Chapter 794: Paradise Princesses Rebellion 2
The fig had vanished from its plate. The compact opened and closed with a soft metallic sigh before opening once more. Maddie traced a fourth deliberate coat of pomegranate lipstick across her mouth, the brush moving in slow, unhurried strokes.
The bright, faintly tart sweetness of it lingered in the air, cutting through the warmer scent of the room.
She had not yet turned toward the quiet Elena carried in her chest like a storm pressing against her ribs.
At last she looked up, the movement unhurried, toward the high-backed chair where Jade Park sat in a stillness that seemed inherited from years of expectation.
Three minutes earlier, Jade had lifted one shoulder in the smallest of shrugs — a gesture so slight it barely stirred the air, yet it had spoken with the intimate fluency only the two of them still shared.
"What was that, Jade."
"Mm?"
"What was that small civil shrug for."
"Mm. Nothing."
"Jade Park."
"Mm."
"You shrugged at me."
"Did I."
"You shrugged at Elena."
"Did I."
"In Korean."
"In what now."
"In Korean, Jade. The shrug was Korean. The angle of the head was Korean. The timing was Korean. I have known you since we were six, and I will not be denied."
Jade raised one elegant eyebrow — that precise, practiced arc the rest of them had once tried and failed to copy — and answered with smooth clarity.
"I was simply going to observe, gently, that it is perhaps very easy to mistake your words for jest. You do say quite a lot of things while laughing."
"Honey."
Maddie set the compact down with a quiet finality.
She twisted the lipstick cap into place until it clicked, then reached across the space between their chairs.
Her fingers slid into the sleek, jet-black fall of Jade’s hair — once a perfect, lacquered sheet from an hour of fastidious salon work — and with slow, deliberate mischief she raked through it, parting strands that had been trained into obedience.
They lifted and tangled beneath her touch, the expensive product yielding with a faint, satisfying resistance until order collapsed into wild, living disarray in three short seconds.
Jade’s body jolted. "MADDIE."
"Mm-hm."
"MADDIE THAT WAS ONE HOUR."
"It’s adorable now, sweetie."
"It is not adorable, Maddie. It is sticking up at angles and I will be sending you the salon bill."
"Send it, sweetie. I’ll write with love on the cheque."
"Maddie, I do not want with love. I want dollars."
"I’ll write with love in dollars. Just for you."
****
As they talked more, the room had surrendered any pretense of composure. Delilah’s laughter had turned wet, her shoulders shaking as fresh tears streaked her cheeks and she curled deeper into the cushions.
Yuki had slid sideways until she was half-sprawled, one hand pressed to her ribs as if the ache might split them open while Amber had slipped from the chaise with liquid grace and now lay on the floor, her laughter rising toward the ceiling in bright, unrestrained bursts.
Natasha Sinclair set her teacup down. The delicate chime of porcelain against saucer cut cleanly through the noise. She spoke as if the words were meant only for herself, though every ear caught them.
"...Yes," Natasha said in light to Jade’s words about Maddie’s absence since she met Phei, "You did, Maddie, take us all by surprise."
"Mm, how?"
"With Phei."
The silence that followed felt full, weighted with things left unsaid.
Maddie’s compact opened again, she studied her reflection, decided the color still needed one more layer, and answered her own face with pleasant satisfaction.
"I did, didn’t I."
"Considerably by surprise, Maddie. I had not, until that afternoon, processed that you were even in the running. And then, in the course of a single period, you had — what is the word, Elena —" Natasha said this time, she sought help from the Ashford princesss.
"Annexed him."
"Annexed him in empty classroom, Maddie. The way the British annexed Wales."
"Tasha." Maddie laughed watching Sierra’s fac.
"And you did so with prejudice."
Maddie examined the fresh coat of pomegranate on her lips, then again, she turned her head slowly toward the far end of the long pale sofa where Sierra Montgomery sat, still recovering her breath.
"I went in, sweeties, to conquer. Just after Sierra was conquered by him... I wanted to be better than her. And yet — and yet — what I have to say, with the honesty owed to you all my best friends — I, in fact, got conquered. Granted." She let the pause breathe. "Not, perhaps, as quickly as Sierra got dominated in the hallway when she thought he was the same easy target. I held out better than her for — what, sweetie, three days?"
"Fuck off, Maddie." Sierra said, looking away remembering how Phei had eld her hands and encompassed her body on the wall right before every student watching.
’Good, ol’ days.’
"Three days, sweeties. Three. I outperformed you, Sierra Montgomery. I outperformed you by a full seventy-two hours."
"Maddie —"
"And I will, in fact, be putting it on my résumé."
Sierra set her teacup down on the small, lacquered side-table with deliberate care.
Across twelve years she had learned precisely how much of Maddie’s needling she could absorb without surrendering an inch of her own ground. Her voice came steady, threaded with the dry patience of someone who knew this particular battle would never truly end.
"Sweetie. You have been coveting things I had since we were five. The toy bear. The pink ribbon. The smaller pink ribbon, my first crush, the second first crush, the piano lessons, figure-skating coach who made you cry; Blake Whitfield, was it?"
"Sierra."
"Yes. It was Blake Whitfield."
"Sierra, do not invoke that name in this room. We agreed."
"I am invoking it, Maddie."
"It was a patient civil oversight, Sierra."
"It was a Tuesday."
"And I will not, in this room, in front of all of these witnesses, be slandered by —"
"He told you, you had no talent for figure-skating in front of me, Maddie."
"I wanted to learn from him anyways."
"You didn’t?"
"Yes."
"Maddie, that is not a defence for your lack of talent."
"It is, in fact, the definition of a defence, sweetie."
The girls were laughing, Delilah had folded completely into the cushions, laughter shaking her entire frame until the tears ran fresh again. Jade had abandoned the last of her dignity and was pressing the hem of her ruined skirt to her eyes, shoulders trembling. Yuki clutched her ribs as though they might crack.
Amber, still sprawled on the floor, gave herself over to the bright, unrestrained whoop-laugh that only ever escaped her here — among the only people who had ever seen her without armor.
The sound filled the room, warm and wild and utterly alive, until even the walls seemed to lean closer to catch every note of it.
