Chapter 198: Chapter 198: Confrontation
Chapter 198: Confrontation
Giselle’s cold command came so suddenly that Elias actually startled.
His shoulders jerked. For one clean second, he stood there frozen in her arms, eyes wide and wet, as if the word had struck him across the face.
Then, deep inside, he laughed.
Oh.
So she was panicking now.
To be fair, if Elias put himself in Giselle’s place, he would probably panic too. The thing she thought belonged under her protection had slipped out of sight for a few minutes and somehow ended up back in the hands of its former owner.
That kind of defeat had to sting.
Still, Elias had never told her Serena was the one who had done anything.
Giselle had decided that all by herself.
A faint gleam crossed his eyes and vanished at once. On the outside, he only stared at her for another heartbeat, stunned and fragile. Then he released her as if he had been burned.
He stepped out of her embrace.
The movement was small, but it landed hard. He retreated a few paces, shoulders drawn in, his flushed mouth trembling, his red-rimmed eyes spilling tears before he even seemed to understand he was crying.
"I’m sorry..." His voice broke around the words. "I made you mad again."
Giselle’s expression stiffened.
She was furious.
Not at him.
At Serena. At herself. At the fact that Elias had been standing under her watch tonight, tucked against her, sitting on her lap in front of an entire auditorium, and Serena had still managed to leave some mark on him.
That was what Giselle thought she saw.
That was what Elias let her see.
The anger burned so hot that for a moment, Victoria Frost’s voice seemed to rise in Giselle’s memory, low and unforgiving.
With nothing but temper, even as my daughter, you will lose whatever Serena Blackwood decides to take from you.
Giselle had understood the sentence when her mother said it. That was why she had endured the dinners, the charity circuits, the forced introductions, the etiquette of power, the ugly lessons that had nothing to do with grades or genius and everything to do with how women like Serena moved through the world.
She had listened. She had learned.
She had never fully admitted Victoria was right.
Now Elias stood in front of her, crying because she had snapped at him, his mouth marked, his body shrinking away from her instead of Serena, and something inside Giselle came close to bending.
Even leaning on Victoria’s power, she still could not beat Serena.
She could not even protect Elias.
Guilt slid beneath the anger, quiet and sharp.
Giselle forced herself to breathe. She wanted to soften her voice. She could not. Serena was nearby. Liora was nearby. Yvonne Quinn was nearby. The air itself felt full of witnesses.
So when she spoke, her tone came out stiff and severe.
"Enough. Didn’t you say you weren’t going to cry anymore?"
Elias almost laughed.
Giselle’s face was flushed with anger, her eyes cold enough to freeze over, and she was still trying to comfort him through gritted teeth. She would not fully soften, not with Serena so close. If she lowered herself too much in front of him now, she would feel as if she had already lost ground before the real confrontation began.
How painfully awkward.
How painfully sweet.
Across so many worlds, Elias had met cruel women, stupid women, clever women, women who dressed violence up as love and women who did not bother dressing it at all. Giselle Frost, of all the trash-romance heroines he had handled in recent cycles, might honestly be the cutest disaster.
So this was what a campus heroine looked like when she started breaking.
Adorable.
He raised both hands and wiped at his cheeks. The tears stopped by force, as if he had shut them off at the source. His voice stayed hoarse.
"Okay..."
He said it like obedience.
Nothing about him looked okay.
His chest rose and fell too quickly. His mouth pulled down at the corners. His throat worked again and again as he swallowed what looked like another sob. Every inch of him was a performance of restraint, the kind that made the restraint look more pitiful than the crying.
For Giselle’s sake, he was trying not to fall apart.
Yvonne watched it happen.
She saw the way Giselle’s fine silver brows drew together. She saw the moment the girl hesitated, then stepped forward and folded Elias back into her arms.
Giselle lowered her head beside his ear, saying something too quietly for the others to catch. The frost in her face did not vanish, but it thinned. Her hand settled at the back of Elias’s shoulders with a care that did not look practiced.
So this was how an ice queen melted.
Not loudly. Not all at once.
She simply made room for the person destroying her.
Yvonne looked away.
Her gaze met Liora’s.
For a moment, neither woman spoke.
There was a thin, unpleasant understanding between them, the kind born from watching someone descend one step at a time and knowing the staircase would not end well.
Then a sharp voice cut through the night.
"Elias!"
Both women turned.
Serena Blackwood was striding toward them.
She moved fast, heels biting cleanly against the pavement, her posture still elegant even with anger written through every line of her body. The auditorium lights spilled out behind her in pale gold, but the look on her face had nothing warm in it.
Liora’s mouth curved.
The show had officially begun.
Even Yvonne, who had been ready to leave, slipped one hand into her coat pocket and took out her phone.
She opened Mira’s contact.
Yvonne: Head back without me.
The reply came quickly.
Mira: Dr. Quinn, is something wrong? I thought you still had plans tonight.
Yvonne’s thumb hovered over the screen.
Cancelled. I have...
She paused.
Then she typed the last word.
Yvonne: Cancelled. I have something to handle.
She put the phone away and lifted her eyes again.
It did count as something.
In Giselle’s arms, Elias trembled the instant he heard Serena’s voice.
That part was not even acting. Serena’s shout had hit as abruptly as Giselle’s earlier command, and his body reacted before his mind bothered to decorate it.
Giselle misunderstood it beautifully.
Her arms tightened around him. She pulled him closer, blocking him from Serena’s sight and blocking Serena from his. Elias ended up pressed so tightly against her that he had to lift his face a little to breathe.
His eyes widened with genuine surprise.
This might have been the first time he had heard Giselle shout.
Before this, even angry, she had always gone colder. Quieter. More distant. Her rage usually froze over instead of boiling.
Now her voice cracked through the courtyard.
"Serena Blackwood!"
Elias blinked against her.
Wow.
She was really mad.
Then Giselle snapped, "You are fucking shameless."
Elias’s eyes opened even wider.
Oh, she was really, really mad.
For a girl who carried herself like she had been carved out of moonlight and old money, the profanity landed like a glass breaking in a cathedral.
Even Serena stopped for half a step.
The shock lasted only a moment.
Then it fed her fury.
At first, Serena had intended to take Elias back from Giselle’s arms and end the farce. She had even planned to leave Victoria Frost a little face. No matter how much she hated the sight of Giselle touching him, the Frost family was not some minor name she could swat away without thought.
But Giselle had cursed her first.
If Serena did anything now, Victoria could swallow the insult.
Serena’s smile was gone.
"Little brat," she said, voice low and cutting. "Let him go."
"What right do you have to tell me that?" Giselle’s arms did not loosen. "Do you still think things are the way they used to be? Elias broke up with you."
Serena’s anger flared so sharply that even Elias felt it through the space between them.
"Who said we broke up?" Serena demanded. "It was a misunderstanding. And you, exactly what are you supposed to be?"
Giselle answered without hesitation.
"I’m his Bestie."
For one silent second, the entire space seemed to stall.
Elias buried his face against Giselle’s chest, and his mouth curved where no one could see it.
He could not hold it.
He really could not.
"System Theta," he said inwardly, laughter shaking at the edge of every word, "I’m going to lose it."
[System Theta: ...]
Even System Theta sounded like it had started feeling sorry for Giselle.
