The Event (con't)
High above, in a shadowed corner of the rooftop, Lili holds her phone to her ear.
“I’ve been digging into the IP addresses tied to the messages,” Park says, voice lowered with grave concern. “At first, the patterns were erratic—spoofed signals, layered proxies—but once I filtered out the noise, two consistent sources emerged.”
A quiet gasp slips past Lili’s lips.
“One is a mobile device,” he goes on. “I traced it through masked networks, but the registration pinged back to a known device that’s active at a single location. The other? A fixed address.”
A pause. A jolt runs through her as he says it—
“222 Corpse Flower. Your building.”
Stillness. Lili’s heart races ahead of her breath.
“The mobile activity and network logs overlap—same user, same device footprint. Metadata, timestamps, all of it aligns. Do you know the name…”
Lili’s vision blurs. She almost doesn’t hear it, but she already knows.
“Daphne Marks?”
The world tilts. The music dulls, the edges of the room bending, slipping out of focus. “Daphne?” she whispers.
“I can’t say with absolute certainty,” Park cautions. “But if someone else is behind this, they’d have to be routing everything through her devices. Not likely.”
But Lili barely hears him now. His voice fades to static as she ends the call. A strange calm settles in her chest. No more doubt. No more fear. Only the devastating truth: she wasn’t just bullied. She was betrayed.
Across the rooftop, she sees her. Daphne, lounging against the bar, martini tilting in her hand.
Lili cuts through the crowd. The thumping bass melts into a dull roar. Just ahead, Daphne’s head tips back in another burst of laughter, oblivious to the approaching storm. Lili doesn’t wait. She lunges forward and grabs Daphne’s arm.
Daphne jerks back, her mask slipping for a second as their eyes meet. “Lili? What the hell?”
“It was you,” Lili says, voice catching as the truth rushes out. “The messages. The threats. You did this.”
Daphne recoils, the shift small but visible. Confusion? Disbelief? Or something uglier? Her laugh comes too fast. “You’re insane. I would never—”
“Don’t. I traced it. Your device. Your network.”
Lili sees it then: the flicker of panic in Daphne’s eyes.
“You can’t prove it,” Daphne says, a smirk tugging at her lips. She steps in, the movement slow, almost predatory, testing, taunting, daring Lili to bite.
“I don’t have to. I know. Why, Daphne? Why would you do this to me?”
“Do what?! Why would I waste my time on something so—”
“Stop lying!” Lili snaps, her voice splintering, more fury than plea. “Just admit it.”
“You’re paranoid. You actually think—”
“Tell me the truth! Why?!”
Daphne says nothing. Just stares back, eyes giving everything away, or nothing at all.
“Is that all you have to say?!” Lili shouts, the words tearing out.
Daphne draws in a long breath, steadying herself. “Because I was angry, Lili! Okay? Angry for you. For what Casey did. The cheating. The lies. You deserved to know. And if you wouldn’t see it, someone had to make you.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Lili flinches, disgusted and more wounded than she wants to be. “So you cyberbullied me? You stalked me? Tormented me? That’s how you thought you’d help?”
“I thought if I pushed hard enough, you’d finally see Casey for what he is.”
“That’s not what this was about.” Lili catches it, the slightest twitch in Daphne’s composure. A crack in the façade.
“Maybe I was jealous, okay, Lili? Of everything. Your career, your marriage. The perfect life.”
“Perfect? Are you serious? You know better than anyone that Casey and I are far from perfect.”
“You don’t know what it’s like to be alone. To wonder if anyone will ever choose you!”
Lili’s voice drops, quiet now, burdened by what she can’t unknow. “I’ve only ever tried to be a good friend to you, Daphne.”
“A good friend?” Daphne laughs, the sound ragged and too close to breaking. “You cut me off. You abandoned me. Maybe that’s why I did it.”
“So you did it to help me? Or because you resented me? Which is it?”
Before Daphne can answer, she freezes. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him: Casey, pushing through the crowd, rushing to Lili’s side.
Daphne and Casey’s eyes meet. And in one charged moment, she sees everything. Feels everything—his mouth between her legs. Her nails down his back. His voice in her ear, whispering her name…
Casey turns to Lili. Does she see it? The panic in his eyes? Lili just looks away. Turns to Daphne, then draws a shaky breath, searching for some trace of the person she thought she knew.
“I should’ve cut you off the day I met you. We’re done, Daphne Marks.”
Then, Lili grabs Casey’s arm. “Let’s go home.”
Daphne watches them leave, a withering gleam in her eyes, as Casey trails after Lili without so much as a backward glance.
He was never mine. She knows that now. Worse, she always did. But he made her believe. Every wild night. Every stolen hour in daylight. The hiding. The passion. That look in his eyes, like Daphne made him the man he needed to be. And yet, he also made her feel worthless. Like if they weren’t fucking, there was no point to anything. Until he touched her again, and it all started over.
I wasn’t supposed to fall for anyone. And now he’s gone. Following the wife he doesn’t love.
The humiliation hits her. The sting. The burn of being discarded. Daphne’s hands shake. She wants to scream. To break something. To set the whole night on fire. But she just stands there. Staring at the space Lili and Casey left behind.
She stumbles. Catches herself on the table’s edge. Beside her: one of the Weylyn candelabras. Three tall tapers, the flames wavering steadily in the breeze. The silver base gleams as she zeroes in on it. Is that even up to code? The thought barely finishes before she moves. Daphne grips the candelabra. Cold. Heavier than she expected. She lifts it. Holds it. For a second, the weight steadies her.
Then… she lets go.
The candelabra hits the wall with a metallic crack. It crashes to the ground at the foot of the velvet drape.
A snap, then flame surges upward, racing the length of the fabric. The crowd doesn’t register it at first, just the sound. Then the heat. Then the light. Gasps. Shouts. A glass smashes. Someone screams.
Boots turns. Paralyzed for a breath, eyes wide as the chaos explodes around her. Then she’s moving, shouldering past a stool, dropping low behind the bar. Her hand finds the handle. She rips it loose.
The extinguisher hisses to life as Boots barrels through the smoke. Foam sprays in wide arcs, coating the curtain, the floor, a few stunned guests still backing away.
The flames keep climbing. She doesn’t stop. Keeps squeezing the trigger, moving closer, shielding her face from the heat. But finally—
The flames sputter, spit once, then die. Boots lowers the canister, exhaling hard. Her eyes scan the wreckage. The velvet hangs in ruin—soaked, scorched, half-melted onto the floor. Smoke clings to the air before a gust carries it skyward, off into the hills.
Then, the DJ resumes. Music picks back up. The hum of conversation returns. Just like that, the party goes on.
The room sharpens into focus. Boots sees her: Daphne, just a few feet away, still and untouched, like the fire never happened, a strange smile twitching at the corner of her mouth.
“Daphne!”
Boots turns. Sees Leah pushing forward, cutting through guests who’ve already moved on, reaching for Daphne. “What the hell? Are you okay?”
Daphne barely reacts. Her gaze stays fixed on the smoldering drape. “Now they know how I feel,” she murmurs, eyes glazing as she finally looks away.
The scream rips from Boots’s throat: “Are you out of your fucking mind?! You’re done, Daphne. Not just tonight—forever!”
Daphne staggers back. But Boots doesn’t stop. “You’re banned from every event I touch. Every venue. Every client. I’m done trying to save you!”
Leah grabs Daphne’s arm. “Don’t! She didn’t mean—”
Daphne wrenches away with unnecessary force. “Don’t touch me!” Her voice shudders, rage pushed to the point of breaking. She whips around to face them.
“Both of you! You’re the same. Pretending you care. Pretending you’re better than me.” She laughs, short and joyless, a reflex more than anything real. Her gaze sweeps over them, not pleading. Accusing. Daring them to deny it. “You needed me broken so you could feel fixed. If you were ever my friends… you wouldn’t have tried to save me.” She trails off, swallowing whatever softness might have slipped through. “If you were my real friends, you’d have let me burn.”
Then, she bolts, heels clattering as she cuts through the crowd, vanishing before anyone can follow.
“Let her go,” Boots says, catching Leah’s wrist. “She made her choice. You don’t owe her anything.”
Leah doesn’t answer. Just stares after Daphne as she disappears, frozen. Too stunned to speak. The party hums on, oblivious. The smoke has thinned, drifted off, carried like smog over the city. But the air still crackles, sharp with the bitter scent of something only half-extinguished…
Embers, waiting to reignite.