The girls all scream in unison as my fist connects with Winona’s perfectly symmetrical face hard enough to make blood spray from her nose. Winona stares in shock, tense but frozen, her pupils like tiny, terrified islands in the middle of wide white pools. I let go of her, and she slides to the floor, her eyes never leaving me.
“You stupid, petty children,” I growl. “Is this why you came here? Is this why you sold your life away to bloodsuckers? Just so you could live out some mean girl fantasy? You idiots! You.” I point at Winona, who cringes away from me. “You have done nothing but drive wedges between tributes since the moment you set your porcelain feet in the palace. Are you out of your mind? The only people you have on your side are the other tributes! Everybody else either wants to eat you or get you paired up with a vampire A.S.A motherfucking P. so they can get your dramatic bullshit out of their workplace!”
Winona’s jaw stiffens and she looks away.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I grit out between my teeth. Then I turn to the girls on the bed. “And the rest of you, you’re really just going to follow her and do whatever she says? Why? She’d sell each and every one of you out just as fast as she sold herself, and you know it.”
They gave each other shifty looks, with more than a few sending wary glares in Winona’s direction.
“Now.” I’m still shaking with fury, trying to bottle it back up before I do any permanent damage either to the girls or to my “willing tribute” reputation, but it’s like a dam has broken inside me. “Now,” I say again. “Don’t touch my shit. Don’t go in my room. And leave me the fuck alone.”
I stalk away, leaving a stunned, suspicious silence behind me. If I’m lucky, their little clique will tear itself apart from the inside out before dawn.
Or maybe not. Hitting Winona—while it felt fantastic and was definitely deserved—might have made her a mean girl martyr.
Yup, there it is.
I’m barely back to my room and already I can hear a couple of the girls making sympathetic noises in Winona’s direction.
Maybe the broken nose will give her face character. Or hell, maybe it’ll give her character.
A second look at my room keeps my adrenaline up. I’m hot and loose and ready for war. If the assholes who fucked up my room weren’t so soft and pampered, maybe I could have worked some of this off with a good fight. But they aren’t the types to jump a bitch, oh no. They’re the types to dump a bucket of pig’s blood all over her and sit behind innocent eyes and wicked smiles while the world around them devolves into chaos.
The real question is, how far did they actually go? Did they find anything that matters? The only thing that matters?
Ignoring the clothes and bedding on the floor, I stalk to the wardrobe and pry open the drawer at the bottom. They knocked it off its runners, so it takes me a minute to get it open—a very loud, very long minute full of very unladylike words. But eventually, it gives way, sliding out.
The dress I wore to begin this charade is still sitting on top, exactly how I left it. That doesn’t mean anything though—if they have even one functional brain between them, they wouldn’t want to make it obvious that they saw the weapons. If they did, that is.
The dress gets stuck as I pull on it, and I’ve got several more choice words for that. I put my back into it and almost fall over when the drawer finally gives it up, but I catch myself and throw the dress to one side instead. The gleam of cool steel in the drawer doesn’t give me much relief, I’m too wound up, but I pull them out anyway. I need to feel the steel in my hands.
I pull my twin blades out and grip the handles so tightly that my knuckles turn white. I stand quickly, whirling around to look for another hiding place now that the drawer’s been compromised—and freeze when I realize I’m not alone.
Rome stands just inside the doorway to my room, the heavy wood closed behind him.
I didn’t even hear him coming. I didn’t hear him open it or close it.
Shit.
I freeze. He’s frozen too, his eyes wide with shock, his mouth slightly agape as our eyes lock. Cold focus channels my adrenaline, my fighting instincts overriding everything else.
He saw me. He knows too much. I can’t let him live.
The second he closes his mouth, I move. But so does he. I jump, crossing the blades in front of me, targeting his throat. His strong, muscular throat. The throat that spoke up for Nathan and Jessica, even though his only connection to them was me. The throat I’ve kissed. The neck I’ve clung to.
I slide the blades open a fraction of a second too soon, land clumsily—and get snagged.
His strong hands are vices around my wrists. He lifts me, pulling me in one smooth motion until my weight is only barely on my feet, until I struggle to breathe. With a sudden jerk and twist, he forces the blades out of my hands, letting them clang to the floor.
“I should kill you,” he growls, his voice low and harsh.
My heart slams in my chest at the sound of those words coming from his lips. There are plenty of vamps I expected might try to murder me in this place, but Rome has never been one of them.
Until now.
“It’s my duty to kill you,” he repeats. There’s more force behind the words now.
“Who are you trying to convince, Rome? Me, or yourself?” The words hiss out painfully. There’s not enough air in my chest to propel them properly.
His eyes narrow. In a single, smooth movement, almost faster than I can make sense
