BREAKING NEWS: heiress Chastity Queen who had died along with her brother and lover, Seren Jones, scandalously five years ago is alive, having survived on an island for the past five years.
Beauty, splendor and the slanderously rich. It’s the world Chastity lives in, and she fit into it frictionlessly, a fish in water, a bird in air. There’s still a part of her that falls in love with the glimmer of dresses and the swell of music in the ballroom. Chastity loves a move well played, loves the thrill of power that sets her lips into a carefully arranged smirk. It’s a word of crisp suits and pretty dresses, and well, Chastity likes a man in a suit. She just doesn’t like the feeling of blood curdling in the air as an innocuous word leaves an innocent man’s mouth. It’s more than that though, more than what she likes and what she doesn’t. She owes her brother that much.
There’s an ache in her throat, and Chastity remembers.
(
There’s an ache in her throat, and Chastity forgets. She doesn’t know what day it is, doesn’t – oh, hell, she just doesn’t know. Her dress, a bitter red sticky with sea salt, plasters on her skin, and all she can feel is guilt and tiredness. She might not feel much, but she thinks a lot, and now she’s thinking of a girl with hair like sunshine, kissing her as the sea rocks the boat.
She killed her. She killed Seren Jones.
“Chastity,” Damion reaches out to squeeze her hand, eyes on hers. He’s groping for something behind her, and there’s a sad smile on his face. Then, before she could breathe, before she could think, there’s a gun shot crackling through the air, and the thud of a head against the boat. She gasps, and then she screams, voice bleeding and raw.
“You killed Hook,” she gestures haplessly at the blonde man next to them, the only other survivor. Kyle Lowry-Hook.
“Survive,” Damion’s fierce suddenly, and his hands are in hers. He’s yelling at her, and all she can do is sob and nod. “Fucking survive for me. Make them…” He doesn’t finish his words, and then he’s dead too, limp with his hands still curled into hers. She’s crying and shaking, but she knows what she’ll do. Chastity would survive, and she would make them – she would make them pay.
)
“Are they here yet? My family?” She asks the male nurse. It’s kind of funny that he’s the only male nurse there, and she’s been entertaining herself for the past few days by watching him be uncomfortable and awkward. She flirts with him a little, but she’s almost sure he has a thing for the pretty French nurse in the maternity ward. They always share these little smiles and drop things around each other.
Nurse Attaway nods. “They’ll be right up.” It’ll be the last time she’ll be seeing him, so she shouts something at him as he leaves the room.
“Get some!” He turns a fantastic shade of red, and Chastity almost feels normal again.
Like he says, in moments she sees her family again. She’s thankful the hospital robe hides the scars and ink cut into her skin, and that they see nothing but her. She doesn’t know how much she can handle.
“Alice,” she hugs her stepmother at once. The blonde was still far too young for her father who had died long ago, and she’s more of a sister than anything. “Back from the dead.”
Alice Fairchild Queen musters a tired smile, tossing her hair back. “If you ever do that again,” she wiggles a manicured hand at her. “I swear to God -”
Alice is drowned out by Chastity’s godsister who’s tackling her, wrapping her in a tight hug. “Chas,” Ariel’s smiling, freckles sticking out and bright red hair everywhere. Her eyes are a little pink too, but Chastity doesn’t point it out. “How are ya?” She updates Chastity with gossip, finishing with, “I’m a biology major – you know, the things we did for science.” She winks at Chastity.
“Brilliant, really,” she flashes her sister a charming smile. It comes as naturally as it did five years ago. “Are you two signing me out?”
“Yes,” Alice says with a firm nod. It must have been Alice keeping the Queen Consolidated afloat the past few years, and she knows that while Alice would want her to step up and take her mantle, it wasn’t something she could do. That’s for later though. “This place is kind of boring.”
No. Bloody. Kidding.
xoxo
Chastity knows that life had gone on without her, but she didn’t expect did. She stares up, aghast, and then turns back furiously at her stepmother. “You remarried?” Alice hadn’t even done that when her father died all those years ago.
Alice arches an eyebrow. “What? He’s hot.” Then pushing a hand through her hair, not guilty but understanding, she continues, “I fell in love again.”
She whispers, staring up at the bloke leaning on the bannister. In his late thirties, she suspects. Five years older than Alice who was six years older than Chastity, she would later find out. “He’s a hippie. I remember Rocky Walker. He was a hippie. You married a hippie.”
Alice sighs. “He’s a respectable business owner now, and the Walker contributions to our family business is more than -”
Chastity cuts in with a swear word. She knows what Alice is saying, that Rocky Walker is necessary. She can tell from the soft warmth in the blonde’s eyes that she genuinely likes the man with an over ethusiastic smile and the hair brushed back the wrong way. Still. “What about Beckett?” She harshly whispers, referring to the affair the woman had five years ago.
Alice’s face tightens, ice glistening in her eyes. “Dead.”
She steps back. “No.”
Alice is stoic as she speaks, still in a whisper, ascending the stairs. “Beckett Merlyn died in Knockturn three years ago. A shooting.” She reaches her husband, laces her arm through his. “This is my husband, Rocky. Rocky, this is my stepdaughter, Chastity.” A perfect glossed smile.
“A pleasure,” Chastity smiles up, trying to hide her heart thundering in her ears. Emrys and Emlyn, the twins and her closest and dearest friends – lost their mother. Will, their father, had lost his wife, Beckett. She knows it wasn’t a marriage of love, not when both of their hearts belonged to another, but it fucking hurts all the same. Life really had gone on without her.
“Hey, bae,” he’s casual, smiling at her. When she tries to shake his hand, he highfives it. It’s awkward and fumbling, and Rocky Walker has the most stupid look on his face, but Chastity laughs anyways. “If you ever,” he fidgets, “need anything. Ya know.”
“Thanks,” she nods.
Ariel shoots her a sympathetic look. “Emrys is coming over tomorrow.”
She releases a breath. “It’ll be nice to see him.”
“Yeah,” Ariel agrees promptly.
Later, Ariel takes Chastity to her grave. She whitens when she sees her name engraved on her stone, too early, too much. She isn’t dead, and the stone says she is. Then her eyes shift over to her brother’s, and her fists clench. She would make them pay.
First, she has to come back to life. Legally.
chaste euphemisms 