Chapter 13
Snow clings to my gloves, a lacing of frost along the grooves of my fingers.
I swipe at them, the scent of hot chocolates and coffee thick in the air, blending in with the layers of burning firewood.
Laughter slides along the wooden walls of the grand parlour, and every corner hums with soft chatter, so much so that it lifts my frown and turns it about the room, from the nooks by the windows to the curtained alcoves.
A lot of people around, too many for just after noon on a Saturday. Most of them should be down at VeVille or on the slopes or at a game.
But it looks like the bulk of the seniors stuck around today.
The amber that glows from the fireplaces washes over the deep brown hues of the couches, where seniors are draped and lounged, crystal tumblers clink with ice and slosh with booze, like all the rules are out the window now that the final semester is here.
I side-step Piper who, as I make to pass, leans back in the claw-footed armchair to swipe out at me.
“Join us,” she croons, and the stink of cheap booze radiates from her. “We’re playing UNO.”
I start the forced smoothed look, the polite rejection of her darling offer, but then my brain and eyes catch up.
The colourful cards spread around the table.
She really is playing UNO.
Not a game often seen around the grand parlour. But there are about two dozen cards stacked in her hand, while across from her, Eric holds just two.
My eyes narrow on him.
He makes no effort to pretend, to smile, to welcome me or invite me into their game. Guess it serves no benefit for him this time around.
But his thumb is flat against one of the cards, and after a beat, he slides it out.
I watch it, the lowering of the card to the pile and, as Teddy holds out a bottle of cinnamon flavoured whisky, sloshing it around in an offer to me, Eric plants the card down.
The moment it happens, I jump on it.
I aim a smarmy look his way. “He didn’t say UNO.”
The rise of booming outrage and laughter and shrieking flinches me.
Teddy hollers and points Eric’s way.
Piper shrieks and shouts for him to pick another card.
Sara Horvat almost falls out of her seat.
It gives me a moment of satisfaction—and the opportunity to flee before Piper can drag me into the game.
I walk right into a blockade.
The queue for the coffee station. The machine whirs too loud, a screech that’s only welcome in the morning, not when the grand parlour is already too full, too loud, and I have to turn my body sideways to inch between Dragana and Mikhail Ivanov, a fallen gentry with unkempt stubble on his narrow chin and brows so bushy it always looks like he’s scowling.
I edge out on the other side of the queue, but I reel back as a paper plane goes zipping right by the tip of my nose. The huff barely releases from me before a swarm of snow-suited students come spilling out of the door to the girls’ dorms.
The breath that grates me is unkind, impatient, and I step aside to let them pass. Not like I can shoulder my way through all six of them.
With my back pressed against the spine of a couch, I turn my gaze around the curtained length of the room—and I find Dray.
At the round, felted table, he reclines in his chair. Behind him, the row of three stained glass windows rises up, moody and dark.
But Dray isn’t interested in the windows.
His focus is on the poker game.
Cards are fanned out in one hand, and there’s a stack of black poker chips on the table that he idly fingers.
Snakes orbit him.
Gleaming in silvery silk, Asta sits beside him, her own cards face-down in front of her.
On the chair next to her, Serena’s nude nails glint like pearls as she picks at her pile of chips—but her cards are folded, too.
I lean around the tail of the coffee queue, and just around the velvet curtain, on the chair directly opposite Dray, sits my evil twin.
He hasn’t folded.
Oliver faces off with Dray.
A row of cards is face-up in the centre of the table, a small stack of black chips to the right.
Then Dray’s eyes shift to me, pale as winter ice. They catch the firelight and hold it, unblinking.
It pins me.
There’s no smile, no greeting—just that silent stare that prickles my skin.
I don’t know how long it pins me, but the locked stare is broken when Landon shoves through the coffee queue.
He’s moving for me, words on his tongue, about to fall from his parted lips. But then his gaze shifts to the poker game—and snags.
Landon tilts his weight away from me, closer to the poker table, the lure too quick to grab him.
The deal strikes through me, and I catch his wrist in my gloved grip.
He startles, eyes flashing down at me.
For a heartbeat, his face hardens, his pride rising like a swell over calm waters—
And before I can say anything, or decide to not help him at all and just let him go chasing his own demise, the door of the grand parlour bursts open so violently that it sounds like it’s been booted.
The door strikes the wall and shudders the whole room.
Voices silence.
Heads turn.
For a moment, all that can be heard are the fires crackling in the hearths—but then the bootsteps come, pounding down on the floorboards like hammers.
The coffee queue is in my way, and I can’t see through it to whoever is storming through the grand parlour, but I know.
I know it’s her.
My heart slingshots before the name even settles in my mind, before the realisation can fully register.
Mildred.
The fright jolts through me, rushes in through my flared nostrils, and I stagger back.
The spine of the hard sofa digs into me.
Landon whips around and looks over the heads of the students in the way.
His gaze lands on something—her head, her face, I don’t know, but his jaw tenses, tight.
“Go.”
That’s all he says—and I don’t need telling twice.
I shove myself from the couch, smacking into the back of a junior that I shove aside, and the moment the coast is clear, a cluster of four witches come out of the doorway from the girls’ dorms.
The swell of their entrance pushes me back a step—and that gives Mildred the time to catch up.
Her hands smack into my shoulder blades with enough force to throw me into the cluster.
The girls shriek with the impact, and a head knocks off mine before I stagger upright.
I whip around, a lump trapped in my throat.
The room quietens.
Games pause, conversations halt, until all I can hear are the fireplaces crackling, the rustle of clothes as people shift to get a better look, and my own heart thumping in my ears.
Mildred’s face is blotchy from the cold, her braid coming undone, her cheeks bright and furious. She’s panting, as though she’s run all the way up the slopes after us.
My pulse spikes.
But for a long while, she fights her heaving breaths, that rage billowing through her, and just stares at me with those unhinged eyes.
I expect a hit. A fist to curve through the air and collide somewhere on my skull, my nose, my mouth, my temple, anywhere.
But no punch comes.
Mildred’s fists are balls at her sides, knuckles white, but the wild glare she slides to the poker table tells me all I need to know.
She’s holding back—because those are the rules now.
And Dray is watching.
The cards are gone from his grip, the sleeve of his sweater shifting over his wrist as he flattens his hand on the felt table and slowly pushes himself up from the chair.
Oliver mirrors him.
Out the corner of my eye, they step out of the curtained pocket of the room.
The fires crackle.
Someone breathes too loud, raspy, like they are recovering from a cold. Another sucks on a hard sweet, like a boiled butterscotch drop, and I hear it clatter against teeth.
But my pulse is an underwater thumping in my ears, because Mildred hasn’t backed down yet.
Her wild stare swerves back to me, her legs tense and stance rigid.
Even with Landon inched up behind her, as if ready to grab her if he needs to, I don’t feel all that safe.
I wait for her next move.
I consider her as sharply as she does me.
It’s a fucking stand-off.
Until Mildred makes her move.
And it’s all words.
Not her strong suit.
“They’ve taken you in and you think that changes things?” Her cheeks flush hot. “It doesn’t change what you are. You’re still a fucking waif. Even with your new friends who still hate your fucking guts, you are nothing.” Her thin lips curl. “You will always be nothing.”
Mildred fucked up.
She was always better at violence than insults.
My smile is patient. “If I’m nothing, explain why you’re so obsessed with me.”
Mildred’s eyes flash.
She takes a solid step forward, and right behind her, Landon copies it, that step closer to her.
“Really, Mildred.” I cock my head. “Of all the seniors in this room, you are the only gentry who has made it the whole purpose of her existence to live for me.” That smile darkens on my face, just like the ugliness of hers stirs into a snarling look.
“When you go to sleep at night, do you drift off to the dreams of being me—or being with me?”
The silence that follows is absolute.
It hangs over us for a heartbeat, two heartbeats, three heartbeats.
I swear, not even the fires crackle or the coffee machine whirs, nothing but thick, tense silence.
Then a scoff in the background.
Another quick to follow.
A snigger hidden behind a hand.
Then Serena’s perfect laugh escapes the alcove, and it triggers the rest of the laughter through the parlour.
There’s victory on my face, in my slick smile, but my insides are running cold as I watch Mildred turn into the darkest, deepest shade of purple I’ve ever seen.
Cutting through the booming laughs, Eric’s shout is strained, “That’s enough! Mildred, get ba—”
It’s all he manages to say before a gasp cuts through the room—because Mildred lunges at me.
The cry splits me.
I throw my hands up to protect my face.
The cluster of students at my back suddenly scrambles. I stagger back into an empty doorway, a fucking brick wall flying through the air right at me.
But so much happens in that one split second.