CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
ZADE
I pull away from her lips, my chest heaving as the cold air of the pavilion slams back into my face.
The taste of her—sweet, dangerous, and entirely too addictive—is still burning on my tongue.
For a fraction of a second, as my hand stays wrapped around her waist,
Smack.
The sound echoes through the dead-silent ballroom like a gunshot.
My head snaps to the side, the skin of my left cheek bursting into a violent, stinging heat.
The force of the blow is so sudden that it actually makes me take half a step back.
I turn my face back to her, my jaw gritted, ready to roar, ready to rip this entire place apart—but the words freeze solid in my throat.
Alice is standing in front of me, her chest rising and falling in ragged, furious gasps.
The thin straps of her dress are trembling.
But it's her eyes.
The blue-grey is completely drowned in a layer...
She has actual tears in her eyes.
"What the fuck do you think of yourself, huh?!"
she screams, her voice cracking, vibrating with a raw rage that cuts right through the classical music still playing in the background.
"Who the hell gave you the right to touch me?!"
I step toward her, my hands twitching. "Alice, listen to me—"
"No! You listen to me, you psychotic bastard!"
she yells, stepping back, her hands shaking as she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, as if she's trying to scrub the very memory of my lips off her skin.
"Do you think because your family owns this godforsaken place, you can just buy people? Do you think I am some toy you can just break whenever your precious little ego gets bruised?!"
"I didn't try to break you," I growl, my voice dropping into a low rumble, but the confidence is completely gone from my posture.
"You hit me with a golf club, you drag me to your house like a hostage, and now you do this in front of everyone?!"
She gestures wildly to the crowd of hundreds of students staring at us with open mouths.
Briar is standing near the lounge, her face pale with shock, but I can't even bring myself to look at her. All I see is the girl in red.
"You are a monster, Zade Hamilton,"
Alice spits, the tears finally spilling over her lashes and tracking down her pale, freckled cheeks.
"You don't care about anyone but yourself. You are nothing but a cold, empty tomb. And I loathe the very sight of you."
A cold, empty tomb.
The words slice through my chest, cutting deeper than any knife Marcus could have ever pulled on me.
It hits the exact spot where Lila's ghost lives, hitting the realization that every single person I try to keep close ends up ruined.
She didn't just reject the kiss; she dismantled every single defense mechanism I've built since I was seventeen years old.
I stand there, completely paralyzed, as her words echo in my ears.
The King of Oakhaven is bleeding in front of his entire court, and he doesn't even have a weapon to fight back.
"Don't you ever come near me again," she whispers, her voice shaking with a finality that makes my blood turn to ice.
She grabs the sides of her dress, turns on her heel, and sprints through the parted crowd.
The heavy double doors of the pavilion slam shut behind her, the sound echoing like a death knell.
"Zade..." Briar's voice calls out from somewhere behind me, her hand reaching for my shoulder.
"Zade, what the hell was that? Who does she think she is?"
"Get your hands off me, Briar," I hiss, flinching away from her touch without even looking at her.
Marcus steps into my line of sight, his knuckles white, his chest heaving as he glares at me.
"You really are a bastard, aren't you? You just have to destroy everything beautiful that crosses your path."
I don't throw a punch.
I don't even look him in the eye.
She won the game.
She shattered my mask, left me bleeding on the floor of my own palace, and walked out into the night.
And the worst part is, she's entirely right.