American Royals (42 page)

Daphne should never have doubted her abilities.

When she’d arrived this morning with a bouquet of lilies and asked the hospital staff to admit her, Daphne hadn’t been certain they would let her through to the royal wing.

She’d been startled when Jefferson came down the hallway himself and threw his arms around her with surprising emotion. “Thank you for coming. It means a lot to me,” he’d said roughly. “Will you stay?”

“Of course.”

He’d led her to the waiting room, where they sat in a pulsing, anxious silence. Jefferson kept reaching for Daphne’s hand, as if seeking the simple reassurance of human contact.

She hadn’t realized that it would be so easy. That after months of careful plotting and maneuvering, months of calculation, all it had taken was a single act of tragedy for Daphne to work her way back in.

But then, events like this had a way of changing people; or rather, of
revealing
their true selves. It whittled parts of them away, until they emerged honed and clean like a sharply fletched arrow.

Daphne, certainly, had been forever changed by what she did to Himari.

She kept stealing glances at the prince, wondering what he was thinking. Did this mean that they were back together? At the end of their conversation last night, they had agreed simply to be friends again—but surely friends didn’t sit here all day, holding hands in a hospital waiting room?

A small, shrill voice in Daphne’s head reminded her that she had woken up this morning with Ethan. She had gone straight from Jefferson to his best friend,
again;
and the fact that she’d slept with Ethan sent her mind tumbling down a dark tunnel of memories, of all the terrible things that had happened after the first time she hooked up with him.

She didn’t like thinking about it. Daphne had a readily adaptable moral code, but even she couldn’t come to terms with what she’d done. Her best option was to compartmentalize it: tuck it into a dark box and leave it alone. Most of the time that worked.

But after what Ethan had said—after waiting here all morning for good news that never came, just as she’d waited the day Himari fell—the box was open, and now all the memories came rushing back.

Daphne felt an overwhelming need to talk to someone, to unburden herself. Even to someone who couldn’t hear.

“Do you mind if I step out for a second?” she asked, giving Jefferson’s hand a squeeze.

“Of course not,” he assured her.

Daphne stood with a nod, smoothing her hair carefully over her shoulders. When she reached the elevators, instead of heading down, she went up, toward the long-term care ward. She’d walked these steps to Himari’s room so many times, she could have navigated them blindfolded.

“Hey. It’s me,” she said, just like always, as she took the chair by Himari’s bed. Her gaze traveled instinctively to the medical monitors, where Himari’s life was reduced to a series of numbers and squiggly green lines.

“I was thinking about the time we met. Do you remember when we were partners for that ninth-grade project?” They’d been assigned to research an era of history. Himari had immediately insisted that they focus on the Roaring Twenties.
We can wear
boas
for our presentation,
she’d pointed out, in a
duh
sort of tone, as if the very mention of boas negated any other argument.

Daphne had laughed.
You had me at
boas
.

That afternoon, Daphne went over to Himari’s house to try on the costumes in her family’s attic. As they stood there facing the mirror—both of them giggling and preening, their eyes sparkling above the mound of feathers—their friendship had been sealed.

Daphne slumped her elbows onto her knees in a distinctly unladylike position, and sighed. “I wish you could answer. Every time I come, I wonder what you would say to me if you could reply. I wonder if you even
like
my coming.”

Daphne wasn’t sure why she visited Himari so often.
Keep your enemies close,
as the saying went—except that Daphne still had trouble thinking of Himari as an enemy. Even after everything.

“Maybe you hate me,” she went on. “You have every right to.”

She didn’t usually talk this much on her visits, not anymore. These days she mostly sat in silence, brushing her friend’s hair, watching the beat of her pulse on those glowing monitors. But today Daphne felt a strange impulse to voice her secrets. Today she could practically see them—they were here in the room with her, lurking in the corners, flapping about on great leathery wings.

“You probably don’t care, but I’m about to get Jefferson back. He was seeing this new girl, Nina, but she ended it. Well, I
made
her end it.” Daphne reached to take her friend’s hand, closing her other palm over Himari’s fingers. “Also, not that you would approve, but I slept with Ethan again.”

Daphne hadn’t dared acknowledge what had happened between her and Ethan at Himari’s birthday party.

She’d woken in the middle of the night and slipped away before anyone could see her, while Ethan was still snoring in that fold-out bed. If she never spoke it aloud, she told herself, it would be as if the whole thing had never happened.

Until the following week at Himari’s house, when Himari confronted her about it.

“So,” Himari said, turning to Daphne in cool disapproval. “When are you going to tell the prince about you and Ethan?”

“Excuse me?” Daphne spluttered.

They were in Himari’s bedroom, trying on their dresses for the next day’s graduation party. A party at the palace, which they had planned to attend together, as best friends.

Himari rolled her eyes at the denial. “Don’t play dumb, Daphne. I saw you and Ethan at my birthday party, in my pool house. How long has
that
been going on?”

She’d seen them, but said nothing about it until now? Daphne’s eyes flicked guiltily to Himari’s window, to look out at the scene of the crime. The floodlights made the pool house look brighter than ever, as if Himari had highlighted it for just this purpose.

“I kept thinking you would tell Jefferson yourself.” Himari stared levelly at her friend. “Though I guess I wouldn’t say anything either, if I was dating the prince—and supposedly waiting till marriage—and I’d been sleeping with his best friend. Classy move, Daphne.”

“I haven’t
been sleeping
with Ethan! It was just that one time, and it was a mistake! I want to erase the whole thing and pretend it never happened.”

“You can’t erase something like that.” Himari’s face was spiteful, her dark eyes glittering with condemnation.

“My relationship with Jefferson isn’t any of your business, okay?”

“It’s my business because I saw it! You might be okay with
lying,
but I’m not.”

“Let me explain,” Daphne attempted, but Himari cut her off.

“Explain? To me?” She gave a hollow, merciless laugh. “The one you owe an explanation to is
Jeff.
He’s the one whose trust you betrayed. But I’m going to give you one last chance. You tell Jeff by the end of the party tomorrow night, or I will.”

Daphne swallowed. Her throat felt sandpaper dry. “You’re blackmailing me?”

Himari gave a narrow smile. “I prefer to think of it as strongly incentivizing you to do the right thing.”

“Why do you want to hurt me?”

“From where I stand,
you’re
the one hurting
Jefferson.
Don’t you think it’s time you took a step back? Let him date someone else for a change?”

Daphne stared at her friend in numb disbelief. She should have known. Himari wanted the prince for herself.

Of course, other girls always wanted Jefferson. Daphne had been fending them off throughout their relationship, at parties and at school and even on the streets. Jefferson literally couldn’t walk in a parade without girls screaming at him, holding signs that said MARRY ME, JEFF! Daphne had long ago resigned herself to watching girls preen and flirt before him, throw themselves at him as if she weren’t standing right there.

But never had she suspected that her best friend was angling for him, too.

She wondered if she and Himari had ever really been friends, or if Himari had been posturing the entire time. Waiting for the moment when Daphne might slip up, and she could swoop in to take her place.

“If you think he’s going to jump from me to you, you’re wrong.”

Himari gave a harsh laugh. “Maybe he will; maybe he won’t. I guess we’ll find out.”

There was a hardness to Himari that Daphne had never seen before. It created an answering hardness within her. She felt like she no longer knew her friend at all.

She told Ethan to meet her outside school the next day, in the alley between their two campuses. He was at least half responsible for the events of that night—and he couldn’t afford for the truth to get out either. Not if he wanted to keep his best friend.

When she told him about Himari’s ultimatum, Ethan frowned. “Maybe we should tell Jeff ourselves. Preempt her. If it comes from us, we can spin it the right way.”

Daphne struggled to keep her voice down. The alley was mercifully empty right now, but you never knew who might turn the corner. “You can’t be serious. There’s no right way to
spin
this, Ethan! Jefferson can’t find out. It was just a one-off mistake, something we never should have done, and that we both regret.”

“Was it?” he pressed, with a curious, half-watchful look.

“Of course.”

The strangest thing was, Daphne didn’t actually feel guilty. She knew she should, they
both
should: this was a terrible double betrayal, the girlfriend and the best friend. Yet the only guilt Daphne had managed to muster up was a vague sense of guilt for not feeling any guilt at all.

She realized with a start that she didn’t actually regret what she’d done.

All she regretted was that she’d been caught.

“I don’t see how we can stop Himari from telling him, if her heart is set on it,” Ethan said slowly.

Daphne rolled her eyes in frustration. Why didn’t he seem more determined to fix this?

“Maybe we can undermine her,” she mused, thinking aloud. Her shoes crunched on the pebbles underfoot as she paced back and forth.

Daphne felt her mind spinning and clicking like the gears of a watch, racing down a thousand possibilities every second. What they needed was a way to sideline Himari—make her seem ridiculous, even farcical, so that if she did tell Jefferson what she knew, he wouldn’t believe a word she said.

“If only she would get drunk at the party. Then her accusations will come across like incoherent ramblings.”

“Even if she does get drunk, she won’t forget what she knows,” Ethan reminded her. “How does this prevent her from going to Jeff another time and telling him everything?”

He was right. They needed leverage.

“If we get her drunk enough, then she might do something ridiculous. Something we could take photos of, to hold against her—threaten her that if she ever told Jefferson about us, we would show the photos to her parents.”

Ethan nodded. “They’re so strict with her, it just might work,” he agreed. “Fight blackmail with blackmail. Except …”

“Except it’s Himari, and we both know she won’t get drunk and do something incriminating,” Daphne finished for him. No matter how often people urged her to let loose, Himari never had more than a single glass of wine. She was too scared of her parents’ punishments. The one time they’d caught her and Daphne sipping wine coolers outside, they’d threatened to send Himari to a military school if she ever did it again.

Panic swept through Daphne, a harsh, cold panic that wiped all thoughts from her head.

It was only then, when her mind was brutally empty, that she knew her plan. It didn’t even feel like she’d come up with it, more like someone else had written it for her, in stark block letters, and now she was finally able to see.

“What is it?” Ethan prompted, reading her expression.

“We could make her
seem
drunk.”

“What are you suggesting, that we roofie her?” Ethan said it jokingly, but when Daphne didn’t laugh, his eyes widened in trepidation.

“Hear me out,” Daphne said quickly. “We could slip a little something in Himari’s drink—not a lot, just a minimum dosage. If she does say anything, it will seem like drunken incoherent ramblings. Or she might just pass out on the couch before she gets the chance. Everyone will think she drank too much, too quickly. And she obviously won’t be in any condition to rat on us. We take some photos of her, just to be safe—to hold over her head in the future.”