Aliyah had never felt fury arrive so fast.
One second she was stepping into Scarlett's apartment with her key in hand, ready for their anniversary dinner, still carrying the warmth of anticipation in her chest.
The next, she was standing in the doorway staring at Scarlett's parents, at Scarlett's face, at the sick, hollow look in Scarlett's eyes, and the whole evening split open like rotten fruit.
"Is this true?"
The words came out low and sharp.
No one answered fast enough.
That was answer enough.
Something hot and violent cracked through Aliyah's chest.
"What the fuck, Scarlett?" she said.
Scarlett took one step toward her. "Aliyah, please."
"No." Aliyah's voice rose, cutting through the room. "No, don't you fucking dare say my name like that. Is it true?"
Scarlett's mother said, with silky poison, "It seems the princess deserves honesty, at least."
Aliyah barely looked at her.
Her gaze stayed locked on Scarlett's face, on the woman she had loved for a year, the woman whose bed she had slept in, whose hands she knew better than her own jewelry, whose mouth had said I love you against her skin like prayer.
"Did you get with me only for the money?" Aliyah asked.
Scarlett flinched like the words had struck her.
"That's not what it is now."
Now.
Now.
The room went dead silent in Aliyah's head.
Not what it is now.
Which meant it had been.
A laugh tore out of her, ugly and disbelieving and on the edge of breaking. "You unbelievable piece of shit."
"Aliyah," Scarlett said, voice rough, desperate already, "listen to me."
"No, you listen to me." Aliyah stepped fully into the apartment and slammed the door behind her with enough force to rattle the glass cabinet by the wall. Her hands were shaking.
Her entire body was shaking. "You let me fall in love with you while this was how it started?"
Scarlett's father made some disapproving sound, as if tone still mattered.
Aliyah turned on him with such cold fury that even he stopped.
"Get the fuck out of my sight," she said.
Something in her voice, something royal and furious and not at all soft, made both of Scarlett's parents go still. For one second the room seemed to remember exactly who she was. Not just Aliyah.
Not just a student. A princess. A woman raised in palaces and politics and polished cruelty, and perfectly capable of recognizing a scheme when she smelled one.
Scarlett stepped between her and them without fully blocking either of them. "This is between me and her."
"Then send them away," Aliyah snapped. "Or are they staying to watch how well their little fucking investment turned out?"
Scarlett's jaw clenched. "Mother. Father. Leave."
Her mother arched one elegant brow. "Scarlett."
"Leave," Scarlett said again, harder now. "Now."
Her father looked furious. Her mother looked calculating. Aliyah hated them both on sight.
But after one terrible beat, they turned. Scarlett's mother paused at the door, glancing once at Aliyah with the kind of pity only cruel people knew how to fake.
"I do hope," she said softly, "that next time, Your Highness, you choose more carefully."
Aliyah did not move.
If she spoke, she might have set the fucking apartment on fire.
The door shut behind them.
Then it was only her and Scarlett.
Only the candles.
Only the dinner table set for two.
Only the anniversary that had just turned into a joke.
Aliyah stood near the door, chest heaving, and looked at the room with new eyes. The plates. The glasses. The careful lighting. The flowers.
Had all of it been real?
Had any of it?
"You should say something," she said, voice shaking now with rage and hurt and humiliation twisted together so tightly she could barely tell them apart. "And you should say something fucking good."
Scarlett looked wrecked. Pale under her skin. Tense all over. Hands empty at her sides as if she knew better than to reach for Aliyah right now.
"It started like that," Scarlett said.
The honesty of it hit harder than a lie would have.
Aliyah stared at her.
Scarlett swallowed. "At the very beginning, yes. My parents knew who you were. They wanted me close to you. They wanted…" She laughed once, bitter and self-disgusted. "Money. Influence. Access. Whatever they could get if I played it right."
Aliyah felt sick.
The room tilted, just slightly. Not enough to fall. Enough to understand that she could.
"And you agreed."
"At first," Scarlett said.
"At first," Aliyah repeated, and then laughed again, a horrible sound. "At first? Scarlett, do you hear yourself?"
"I didn't touch you for them," Scarlett said quickly. "I never took anything from you. I never asked you for money. I never tried to use you once it became real."
Aliyah's eyes burned.
Once it became real.
Once.
As if there had been a threshold. As if there had been a point where she had transformed from target to lover and Scarlett thought that somehow erased the beginning.
"You approached me because your family told you to," Aliyah said. "You flirted with me because there was a plan."
Scarlett's throat moved. "Yes."
"There was a scheme."
"Yes."
"You lied to me."
Scarlett took a breath like it hurt. "Yes."
Aliyah closed her eyes for one second.
One second.
Because if she looked at Scarlett while hearing those yeses, she might actually scream.
When she opened them again, her voice had gone dangerously calm.
"You should have told me."
"I know."
"When?"
Scarlett blinked. "What?"
"When should you have told me?" Aliyah asked.
"On our first date? After our first kiss? Before I slept with you? After you took my virginity? At our six-month anniversary? Last fucking week? Tell me, Scarlett, at what point exactly were you planning to mention that you first came after me because your family thought I'd be worth something?"
Scarlett looked like she had been flayed.
"I was going to tell you," she said.
Aliyah's laugh came sharp as broken glass. "When? Tonight?"
Scarlett said nothing.
That was enough.
"Oh my God."
Aliyah took a step back from her as if the truth itself had become contagious. Her whole body hurt now. Not in one place. Everywhere. In her throat. Her chest. Her hands. In every stupid soft memory that had turned, suddenly, barbed.
The first time Scarlett had called her princess.
The first time she had kissed her.
The first time she had said I like you enough that it's become embarrassing.
Had that been after it became real? Before? During? Did Aliyah really want to know?
"No," she whispered to herself, and then louder, "No. No, don't look at me like that."
Scarlett's eyes were wet now, though the tears had not fallen. "Aliyah, please. Please. I love you."
Something in Aliyah's face must have changed then, because Scarlett's panic sharpened.
She reached into the inside pocket of her coat hanging over the chair and took out a small velvet box with shaking fingers.
Aliyah felt the blood drain from her face.
No.
Scarlett opened it.
The diamond flashed under the candlelight, brilliant and expensive and devastatingly beautiful.
For a second the whole room was silent except for Aliyah's breathing.
Scarlett's voice broke. "I got it for you. I took extra jobs for months. I wanted tonight to be…" She swallowed hard. "I love you. That part is real. All of it is real. Please."
Aliyah stared at the ring.
A one-year anniversary.
Candles.
Dinner.
A diamond.
A confession dragged out only because she had walked in at the wrong moment and heard the truth from someone else's mouth.
The hurt in her twisted into something colder.
She stepped forward and with one quick movement knocked the box out of Scarlett's hand.
It hit the floor, rolled, and landed open near the leg of the sofa, the diamond still glittering obscenely in the low light.
Scarlett flinched. "Aliyah—"
"No." Her voice cracked on the word, then hardened. "Do not fucking propose to me in the middle of your lie."
"It's not a lie now!"
"You betrayed me!"
The force of it rang through the apartment.
Scarlett went still.
Aliyah's chest was heaving. Tears had finally spilled, hot and humiliating and unstoppable, but she did not wipe them away. Scarlett had no right to see dignity from her right now.
"You let me love you without giving me the truth," Aliyah said. "You let me trust you. Do you understand how disgusting that feels? Do you understand what you did to me?"
"I know," Scarlett whispered.
"No, you don't."
"I do."
"No, you fucking don't." Aliyah shook her head, tears slipping faster now. "Because if you did, you would have told me before your parents had the chance to throw it in my face like court gossip."
Scarlett took a step toward her. "Please, let me fix this."
Aliyah stepped back immediately.
That hurt Scarlett more than any slap could have. Aliyah saw it. Hated that she saw it. Hated that some traitorous part of her still knew exactly what wounded Scarlett looked like.
But the wound inside her own chest was bigger.
And rawer.
And it had Scarlett's name on it.
Her voice turned very quiet after that.
That was worse than the shouting.
"We're done."
Scarlett's face went blank with shock. "Aliyah."
"We're done," she repeated, each word clean and final and cutting her open as she said it. "I'm breaking up with you."
Scarlett looked like the ground had vanished beneath her. "Please don't do this."
A sob nearly rose in Aliyah's throat. She swallowed it like poison.
"You should have thought about that before you built us on a fucking lie."
Then she turned, unlocked the door with unsteady hands, and walked out of the apartment before she could do the unforgivable thing and look back.
Author's Note: Yes, this is the last part, but don't be sad. They'll get their own story, if you'd like. Scarlett is going to become Aliyah's royal guard, and it's going to be a beautiful yearning story.