Chapter 8
The slanted roofs of the village are caked in snow.
In the misty air, paths are packed with white dust, and the drizzle is ice nipping at my cheeks.
Winter has been harsh enough at home. I don’t relish in my fate of a cold, unforgiving semester in the alps.
I throw a look over my shoulder, moody and put out.
Down the path, the veil shudders at the clasp of the town, a steady stream of students piling out onto the snow-coated cobblestone.
The inkling tickles—the urge to turn on my heels and make a run for it, to barrel into the veil, past the security guard, and race through the streets of Edinburgh.
Don’t think that would go down too well for me, though. It’s been just moments since I came through the veil, so I would probably run right into Mr Younge on the other side—and I’m already in enough trouble as it is.
The huff that deflates me is too soft to hear. It fogs at my face.
Bluestone used to be the obstacle in my life. I wished for my graduation day to come, because it meant the end. It meant freedom.
I would leave the academy, marry some faceless aristos, out of Dray’s path.
Worst case, I would be unmarried and stay at Elcott Abbey, live out the rest of my life there, but still be out of Dray’s reach—because once we entered that next phase of life, of marriage and responsibilities, it would all change.
Now, the path ahead of me is shrouded in the same fog that’s settled over VeVille.
I can’t trust anyone. Not my mother, my father, not the brother walking up the path beside me.
I trust him even less now that, after I smacked a cake down on his face hard enough that he bled, he has stuck beside me since we came through the veil.
I always thought Oliver would let me stay as the spinster sister at Elcott if it came down to it.
I see him better now.
And, as I eye him over, checking his watch, his pace matching mine up the trail, I wonder if he would send me off to live out my spinster life at Nonna’s—or worse, Grandmother Ethel’s—just so he doesn’t have the burden of my presence.
That’s more than spinsterhood.
That’s banishment.
Banishment from the society we’re raised in.
I love Nonna, but to be packed off to live with her means to live on a small allowance with the gentry. It means to live a gentry life.
It’s demotion.
And Grandmother Ethel…
I shudder to think of a life in her home.
I’m nudged out of my spiralling terror as Oliver’s shoulder bumps into mine. “No fantasies of fleeing will help you,” he says, soft.
The frown I swerve up at him isn’t kind. I snap, “What?”
His head dips, a slight gesture to the pentacle firm in my grip. My knuckles are blotching, paling, and I only now realise I’m still holding it.
The huff puffs at my face.
I stuff the pentacle into my pocket.
Oliver keeps my pace.
His steps are synced with mine up the incline of the hill, the path slushing under our steps.
Every semester, we come through the veil together. I step through first, then he follows, but he is always quick to overtake me on the path and disappear ahead, away to find another Snake, or to simply be anywhere that I’m not.
But here he is, still beside me.
I expect him to splinter off when we reach the queue forming in the mist ahead. Since it’s early, the queue hasn’t formed downhill just yet, and the incline slows us.
I fish my ivory leather gloves out from the deep pocket of my sable fur coat. Finger by finger, I slip them on. The leather shields the damp from reaching my skin, but the cashmere interiors are buttery clouds gliding over me.
The faint early gathering of students is starting to clear through the mist.
The closer we get, the more annoyed I am at Oliver’s presence, until I loosen a harsh breath and throw him a dark look. “What are you still doing here? Don’t you generally disappear around this time?”
Oliver side-glances at me. “Word hasn’t gotten out yet about the engagement—not more than a few whispers among the aristos.”
My face twists, unkind. “So?”
“Landon and Serena know.” His voice is low, gravelled, like he’s sharing secrets with me in the fog. “Asta suspects, but no one else knows yet. And they won’t, not until Dray formally announces it. You have time on your side.”
I draw the sable-fur hood over my head. “Word will get out, and you know it. Just like it did with Landon, just like it did with Serena.”
Oliver’s mouth moves with a subdued murmur, “I confided in Serena. Landon hears more than he should. And yes, whispers will spread, if they haven’t already, but as long as Dray believes you are still in the dark, you should go on as normal, as though nothing has changed—”
“That’s why you’re still walking with me?” The force of shoving my fists into my pockets is violent. “To ask me to be everyone’s target again?”
Oliver considers me out the corner of his eye. “You’re underestimating Dray’s influence.”
A bitter scoff catches in the back of my throat.
His influence.
What a laugh.
Dray is just a beast marking its territory.
“Mildred,” Oliver says, and he says it so simply, so purposefully, that I think he expects me to just get whatever he’s saying.
I don’t.
I flail a hand trapped in my pocket. A gesture that says, ‘what about her?’ in not the politest of ways.
If I had a lamington…
Oliver’s cheek is turned to me, blushed and burnt from the cold already.
“Before everyone realised you’d left the academy early, Mildred got some itching powder from the village.
She was bragging about her plans to sprinkle it in your underwear, in your socks, sheets, hairbrush…
everywhere.” He shrugs. “Dray warned her off.”
A blank look settles on my face for a heartbeat, then, “Warned her? How?”
“He told her not to,” he answers, and the ease of the words, the explanation, the tone, itches me with the urge to push him over. “He just said no.”
I stumble over an uneven cobblestone, arched under the snow.
“Wow, what an impressive tale,” I say. “I’m so grateful you told me the adventures of his heroism—how could I have lived without knowing such valour?”
Impatience is a sharp glint in the gaze he cuts to me. His jaw tightens for a beat. “It’s how he said it—in a way that implied he would ruin her entire family empire if she went against him.”
“Oh, so classic Dray, then.”
His mouth curves. “Classic Dray, yes.”
A heartbeat passes before I loosen the weight pulling down on me. “He’s determined. It’s almost not worth the bother to take down a winery.”
That’s all the Green empire is.
Vineyards and wine production.
Good enough business that the Greens are gentry—but it is just wine.
Oliver lingers a patient consideration over me, as patient as we must be for the long hike up the cobblestone, made longer by our early arrival. Less students this early, that means a smaller queue to form at the gondola line.
And that means tackling the hike in one go.
“Dray’s already acting like I’m his property,” I say. “He’s blocking Mildred and even Grandmother Ethel.”
We split around a tall, black lamppost.
Landon’s words rattle around in my skull.
Property.
Possession.
Territory.
Dray hasn’t blocked Mildred’s attacks on me out of the goodness of his heart.
This isn’t romance, it’s not love—not regret or protection.
This is the don’t touch my stuff sort of thing.
He was always like that.
Even when we were children, young, silly, na?ve—and in no way prepared for this bitter future, Dray never let anyone play with his things.
Except me.
But that’s because I would throw screaming, shrieking, flailing, sobbing fits if he tried to take anything away from me, and chances were I would bite someone in the tantrum, often Dray himself.
That’s all that worked for me.
I learned fast in my youth that that was how I was going to get my way.
Dray learned faster that it was easier to not trigger the tantrums in the first place.
It was all so different then.
But then there were days that echoed our futures.
Like the day Landon didn’t want to play with us.
I don’t remember why.
I do remember that for the most part, he was up on the terrace of Thornbury Park, overlooking the gardens, and the rest of us were down in the hedge maze.
Sometime later, when we finally emerged, Landon was by the pond—and he was playing with Dray’s brand-new electric boats.
They were toys, of sorts. But like drones are today.
Those little remote-controlled boats weren’t toys for sticky fingers or heavy hands.
Dray paused on the path, like he flinched into motionlessness, and he blinked stupidly at Landon just smacking the toy boat, worth thousands, along the sludgy grass, over and over.
Something in him just snapped.
Dray drowned Landon in the pond.
Literally.
Dray held Landon’s head underwater until his arms went limp and the bubbles stopped churning to the surface.
The memory is an echo of fresh spring flowers and grass flooding my senses, blended with the shouts of Serena and Asta calling for our parents on the terrace.
I didn’t shout for help.
I stood there on the path, looking at the broken shards of the small toy boats. Ruined. Fragmented and shattered and crushed in the scuffle.
Oliver stood with me, his fingers threaded through mine, as if to stop me from leaving his side.
He watched the life leave Landon’s body, watched Dray pin his head down in the water—until the adults were running by us for the pond.
Landon was dead.
I remember the grunts of his father desperately performing CPR on his lifeless body.
As he did, Dray trampled over the broken boats as he made his way back to us, to me and Oliver still standing on the path.
Oliver’s hand tightened on mine.
I’ll always remember that.
And now, I understand—I am a toy boat.
And only Dray is allowed to break me.
I run my gloved hands down my face.
The raw tingle of my cheeks is itchy, so I wipe at them a few times, and let my mind shift to promises of a scalding bath and a bucket load of moisturiser.
Another thing about the alps.