#ghstlnes

It should be a joke. Like they are back at the trailer park after practice, arguing about something stupid in a movie, or whose turn it was to grab snacks. Nat's never asked them this question with such seriousness before.

Van's never given her a reason to.

But out here, everything has been spun on its head. Each choice is heavy with unsaid implications, and Tai has muttered the words to herself and Van enough for them to be imprinted in her mind. Out here, everything is life and death.

At the same time, death feels so ordinary now. Van's not sure when that numbness set in, probably sometime during the winter. In many ways, it makes this easier. It hovers over them, silent and waiting. Spring and summer made it easier to forget about the things they went through, plastered over by the stories that Van narrates for herself and the rest of the team.

Natalie should be joking, not covered in the blood of their dead coach after she carved him up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Shauna watching them like a hawk, and Van reaches out to steer Natalie over towards the lake to wash up, away from everyone else. She tries not to look at the blood that is smeared across Natalie's face, or the way her hands tremble. For the first time in her life, Van would have preferred seeing Natalie's glassy-eyed stare from being hammered out of her mind instead of the haunted clarity she has now.

It reminds her too much of that day in the trailer park years ago, the echo of a shotgun blast lingering in the air.

"No, Nat. Course I don't," Van tells her softly. She carefully coaxes Nat to the edge of the lake and slowly begins to wash away the worst of the stains. "I was... angry," she finishes with a mirthless snort, as though that was an excuse for the way she threw her best friend to the ground and yelled at her. Van hates how weak the excuse sounds, but she hopes Nat can read between the lines. People might not expect it, but Van is not unfamiliar with anger. The only way she can stay cheerful in the face of it is because she knows its edges with painstaking precision.

"We're supposed to be a team," Van starts, struggling to find anything to say. "You just made that decision on your own to-" Van chokes off the end of the sentence. They both know what Natalie had done. A part of Van knows why she did it. She is still haunted by the way his frame fought under her grip, the awful choking sounds for Misty forcing whatever that slop was down his throat. She'd done that for Natalie too.

"I told my mom it's not a phase." Van's voice cuts through the silence that sits heavy over them as she skips another rock across the creek. Even though her words are quiet, they land like the bruise that blooms across her cheek.

Agatha fixed the young woman with one of her trademark looks. Not a glare, not chastising, simply a raise of a single eyebrow because yes, Beatrice Bridgerton would lie to her. Surely, she would not lie about anything of real import, but members of the Ton had tried to keep their sordid secrets under lock and key since the introduction of the illustrious Lady Whistledown. Not that they were very successful. Beatrice's reputation as a rake was somewhat of an open secret in Grosvenor Square.

She let the stare linger for a few moments longer, simply to make the young Bridgerton squirm before a smile curled across her lips. Agatha remembered being her age, remembered believing she had been discreet when surely she had not. "Well, whatever it is, I am certain you are being mindful of the stress your dear mama is under this season," she said with a pointed look.

Lady Danbury had done decently well with her four children, set them up with good matches that would keep them comfortable and safe in this world. While society had largely accepted their elevation in society, there was always a fear in the back of her mind that this could crumble at any moment. The clear love that Violet had for her children was a luxury that Agatha had never fully been afforded, nor had it been common of the era. It was a treasure to witness.

Rhaenys regarded her eldest grandson for a long moment. So many looked at Jacaerys and saw only the bastard he was rumored to be. For a time, perhaps, when she had been at her lowest, she had thought of him as such as well. But now in Jace she saw a prince who carried himself with great dignity and an air of responsibility.

Moreover, she saw in him the king he would one day become.