"Why was she wearing a red dress, and why did she have to run over the second those doors opened?"
He hadn't expected me to challenge him that bluntly.
She clutched Dick's hand tighter.
"Chloe told me she wanted to welcome you in my place. She meant well, and you cursed her for it."
"Seraphina, how could you be so vicious? You've disappointed me."
Hearing Dick say it, my heart twisted despite myself.
I'd thought I wouldn't care.
But hearing it from his own mouth—
The cold sank in anyway.
"I'm vicious? Do you really not know what she did?"
"You were too far away, and blind on top of it, so you didn't see. But Adela and the other bridesmaid saw every bit of it."
"She wasn't welcoming me. She was stealing my—"
I never got to finish the word. His hand cracked across my face.
The music cut out.
Every eye in the room swung toward us.
"Seraphina, Adela is your friend, the other bridesmaid is your friend, and the three of you cooked this up to frame Chloe."
If I hadn't held her back, Adela's fist would have landed square on Dick's face.
"Frame her? Please."
I spat the blood out of my mouth, pointed at Chloe, and kept going. "She didn't come to welcome me. She came to snatch the blessing from this wedding."
The hushed hall broke into murmurs.
"Stealing a wedding's luck—I've only ever seen that online. So it's real."
"No, isn't that something dying old women do? She's so young. Why would she?"
"Look at how sickly she is. What's the difference between her and a dying old woman?"
"I saw it clear as day. She had on a red dress and rushed over the moment the doors opened."
It hadn't occurred to Chloe that anyone besides me and the bridesmaids had seen.
Now that others had, she started to panic.
Her brows drew together without her meaning them to, and her eyelid gave a faint twitch.
"Dick, I didn't, I don't know what she's talking about, she's framing me."
She bit gently at her lip, the very picture of pity.
Dick, who already ached for her, looked ready to melt on the spot.
"What is this nonsense about stealing luck? Seraphina, stop inventing excuses for what you've done."
With Dick behind her, Chloe rose to her feet, all fragility.
She stepped forward to apologize to me.
"Sera, I don't know why you've misunderstood me, why you're accusing me, but I really only wanted to welcome you early."
"Sera, you and Dick are about to become one family. Why do you hold so much spite toward me?"
I looked into those eyes of hers, wide and innocent as a rabbit's, and smiled faintly.
"I'm curious about that myself. Why do you have it in so badly for me?"
"Chloe, play the fox long enough and the tail shows. Did you know that?"
I grabbed her by the collar and yanked out the yellow talisman hanging around her neck.
"Look. If she wasn't here to steal the blessing, why is she wearing something like this against her skin?"
Chloe hadn't expected me to lay a hand on her.
"That's a charm I went up the mountain to pray for. It wards off evil."
She stammered out the explanation.
Nearly everyone in the room could tell she was lying.
Only that bastard Dick still stood up for her.
"Seraphina, would you stop making a scene? Chloe apologized to you. What are you still carrying on about?"
"Carrying on?"
That word again.
In these five years together—
from the moment Chloe wedged herself between me and Dick—
he'd thrown it at me at least a thousand times.
Before, I swallowed it all.
I wore the labels: jealous, vicious, always making a scene.
But today, at the wedding I'd dreamed of—
I wasn't swallowing it.
Not only would I make a scene.
