Chapter 16
For the whole first week back at Bluestone, I have stuck to a specific schedule.
The last class of the day, evening or night depending on the class, has me high-tailing it to the mess hall, grabbing food to go, then either spending the rest of my time in bed or in study hall.
It’s my way of avoiding all the new friendships I’ve acquired, avoiding Dray, and avoiding a certain aspirer.
I only manage some of those avoidances on Friday night.
A lot of assignments are due this weekend, so study hall is packed. The hall is narrow, as though it has been stretched through the academy, then filled with two never-ending mahogany tables.
There’s barely a seat left empty.
I’m perched on the edge of the unmoveable bench to read over the mess of notebooks, textbooks, and spilled ink smears.
I slouch over my herbalism assignment, so slouched that my chin rests on my flattened palm, and I’m draped over the table’s edge.
But some people—the Snakes among them—have lost interest in their studies. That, or they finished way before the rest of us.
Either way, they’re a nuisance.
Just up the table from us, a crowd has gathered around a game of cards, and every other minute they break out into cheers.
They just won’t shut up.
I have half a mind to pelt my coffee mug at them. But I’m not suicidal, so I settle on heavy, lingering glowers and the occasional huff.
Oliver catches my glowers a few times, but he just carries on. Teddy leans over him, hand on his shoulder, and eggs Landon on—to bet more.
He does.
Throws down a gold bracelet.
So much for our chat in the gardens of the palace. Moron.
Tugging at a loose strand of hair that’s fallen from my messy bun, I let the pencil slip from my grip onto my half-written essay, utter rambling garbage that attempts to argue why Deadly Nightshade is a less effective amnesic property than Water Hemlock.
Something I really don’t give a damn about, because I’m not a herb witch.
I’m hardly even a witch at all, and I doubt I will ever be in the market for a plant that causes amnesia.
A sudden eruption of laughter jolts me.
I bury my face in the nook of my crossed arm.
A groan rumbles through me.
I feel it. The peeling strands of civility deserting me. I feel my mood souring, the tension stringing to my bones, the gritted set of my teeth.
I push up from the table’s edge and plant my elbows down instead.
My face fast buries into my hands.
“Are you stuck?” Courtney asks.
I spread my fingers and glower at her.
She doesn’t notice, not as she reaches across the table for my half-assed essay. She steals it to her side and starts to skim it.
Another rise of raucous laugher booms around me, clanging my bones.
I throw a wild glare at Landon as he pounds his fist on the table.
His pink face is twisted with laughter, and whatever he finds so fucking hilarious, it’s at Mildred’s expense.
Her face is an ugly shade of purple, of the rage I have seen on her so many times, often directed at me.
She picks up three playing cards from the middle pile, then tosses a ring onto the pile of gold and silver and diamonds in the centre of the game.
My glare holds from beneath my lashes.
I turn it on my brother.
Teddy has shifted to squeeze in beside him and Piper on the bench.
Now, Oliver has one arm thrown around Serena’s slender shoulders, but his other hand is clasped tightly around bending playing cards, three of them all up, and the tension of the game has his jaw working.
“It’s an interesting stance,” Courtney says and hands me the essay.
I eye her for a moment. “You don’t agree?”
In answer, she gives a one-shouldered shrug.
The thin, translucent paper crimps in my grip.
I toss it to the table.
Courtney thins her lips before she says, “Belladonna’s amnesic properties are stronger. That is a fact.”
The look I spare her is withering. “But Water Hemlock has longer amnesic side-effects. It can be lifelong.”
“Only due to the lethal amount required for Belladonna,” she mutters.
“Yeah, so Water Hemlock is better for amnesia, and Deadly Nightshade is better for killing,” I snap.
Courtney rolls her tongue around the inside of her cheeks.
I smooth out the crumpled paper, then snatch my pencil into my grip. I’ve not even touched lead to paper when the next shout erupts from the Snakes—
I flinch before I throw yet another glare down at them. But I only glimpse Mildred snatching up another few cards from the pile before the glint of diamonds catches my attention.
At first, I think it’s another bet about to be thrown onto the pile. But it’s diamond eyes—and they are staring right at me.
Dray hasn’t seen much of me since our deal was struck in the library. And now that I think about it, libraries seem to be our place of bargaining.
But this, now, is the first time I’ve been in his presence longer than a few seconds in passing, or when I’ve wedged myself into a chair far from him in class.
There’s a softness in his eyes. Something faraway, distant thoughts, a mind gone from the game going on around him.
He holds my gaze, and everything else just starts to slip away.
A heartbeat pulses through me.
The noise of the study hall is muted, an echo, and I only hear my own blood pulsing through my body.
Dray’s black sweater is crumpled over the crisp white of his shirt. His tie is tugged loose, but not undone, and his hair is ruffled.
By the look of him, I suspect there to be a flask being passed around under that table.
A sleek black playing card is pinched between his fingers. He runs the pad of his thumb along the edge, that absentminded thing he does when he’s not particularly volatile towards me.
But he does watch me.
Considers me.
And it’s an effort to wrench my gaze from his.
I only manage to look away when the firmness of a finger presses into my shoulder.
I flinch and swerve around.
Behind me, a small student, maybe a second or a third year, lurks. His frown flickers over me before he extends the thick folded parchment pinched between his fingers.
I snatch it and watch him leave without a word.
Once he’s out of sight, and there are no prying eyes around, I bring the note closer and unfold it.
‘The burnt science lab.’
A frown digs into my face.
Maybe from one of the masters who’ve realised that I’ve been slacking off more than usual.
But then, it would be signed if it was from a master.
Oh.
Eric.
There’s no doubt that it’s him as I scan the faces in study hall and see that he’s not among them.
With a huff, I stuff the parchment into my cardigan pocket, then start shovelling my books and loose papers into the backpack.
“You’re not finished,” Courtney says, looking up from her own essay, already on the fourth page.
Six pages is required, handwritten.
I’m only two pages in.
The lie comes smooth as I hoist the bag strap over my shoulder. “I have a phone call.”
Ignoring the burn of Dray’s gaze itching at my cheek, I clammer off the bench and stalk out of study hall.
My steps move swift up staircases, down corridors, taking sharp corners—not because I’m in anyway excited to see Eric or talk about whatever tangled mess was once between us, but just to get it over with.
That purpose keeps my pace all the way to the science lab with the black door, as charred as the room beyond it.
Every time the rooms down this corridor are repaired, another fire breaks out in class, so it feels like it’s just always in this burnt state.
I flatten my hand on the charred wood. The promise of splinters scratches at my palm as I push the door open.
The hinges creak as I slip inside.
And I spot Eric immediately.
He leans on the ledge of the long, frosted window, one of three that line the left wall.
The faint lights of the old bulbs on the ceiling are in dire need of changing—and he looks just as fatigued as those bulbs.
The week’s exhaustion has him running his fingers through his tousled chestnut hair, his lashes low over honey eyes.
He’s slumped on the windowsill, his spine digging into the frame, and it must hurt—but he’s so weathered that he doesn’t seem to care.
He looks up as the door creaks shut behind me.
I unhook the strap from my arm, then toss aside my bag. It thuds onto the desk on my right.
The soft honey of his gaze follows the bag for a beat, then he blinks and returns his gaze to mine.
For a moment, we just consider each other, our new places on a chessboard, our new roles, pawns and knights moved, queens replaced, kings protected.
Between us, dust has gathered over blackened desks and cracked beakers. A grey smear of spiderwebs collects between the legs of fallen chairs.
It all thickens the silence that’s settled in our locked stares.
Neither of us wears kindness in our gazes.
He wears fatigue, and I consider him with a distance that, just six months ago, was warmth and flustered attraction.
Now, I don’t see what I saw back then.
Now, I have no use for the mask I once wore for him.
“I thought you were ignoring me,” I start for him and—coming around the corner of a metal table—stop to fold my arms over my chest. “Do you make a habit of snubbing women after you’ve had your way with them?”
Eric’s faint frown is slow to knit between his brows. “You don’t know,” he decides after a long moment.
I arch a brow. “Know that you’re with Asta? Yes, I figured that out when you attended the ball with her—and without a heads up. Charming.”
Eric’s mouth tilts. “I wrote you. I wrote you when your father officially declined my offer—and to apologise for not speaking to you at the ball.”
My jaw tightens.
For a beat, I marinate in his words—then loosen a curt huff.
I’m not surprised.
I did suspect that my mail was being sorted through, that unfavourable communication was being blocked before it could reach me.
But he also just admitted to writing me after the ball, after he attended it with Asta, not that he wrote to warn me and apologise in advance.