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“...to a Magdalen?”
“To me. Apparently, despite the fact Apollo’s off fucking whoever he likes, Valen denies he still wants me.”
“Oh, juicy. What’s the plan, then?”
“Revenge.”
“Love it. Tell me more.”
We were up way too late plotting my revenge. I wasn’t the only one falling asleep in morning mass. Apollo, bless him, thought it was because he’d kept me up too late. I wondered how long he’d kept the Magdalen up...or, rather, how long she’d kept him up.
Chapter Sixteen
Trying to style a boarding school uniform for the purpose of seducing-slash-punishing a guy like Valen Kincaid took some effort and no small amount of creativity, and still the results were mediocre at best.
“I mean, look,” Florence said on Friday morning, “we could celebrate the fact you were out of bed before eight?”
“Is that seriously how much faith you have in this enterprise?”
Looking at myself in the mirror, I was about at her level of optimism, but one of us needed to look on the bright side. I wasn’t quite surewhyit was so important to me to prove Valen wrong. It was just incredibly important that I kept some control and power in my life, and it felt like that was the only way to do it. Prove Valen wrong. Prove he wanted me. Me. Not just the idea of me or my inheritance.
“If this was me, it’d be easy,” Florence said. “I ‘accidentally’ put your uniform on in the morning after a night of heavy studying. Small slap on the wrist, sent back to our room to change at morning tea, and hope the intended prey noticed the goods while it lasted. But you’re like three sizes smaller than me, that strategy’s not gonna help you.”
No. But the idea had me thinking.
“No, but Exie is at least a size smaller than me...” I mused.
Florence’s eyebrow rose, but she said nothing disparaging about my friendship with Exie.
“Come to think of it,” I continued. “Triss wants to major in fashion...”
“Ican cut up your uniform, babe,” she reminded me slowly.
I nodded. “You can. You could cut it and paint extraordinary designs on it. What you couldn’t do is put it back together without it being obvious that’s what we did.”
Florence huffed indignantly. “Yeah, all right, then. So, what’s the plan?”
“Step one is do our best today. Step two is go all out at the Death Harvest tomorrow night. Step three is get Exie’s and Triss’ help for next week.” I grinned at her. “Tomorrowwillinclude your painting expertise.”
“Oh,” she cooed. “Colour me intrigued.”
“Picture me with tattoos...then go to town.”
Florence looked confused for a moment, then a grin slowly spread across her face. “Okay.” She nodded. “Ohh-kay, girl. I feel you. You wanna give Valen the bad girl. Show the girl inside on the outside for once.”
“Are you done with the excessive exposition, or can we get to morning mass?”
She looked me over. “You look good, but you don’t look good enough to be excited about morning mass, babe.”
I pointed at her victoriously. “Ha! You think I look good.”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course I think you look good. You always look good. We could go to morning mass in pillowcases and we’d both look fabulous.”
I looped my arm with hers as we walked out of our room. “Fuck, yes.”
Sometimes, all you needed in life was a friend like Florence Walton.
Did we have flaws a plenty between us? Yes. Were we still figuring out life but liked to pretend we had it all down? Of course. Did we like to think we were mature and sophisticated, but in reality were still very much barely eighteen and high school students? Damn straight. But we loved each other and we supported each other, even if we’d look back with huge regrets in twenty years.
