Page 157 of Forsaking All Others

But that was before I found out he was fucking his best friend’s wife.

‘I do still trust him, don’t I? I more than trust him, I want him, want to be with him. Always. Shit. Shit. Shit. How is he going to get out of this? Surely he’s come as far as he can without killing? This time there’s no escape. But will he choose me? Or all along has it been sweet Thorun? Too sweet to survive the game without help. Help from someone like me…?’

I try to stop my mind from going into overdrive and instead focus on the prize.

I have to win tonight, even though I’ve met the woman Jag’s actually in love with and found out what being his wife will really be like.

‘I didn’t come this far, fight all those battles, take all those lives, to lose. All through the game I’ve been positive I’ll come out on top, well, mostly. My plans for vengeance have kept me going. I need to focus on those.’

Yet revenge against Valentino seems to pale into comparison tonight with everything else that’s going on.

‘Why does it feel like, standing here on this dais, that I’m standing on an executioner's block just waiting for the axe to fall, and that the one who’s going to deliver my end is one I dream about?’

My knees are trembling like crazy, but thankfully my long gown hides that. Anyone who knows me well would notice I’m as pale as a corpse. No amount of make-up can hide my terrified pallor. But then, what’s the difference? I’m probably going to be like that permanently soon anyhow.

Thorun reaches out to take my hand as the director and presenter approach.

Starlen, swaggering in wearing a too-tight tuxedo, nods to us as if to say, ‘we’ll do,’ before clearing his throat. I guess we’re just two more temporary humans to him, and he’s already thinking about the next season, the next twenty-four victims.

“As you know, Catriona, and you probably don’t,” he points to Thorun, “so listen up; I’m going to run through the rules for the Bachelor Universe, then I’ll switch up to the big screens for family time.”

I swallow hard. Customarily, this is the time we get to see our family on the big screen and say our last goodbyes, just in case. But I didn’t nominate any family members who would appear on my behalf.

So I guess this is just going to be all Thorun.

Still, I nod my understanding and Thorun squeezes my hand. I don’t know if she does know the rules about what’s going to happen tonight. I thought I’d have time to fill her in, but I hadn’t anticipated we’d be separated, and I hadn’t told her earlier because I didn’t want to frighten her. She’d needed to think that reaching the end of the final challenge was the main hurdle. I didn’t want her to know that the bloody end of this season is usually just that, bloody.

‘I guess Jag would have told her by now, though.’

“So,” Starlen turns on his ‘star-quality smile’ for the cameras as his voice booms out. “It’s time, Bachelor Universe! It’s that time of the show when we finally get to find out who will become Viscount Jaguar Speardon’s royal wife. It’s been a long, harrowing, heart-wrenching journey. We’ve lost favourites, we’ve lost those we loved, those we hated — no,” he holds up his hand to the camera and mock shakes his head, “don’t try to say you didn’t hate some of them. But,” he shrugs, “they met their ends, sadly, tragically, just as, love her or hate her, one of the two contestants before me will tonight. As we all know, the bachelor will ask each of these beautiful women to accept his bite — but this evening, this beautiful star-lit evening, when the cicadas are singing, and the moon lights up the landscape like a luminescent party balloon,” he pauses for dramatic effect, “only one will survive that bite.”

Thorun squeezes my hand tightly as the camera pans back to us before it focuses once more on the presenter. I can’t hear what he says next, because I’m straining to hear Thorun’s whispered question.

“Wait, is he serious? One of us dies tonight?”

I try not to laugh out loud, suddenly hit by the ridiculousness of the situation we find ourselves in.

“Yes,” I whisper back.

“How?” She whispers urgently.

“Supposedly Jag’s going to murder one of us. Didn’t he tell you that?”

“No,” she whispers, “he just said to trust him.”

“Yeah,” I look straight ahead, my eyes hard, “there’s a lot of that going around.”

“I don’t want you to die,” she says, a tear running down one cheek, prompting the make-up woman to lunge forward and pat her cheek with a tissue.

“I don’t want to die either,” I mutter through clenched teeth, realising as I say this that I also don’t want her to die, but not as much as I don’t want me to die. “But one of us has to.”

“But why?” She groans.

“He can’t fucking marry both of us,” I snap, digging my nails into her hand in annoyance, more at the situation than anything.

She squeaks, and the director gives a ‘finger across the throat’ motion, warning her to shut up.

“And here we have the first family!” Starlen announces.