Chapter 14 #3
“Information for information.” Asta arrives at her own motive. “I revealed something to you—now I need you to reveal a truth to me.”
I fight the smile from snaking onto my face.
I school myself, keeping my mask on, as I turn to look at her—the desperation in her eyes, but a face of glass.
Asta fucked up.
In so many ways, she sabotaged herself.
First of all, she should have offered the deal before giving out information.
Why would I bargain for what I already know, for information I got for free?
Second, she should have added untrustworthy to her list of adjectives to describe me.
I predict the question before it comes, sensing the echo of Eric, his name, niggling through me.
It makes sense.
Asta was in the mess hall, that’s how she knows Landon isn’t down there. Serena must have told her that I was asked to stay back in class—with Eric. But she also must’ve told Asta that Landon wanted to show me something after class.
So Asta has gone looking for me, hoping I’m with Landon, and she’s started with the mixed bathrooms.
Asta is right about me.
I’m observant in a way—maybe more observant of others than I am of myself and the problems brewing around me.
Like I don’t know if I would’ve figured out Dray’s offer, or his signing of my contract, if I wasn’t told the truth. But I would’ve suspected—and shoved the horror of it down.
I think I would’ve known.
I just wouldn’t have believed myself.
But now, his ex-fiancé is in my face over her boyfriend, also sort of my ex.
This isn’t how I saw my final year at the academy going.
Asta asks it straight, “Did you sleep with him?”
And I know she doesn’t mean Dray.
Still, I play dumb. My brow knits. “Who?”
Her lips curl around her white teeth. “Eric.”
I wrangle back a theatrical groan, a ‘this bitch is getting on my last nerves’ performance.
“No, Asta,” I start, and the exhaustion drips from my tone.
“I told you then, I’ll tell you now. I didn’t fuck him.
He didn’t fuck me. We’ve never even kissed.
And honestly, I’m sick of talking about it, I’m sick of your obsession and paranoia about it.
So I will tell you one last time, and never again. ”
Her chin lifts, but her face is lacking the severity to fool me. There’s hope in her eyes, burning, hanging on my every word, and I’m sure she pins her breath, just so she doesn’t miss a word.
“My father was opening my contract to the gentry. Eric also happened to be my tutor for Star Theory, which I needed.”
Asta nods, faint, like she already knows these details, and it’s adding validity to what I’m telling her.
“Father asked me if there was anyone that he should give special consideration to. I did mention Eric. I said he was kind and fair.” I take a step closer, bringing me nose to nose with Asta’s painfully hopeful face. “That is it. Someone else came in with an offer—and that changed everything.”
The lies and omissions are for my own benefit, not hers.
Maybe one day I can use it against her.
Maybe not.
Right now, it’s just not worth the drama, the headache, the fight.
Serena throws hands quicker than Asta, but I have seen this ice queen in action before. In this very bathroom, three years ago, her and Mildred went at it.
Mildred hit first.
Asta obviously would’ve been annihilated if it wasn’t for Serena throwing in a kick to Mildred’s knees every time she tried to stand up—and that gave Asta a shot.
I didn’t see who won, because I got the hell out of here before the target could switch to me, but I did see Asta literally slam Mildred’s face into the hard tiled floors about three times.
That is not an experience I need right now.
I have enough problems.
So maybe I lie to protect myself.
It doesn’t really matter.
None of this does, Asta, Eric, Serena, Landon, James, Courtney.
All that matters is that thing I keep pushing back down to my worming gut, and each time it springs back up—the memories of the other night, answering those fucking questions, telling Courtney everything, too much—my insides are thrashing.
I wrap this up with the ultimate appeasement.
“Eric never gave me any indication that he liked me. He was just nice—and one time I guess he felt sorry for me, and invited me to build snowmen, which my father ended up chewing me out for anyway, so it wasn’t even worth it.
Eric has always kept his hands to himself, he’s never flirted or anything, he’s just…
nice. And I thought it was better to have a nice gentry husband than a cruel one. ”
Asta stares at me, blank, for a long moment.
Then she nods, faint, and her hum is curt, but it’s light like bells, and I see the trace of an almost smile on her lips.
She eats up my lies.
I don’t give her a moment to stall again, to ask another question, to speak another word, not before I’ve kicked away from the sink.
“I mean it,” I say to her as I start for the door. “I don’t want to hear about this again.”
Before I can reach the door, she says, “Well I have one more question, then. I better ask it now.”
I turn around to face her, my lashes low over my unenthused glare. “What?”
“Why did he ask you to stay back after class?”
I was right.
Serena talks too much.
“Because my assignment was good for once.”
The lie comes easy, smooth, and I hope that if she asks him, he gives a similar answer. But maybe she doesn’t grill him about me, maybe she’s scared to come on too strong, so she swerves it all at me.
I take a backstep. “He congratulated me—then asked if I still need the tutoring. Probably the exam stress getting to him, and he wanted an out.”
“What did you say?” she asks.
“I said I don’t need a tutor.” Another backstep, and I reach for the door handle. “Are we done?”
Her nod is brisk, her smile pinched, like she can’t let herself break out into a grin in front of me.
Her relief is obvious.
And I couldn’t care less about it.
I leave her without another word.
My steps take me through the corridor, down the staircase to the atrium, but instead of turning for the mess hall, those last few minutes it’ll be open for breakfast, I turn right.
In slacks, a shirt and a cashmere cardigan, I go through the doors of the academy.
My boots crunch on the slushy path all the way down to the stream.
I drop onto a boulder and watch the foamy waters rush over rocks.
I drop to the cold earth and I just sit here.
For how long, I don’t know.
Time passes, it’s hard to track, but my mind is a whirl of chaos, stuck.
Tumbleweed, frozen in place.
If the chaos thawed, I might be able to peel apart the threads and consider them one by one.
Dray’s offer on my contract should never have been accepted. Not after I told my father the truth about him. But he signs me away so easily to the highest bidder.
Bet Father never thought Dray Sinclair would want me as his wife, not once it was revealed that I’m a deadblood. The highest hopes my father probably had was Landon, an aristos ready to slip and fall. Then he almost had to settle on gentry, but Dray Sinclair extended his offer.
I didn’t know it then, but that was the moment my fate was sealed. I was done for then, and I don’t even know what day it was.
It whirls me back to Rugby Sunday.
After Dray assaulted me in the library, and then escorted me downstairs, my father looked at him, a silent question in that shared glance, and Dray shook his head.
I wondered then what that was about.
Now, I know.
Father was checking to see if Dray had told me.
Dray wants to be the one to tell me.
Oliver can lie all he wants, try to convince me that Dray will tell me when the time is right, so I don’t break and shatter in the middle of the final semester, so I don’t become a distraction before the exams.
But I know better.
I know Dray.
He wants to be the one to look into my eyes—and break me. He wants to see the realisation battle against denial in me.
He wants to watch the tears.
That is who he is.
Father won’t protect me from my fate.
Oliver won’t, either.
Their loyalties lie with the Videralli.
Not me.
Never me.
I watch the waters mould to the boulders.
The article is my only hope.
Anxiety floods through me in violent waves the moment the thought touches my mind.
The adrenaline from the other day after Mildred, it caved me to temptations. But now, it has faded. The hate has settled, the rage subdued.
I woke that next morning to a hollow gnawing sensation in my gut.
I don’t regret it. But I fear it.
That article will humiliate Dray.
To do that to him, so publicly, is to back him into a corner. He will choose, either to wear the shame of it and continue with our engagement, or to back out and save face.
Face is everything in our world.
That’s why everyone wears such pretty, polished masks.
I’m going to crack his.
But Asta is right.
I’m not an idiot. I’m underestimated.
I’m very fucking aware of the consequences.
Dray might walk away from our engagement once this article is out in nothing but a lowly school newsletter—
But he will break me before he goes.