Vivian Kingsley is watching me again.

I sense it before I confirm it—a prickle along my spine, like the air itself has sharpened, charged with unspoken intent. I shift beneath the girl draped across my lap, her laughter light and practiced, her fingers tracing idle patterns on my chest as she murmurs for the third time tonight that she's always had a weakness for trouble. The words are rote now, a mantra she's reciting to convince herself it's true.

I offer the expected smirk, tilt my head just enough to keep her anchored, but my gaze slides past the rim of my glass to the far side of the room.

Vivian Kingsley.

Sculpted. Untouchable. Ankles crossed with the precision of someone born to command thrones, not merely sit on them. Her chin is lifted, posture flawless, as though her very skeleton was forged from something colder and more enduring than bone. A single black ribbon binds the ends of her dark hair, a deliberate touch of restraint amid the chaos of a party where lines of white vanish in shadowed bathrooms and laughter fractures like glass.

Her dress is armor—tailored, unforgiving, the kind that dares accusation. Yet her lips rest against the edge of a crystal tumbler, and her eyes hold mine with a stillness that promises devastation.

Not anger. Something quieter. More lethal.

Indifference.

We both know it's a lie.

“Are you even listening?” the girl—Jessa, perhaps—whines, tugging at my collar.

“No,” I reply, voice low, eyes never leaving Vivian.

She adjusts her position by the smallest degree, a recalibration she knows I'll notice. Vivian always knows.

This isn't jealousy, not in any simple sense. Nothing between us has ever been simple. She's been woven into my existence since we could barely spell our surnames—our parents parading us through galas like matched pieces on a board, private schools where futures were negotiated in whispers, everyone smiling too brightly at the inevitable merger they all assumed was coming.

And once—once—I kissed her.

Not some drunken collision at a party. This was something that carved itself into me, permanent and vicious. Her mouth tasted of champagne and secrets, of a sweetness that had no place in the world we'd inherited. I've had countless nights since, bodies and beds and oblivion, but nothing has ever matched the raw electricity of that moment on her family's balcony—her fingers twisted in my shirt, pulling me closer even as her eyes burned with something close to hate.

The memory lingers like a bruise I refuse to let heal.

She lifts her glass now, pinky extended in mock delicacy, as though this were high tea instead of a gathering where our friends are currently shattering bottles against marble statues in the garden.

“You know,” I murmur, sliding my hand deliberately lower along the girl's thigh for effect, “Kingsley's stare could strip paint if she keeps it up.”

The girl twists to look.

Vivian's gaze doesn't waver.

I let my mouth curve, slow and deliberate.

Beneath the porcelain composure, the impeccable control, I know her fractures. I've traced them with my fingertips. Felt the hitch in her breath when proximity turns dangerous. Heard the way possession edges into her voice, even when she pretends otherwise.

She wears disdain like couture—tailored, expensive, flawless—but I've seen her jaw tighten when I smile at someone else. Watched her grip tighten on crystal until her knuckles pale. Caught the flicker in her eyes when I pass too close.

And perhaps I savor it.

Perhaps I savor knowing that no matter how often she dismisses me as beneath her, no matter how many times she labels me intolerable, she never truly departs.

She remains.

Embedded in our circle. In our shared, gilded cage. Perched across the room in thousand-dollar heels, sipping vintage poison, regarding me as though she's already composing my epitaph.

“Give me a moment,” I say, easing the girl aside before she can cling.

Because if Vivian Kingsley intends to reignite this particular game, I won't spend another two years pretending I can wait.