Now he was stepping closer to Poppy. His hand, which had been resting on her neck, slid into her hair, and Belle recognized that move. She’d memorized it. Every time his fingers had tangled in her hair, she’d felt a pull deep inside her, drawing her to him.

“I broke things off this afternoon,” he said, and another memory flashed in her mind, of Raven, standing in her bedroom.

Raven, telling her goodbye.

Yes, he’d broken up with her. That much was true. But he’d only done it because he was going away to boarding school! He could be gone for years, and he couldn’t ask her to wait for him. That’s what he’d said, and then he’d kissed her so sweetly.

And Belle had come up with her plan.

She shivered as the wind picked up, slipping under the folds of her jacket. Right now she was supposed to be crawling over him. Teasing him with kisses. Touching him until he gasped. Instead, she watched her best friend whisper, “Why did you break up with her? Is it because you’re leaving? And you don’t know when you’re coming back?”

Yes, Belle thought, but Raven shook his head.

“I told her that was why. But…” He swallowed, looking behind him. It was like he knew she was there. Could he feel her, like she could always feel him, whether she was in his bed or her own? At home or at school? In the orchard or in this garden, where they’d kissed a hundred times? “My feelings changed,” he said finally, and Belle’s gaze shifted to the thorns covering the rosebushes. She could strip naked and walk through those thorns, and they wouldn’t hurt her as badly as these words.

They wouldn’t cut her as deeply as this betrayal.

Raven leaned in and whispered in Poppy’s ear. Poppy shuddered and… sank into him. That was how it looked, as if Raven were the undertow, and she was happily drowning in him.

Belle was drowning too. As Raven brought his lips to someone else’s mouth, Belle’s heart tumbled into the rosebushes. It brushed against crimson petals and sharp thorns, landing in the dirt.

She left it there to wither.

And she turned away from Raven and Poppy, fingers rising to the flowers in her hair. Belladonna, as beautiful as it was poisonous. Once, she’d planned to use those flowers to kill Evelyn Holloway. But that plan was much too small. Too obvious.

Too merciful.

Maybe it would take weeks. Months. Years. But someday, Belle would come up with a plan so brutal, it wouldn’t steal the breath from Raven’s lungs. It wouldn’t poison Poppy’s veins. Oh no, they were going to live through all of it. The pain. The ruination. And by the time Belle was through with them, those two would wish for death.