.
"You came," he said. He didn't even acknowledge Ace.
"Is there an echo in here? Everyone keeps saying that."
"I told you to stay home, Mila."
"And I heard you." I didn't look away. I couldn't. "I just decided your opinion wasn't the one I was following tonight."
His facial expression changed. It wasn't a softening... Zane didn't 'soften' but a recalibration. Like a predator realizing the prey had teeth.
Ace looked between us, his mouth zipped. His phone buzzed. He glanced at it, cursed under his breath, and muttered, "I need to handle this. Back in five."
He disappeared into the house, leaving me alone with the one person who made me feel like I was standing on a fault line.
"Why did you really want me to stay away?" I asked. My voice felt too loud in the sudden intimacy of the terrace.
"I told you. Bianca uses people."
"That's a Hallmark card, Zane. Give me the real version."
He stepped closer, close enough that I could see the dark rings around his pupils. "She identifies what makes someone a threat or a tool. Then she breaks them until they're one or the other. And you..." He stopped, his gaze dropping to my mouth before snapping back to my eyes.
"What about me?"
"You're both," he said, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper. "And she fucking knows it."
Before I could process that, the queen arrived.
Bianca swept onto the terrace, glass in hand, followed by a loyal entourage of sharks. The music seemed to dim just to let her speak.
Her smile was a goddamn weapon.
"Mila! You made it!" She lunged in, brushing her cheek against mine in a fake-as-hell socialite kiss. "I was starting to worry the gates wouldn't let you in."
"I keep my word," I said.
She glanced at Zane. Something old, jagged, and toxic passed between them in the span of a heartbeat. Then she turned back to me, her eyes bright with a predatory hunger.
"I love that top," she said, raising her voice just enough to catch the attention of the surrounding groups. "It's honestly so sweet that you dressed up. I always forget what it's like when you're on a tight scholarship budget, how even something like this must feel so... fancy."
The terrace went dead. Not a whisper. Not a breath.
Everyone was waiting for the scholarship girl to crumble. To blush, to stammer, to remember her place at the bottom of the food chain.
I let the silence stretch. One second. Two. I looked her dead in the eye, and for the first time, I didn't see a queen. I saw a girl who was terrified of being bored.
"Thanks, Bianca," I said, my voice steady and clear. "I borrowed it from the same place you get your personality... Free of charge."
Someone in the back; maybe Petra, maybe a stranger let out a sharp, choked-off sound that might have been a laugh.
Bianca's smile didn't move an inch, but her eyes went flat. Dead. "She's funny," she said to the crowd, her tone dripping with a new kind of venom.
"I know," I said. "It's a gift. Some people have it, some people just have... glass houses."
Zane was watching me, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He looked like he was witnessing a car crash he'd personally choreographed.
Bianca moved on. She didn't retreat, she just redirected her light toward someone else, while the moment dissolved. But the damage was done. The "charity case" had just drawn blood.
Ace returned five minutes later, sensing the tectonic shift immediately. "What did I miss?"
"Nothing," I said, my heart finally starting to slow down.
He looked at Zane for the translation.
Zane didn't look away from me. "She handled it."
An hour later, I was pulling my jacket from the pile in the hallway, ready to vanish before the second act started then a hand touched my arm, it was brief and firm.
I turned. It was Remi.
"It was me," she said. "The texts."
I stared at her, the tall girl with the French braids and the "I don't give a damn" attitude.
"I've been at this hellhole since Year Nine," she said, her voice low. "I've watched Bianca pull that same 'budget' comment on six different girls. I was getting bored of the rerun." She looked at me with something that might have been respect. "You didn't flinch. That's a first."
"Why the mystery?" I asked.
"Because I needed to see if you were worth the effort of a warning." She shrugged, grabbing her own coat. "Turns out, you are. Get home safe, scholarship girl."
She vanished into the night.
I stood there in the middle of that museum-house, the bass thumping in my chest, and pulled out my phone. I deleted the "Question Mark" and typed in Remi.
"I'll walk you out."
I didn't need to turn around to know it was Zane. Not Ace... Zane.
"Not a question?" I asked.
"Not tonight."
We walked through the house, past the sweating bodies and the smell of spilled vodka, and out into the biting cold of the street. He stopped at the bottom of the stone steps, the yellow light of the streetlamp making him look like something carved out of granite.
"You should have listened to me," he said.
"Yhh I probably should've." I looked at him, feeling the sharp, cold air fill my lungs. "But I'm glad I didn't."
He stared at me for a long, heavy moment. His guard didn't drop, but for a second, I saw the cracks.
"Yeah," he said, his voice barely audible. "Me too."
He turned and walked back into the house without another word.
I walked to the curb and called a cab, my hands shaking as the adrenaline finally ebbed away. I'd come to Crestwood to be a ghost. I'd come to survive quietly and get my degree and leave.
But as I watched Bianca Harlow's house disappear in the rearview mirror, I knew that plan was dead.
I'd punched the queen in the face in front of her court, and Zane Calloway had watched me do it with something that looked a lot like hunger.
I wasn't a ghost anymore.
I was a target.