Chapter 9 #2
Landon is at the usual table of Snakes, lounging in his chair so far back that the front legs lift off the wooden floorboards.
His hands are folded at the nape of his neck and though his gaze flickers to the back of James’s head every other heartbeat, he keeps his grins for whatever Asta is animating with her flailing hands and her hard beetroot face, in the middle of a tangent I am guessing is about me or the engagement drama.
“It’s nothing,” I echo and bite into the banana. I need one good food in me after all that fried rubbish. “Just the usual. Dray being Dray.”
The mush is a bit too ripe for my liking. I could go pick out another, but the queue for the buffet is now too long, reaching all the way up the wall to the double doors, and with one glance at it, I decide, fuck that.
Courtney draws in my gaze.
She leans closer over her runny porridge. “Why can’t you just tell your father?”
Something twists inside of me.
The weariness of it sags my shoulders beneath my cardigan.
I’m so tired of explaining it to her.
She just doesn’t get it, because her little section of this world is nothing like mine.
Maybe, if she came from an era hundreds of years ago, she wouldn’t badger me with the same questions. She would just know that there are certain parts of our society that rely on the old ways to maintain alliances, to protect ancient bloodlines, to maintain the power amongst the aristos.
I’m a contract.
I’m a broodmare.
That is my reason for breathing. The future designed for me.
I drop the banana peel to the tray with a sigh.
“If you won’t go to your father, at least tell a master. Surely someone will do something.”
I force a tight smile, but it probably looks more like a grimace. “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
She falls back into her seat, then looks me over. So much disdain in that one look.
But she knows so little.
I glance up at the faculty table.
Eric is there, hunched over the side of his chair, in deep conversation with Master Milton.
He doesn’t even look my way.
Guess we both lost out grips on our backups.
Now, I need another scheme.
But I can hardly think this morning, can hardly focus on more than my full belly and fatigue, and the laughter that booms from Landon.
I watch them, Mildred and Landon and Asta, the first two howling at whatever Asta said—and whatever she said wasn’t meant to be funny.
Her crimson face is cut from glass, and she folds her arms over her slender chest.
“What are your plans for tonight?” I turn back to Courtney. “Want to do something?”
The first official night back at the academy is usually a party night.
Tomorrow, I expect to see a lot of dark circles around bloodshot eyes, and to hear some retching in the bathrooms.
A dubious expression slackens her face. “Study?”
I mumble, “I was thinking more like get wasted.”
Courtney and I have never partied before. Not together, at least. She’s not the type.
So the oddity of the question understandably furrows her brow.
Even James glances up at me, half-crumpled over his soggy cereal and lightly buttered toast.
I spare them each a withering look. “You have any better ideas?”
James lifts his stare to the ceiling. “I should go to bed early. I haven’t been sleeping much.”
I wonder if that’s true—or he’s got plans to hook up with Landon somewhere around the school.
Courtney shakes her head. Doesn’t give me an outright answer or reason not to have fun and let loose for once, or—in my case—fall down a self-destructive hole.
I wipe my hands on a napkin, then push up from the table. “Alright, see you later, then.”
Abandoning the dull twins, I grab my bag and stalk out of the mess hall.
In the atrium, I swivel for the staircase on the right—and falter.
Serena pauses, too.
Her slender hand is delicately rested on the smooth banister, but her silvery eyes are swords striking at me.
“Olivia—” she starts, but before she can speak more than my name, I charge for the steps.
I jump two at a time, passing her in a whirl, and my shout is breathless, “Can’t talk, gotta go!”
Her jaw clicks, slight, almost unnoticeable, and then she’s out of sight.
I keep my rushing pace all the way to the library, and only then do I stop to let my breaths settle.
I don’t know why I ran at the sight of her, why I made the excuse to flee when, in fact, Serena is the best person to go to for a night of partying, of the distraction I crave.
But just seeing her there on the staircase, first time since the ball, the fright lunged through me.
I don’t trust them, any of them, and Serena least of all. She’s more like my brother than I ever knew.
I leave her and the temptation of partying behind, and on my way to the library, I stop off at the bathrooms.
I brush my teeth with what little paste is left in my bag, then wrangle my hair into a ponytail before splashing water on my face.
It’s no shower, but it’s refreshing enough, and I feel that bit better as I head to the krum section of the library.
Those shelves have some good books, little fantasy pockets to fall into, worlds to steal me away from my own.
And if I’m going to be spending most of my nights at Bluestone in my dorm again, then I’ll need good books—and those go fast at the start of the semester.
Given that it’s the first evening back at Bluestone, the library is quiet as I weave around the reading desks.
The air is thick with a soft silence that’s broken only by a faint cough somewhere above, on the aisles that stretch along the balcony.
I see no one but the librarian as I scurry past the study desks. His narrowed eyes lift to me for only a moment before he returns to reading the newspaper.
I reach the stairs before the heels of my loafers are thudding on the wooden steps all the way up to the second floor.
The balcony wraps around the lower level, but the shelves are narrower and windier, and every time I go through them for the krum section, I find it that bit harder to breathe.
Maybe it’s all the times Dray locked me in closets that’s made me somewhat claustrophobic, or just that the second floor of the library is a maze.
Could just be the dust.
I stifle my breaths as I march through the aisles until I find the unpolished brass sign bolted to the wall.
‘KRUM FANTASY’
I veer right into the nook, squared sections cosied with little glow lanterns and reading tables. It’s in the third squared nook that I find the best section.
The shelves are full.
If I had waited until tomorrow, or after classes are done for the day instead of rushing up here on my lunch break, then I doubt there would be so many books left.
I have to compete with the made ones.
Even still, I have read a lot of these already.
So—once I toss my bag onto a reading table—it takes me a while of wandering the shelves, running my fingers down dusty spines, reading blurbs on the backs of the books, before I have a small stack of just three hugged to my chest.
My neck is craned as I eye the top shelf full of colourful spines and glittering letters.
An especially thick spine catches my attention—and though I have no idea what it’s about, I know it’ll keep me busy for a week.
My loafers crease as I push up on my toes and reach out my free hand for the book.
The sleeve of my cardigan slips back, revealing the soft white of my shirt’s cuff.
I reach higher, pushing myself taller, and my fingertips just graze the spine when I feel it—
My breath bolts to my chest.
I freeze.
Because the faintest breath rustles my frazzled ponytail, sending chills down my spine.
And not a heartbeat after, a sunkissed hand grazes over mine.
Goosebumps erupt over my arm.
I’m stiff against the intrusion, watching the hand pass over mine, then the fingers grip the spine of the book.
I recognise not the hand, but the ring on its pinkie finger, the platinum band with the crest of the Sinclairs.
My heart skips in my chest.
The hand slides the book off the shelf, and it disappears behind me.
A breath loosens from my circled lips, a steadying exhale, before I shut my eyes.
I scramble for the patience, the courage, the mask I must wear—
And I turn around.
Dray hasn’t moved an inch away from me.
His proximity forces my back against the shelves.
I look at him from beneath my lashes.
And his stare is equally unkind.
The frosty blue of his eyes is sharper than shavings of diamonds and glass.
Sometimes, there is a hollowness in his stare, like the only thing behind those eyes is a sharp mind, calculation, manipulation—but no feeling.
That hollowness is there now.
“So close to graduation,” he drawls, “yet you’re picking out fiction. No wonder your grades only ever decline.”
I snatch the book from his loose grip. “My grades are not your concern.”
The quirk of his mouth is faint, a quick tug at the corner, then it’s gone.
I shove by him to the reading table by the window and drop the stack of books.
His voice follows me, “One might expect you would apply more effort in your final semester.” His tone is dull, as though none of it actually interests him. “A last-minute grab for improvement.”
I toss open the flap of my ivory backpack. The leather is silky to the touch.
It was one of the many gifts I tore through in my bedchamber, and I didn’t take note of who sent what.
Amateur mistake. New money behaviour.
That’s a faux pas waiting to happen.
“Your newly discovered concern for me is unwanted.” I dig into the bag, carving out as wide a slot for the books as I can, but it only stretches out so far. “Besides, I get by just fine.”
He knows otherwise.
My grades must have been in my file, part of my application to be his future bride.
My mouth curls.
The soft padding sound of his oxfords on the rug approaches. “You get by so fine that you were disinvited to New Year. I can truly say, hand on my heart—”
What heart?
“—I have never heard of that happening before.”
I throw a dark look over my shoulder at him, then flip the satchel flap over.