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“I don’t believe you.” My voice was scratchy.
A Cheshire smile lit his face, and he stepped away from me, reaching for the door handle. “You don’t have to, Hildebrand. The truth is written in your damn DNA.”
Chapter 17
Mason hadn’t been kidding.
He hadn’t been lying.
Somehow, in the two weeks since the end of fall semester, the Princes had decided I was one of them. I was a Hildebrand, granddaughter of two of Roseland’s wealthiest citizens. A Royal.
…and just like that, the bullying stopped.
Not just from them, but from everyone at Oak Park. Adena and her little posse still seemed to hate me, but even they didn’t actively taunt me or push me around anymore.
If I’d ever had any doubt of the Princes’ sway and power over the school, it died the first day of spring semester.
As quickly and thoroughly as they’d turned the entire student population against me, they undid it. Kids talked to me in the halls, people in my classes offered to study with me, I got invited to parties and social events.
The whole thing was such an abrupt turnaround I felt like I had whiplash as I went through the first week of classes—as if I’d literally stepped into someone else’s shoes, some other girl who was popular and well liked.
But that wasn’t the only change.
The weirdest, strangest, most unnerving part of the whole thing was that the Princes didn’t just leave me alone.
They enfolded me, as if their little unit had always been five rather than four.
Over the next few weeks, they insisted I eat lunch with them every day. In the classes I shared with them, they held a seat for me right next to theirs. They walked me across campus, and Finn started hanging out in the ballet studio with me again during sixth period gym. He seemed happy to be there, and I wondered if he’d missed this little haven hidden away on the second floor of the gymnasium.
It was sort of nice to have him back, actually. I still hated all four of the Princes, and I refused to let them just brush the entirety of the previous semester under the rug like it’d never happened. But even when things had been at their shittiest, the ballet studio had always been a weird neutral territory, a place where we’d both let our guards down.
Sometimes we chatted about random stuff, and sometimes we didn’t talk at all. But I found I could concentrate better when he was around, although I had no idea why. Something about the sight of him leaning against the wall opposite the barre and mirrors put me at ease.
As far as the rest of it?
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
It was nice not to be singled out and tormented by my classmates anymore, and the Princes weren’t really even dicks to me when I hung out with them—no more than they were to each other, anyway. They gave each other shit and joked about old, embarrassing stories, and they included me in those conversations almost as if I’d been there.
As if I’d been here this whole time.
They’d been friends since they were toddlers—something I’d guessed after my talk with Philip over the break—so they knew all of each other’s buttons and exactly how to push them.
But they also had each other’s backs. Always.
It was strange to be on the inside of this tight-knit group looking out, rather than on the outside looking in. It felt strangely safe inside the circle, although I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Leah had walked into the dining hall on the first Tuesday back, and the second she’d seen me sitting stiffly at the Prince’s table, her jaw had practically hit the floor. I’d seen her body lock up, seen her internal debate about whether to leap in and try to save me or run for her life, and I’d shaken my head at her quickly.
It wasn’t her job to try to save me from… whatever this was.
She’d blown up my phone the rest of the day with text messages demanding to know what the hell was going on, and as soon as we got out of Chemistry, she’d dragged me back to my dorm before the Princes could get their hands on me.
Ensconced in my room, we’d picked apart every detail of my interaction with the Princes at the party and beyond, trying to pinpoint what had caused the abrupt about-face.
“I mean, shit, girl. If you have a chance to get back in their good graces, take it! I saw how miserable they made you last semester. If they’re willing to drop the whole thing because you called them names at a party—which I can’t believe I was inside the house for, by the way—then take that deal and fucking run.”
“Yeah…” I wrinkled my nose. “I just wish they didn’t want me to be part of their stupid Royals club.”
