Chapter I could never live here.
The air of the village bites like glass—sharp and clean down my throat.
It’s no difference to the gaze that slides to me every other moment.
Turns out, Dray is joining us.
He and Oliver seem to have no problem just inviting themselves along with us.
Now I wander behind Serena and Oliver, arm in arm, like they have no issues in their twisted relationship.
Serena stops on the snowy cobblestone to consider the new window display at Chloé’s.
Dray keeps my pace to the window and patience has him pausing at my side as I consider the blush of the silky dress draping the mannequin.
The sort of dress that would kill on someone like Asta, with a pilates body and barely-there breasts.
Chloé’s is the best boutique in VeVille, all natural fibres, handmade, imported—and on the pricey side, so I’m certain it’s the aristos students who keep this place afloat.
But the dress isn’t for my body type, so I appreciate it for a moment before I watch the village come to life in the window’s reflection.
The streets are flooded with students.
Every witch that passes is a picture of scarves and hats and gloves, long coats, puffy coats, or the braver locals who simply wear sweaters as they rush down the crooked street to the bakery—before it’s swarmed by us, the invaders.
“I could never live here.”
The confession is a misty breath from my lips—glossed and prepared for the bite of the cold—and the moment I confess it, Serena turns her cheek to the shop window that held her attention, and she looks blankly at me.
I watch the window, the reflections in it.
Behind Serena, as though I didn’t speak at all, Oliver is checking over the palm-sized notepad with game scores inked all over it—games from outside of Bluestone.
Dray looks it over, but it only loosely holds his attention, because the moment I do utter that confession, his gaze lifts to mine in the reflection, and the game scores go forgotten.
Serena’s confusion threads through her slow tone, “Was that ever an option?”
The smirk I give her is smarmy. “I’m just saying. The locals can’t move without stepping on a student most of the year. They get, what, a few months of peace before we’re back?”
Oliver’s grumble is smooth, and I suspect he lost whatever bet he had going on, “Then they shouldn’t live next to an academy.”
“The village came first,” Dray says and takes the notepad from Oliver. He folds it, then slips it into his coat pocket.
As though no one spoke, Oliver throws his arm around Serena’s slender shoulders, disturbing the faint wet dusting of snow on her coat. “Are we going in?”
Dray checks his watch—and it hooks my gaze. “The reservation is in thirty minutes.”
His watch is a Vacheron.
But not the one I gifted him.
That puckers my mouth.
If he’s going to wear a pricey timepiece like that around VeVille, why wouldn’t he pick the new one?
Oliver doesn’t wear his either, but that’s because he’s more of a collector, and so his watch is in his own personal vault.
Dray, on the other hand, wears quiet wealth with indifference.
I can’t recall a time, ever, where he has been dressed in outward labels. I recognise the brand by the look of what he’s wearing, like now, the dark grey blouson and the pleated trousers are Bottega Veneta, and the boots are John Lobb.
The watch is a Vacheron Constantin.
But not one item of clothing he wears right now screams its brand. He would never wear red painted soles for all to see with every step he took. He would never wear a sweater with BALENCIAGA printed over it.
Tasteless, tacky, new money behaviour.
Dray wears craftsmanship, not labels.
But he would—and does—wear his brand watches, he wears them quietly, doesn’t show them off, lift a cuff or a sleeve to reveal them.
So it startles me that he wears a watch he has had for two years in favour of the brilliant timepiece I gifted him for New Year.
Dray and I never get each other’s gifts wrong.
There has never been a time we haven’t liked what we’ve gotten.
Maybe the watch is the first.
I almost ask him about it, but then the bell above the shop door jingles, and the small group starts to pour inside.
I follow.
The bite of the sharp air is washed away by the heat searing from the radiators.
The shopkeeper attends to Serena at the display. Oliver lingers close to her, since this will definitely be going on his card.
But Dray follows me, three steps behind in this crammed, cottage-like shop.
He shadows me through the narrow rows, stopping when I stop, looking at merchandise when I do, and as I draw out the length of a cashmere scarf—a ribbon of snow—he reaches for the shelf above the hangers for the matching gloves.
I don’t argue as he puts them on his card.
I drape the scarf around my neck, swap over the gloves, then follow out of the shop, down the crooked, winding street to ARO—the only restaurant in the village.
It’s a cosy restaurant with golden plates and cutlery. Golden, not true gold, just dipped and painted.
The tables are draped with white linen, the chairs are cushioned with add-ons, and the candles have no fragrance.
It tries to be something it isn’t.
Fine dining.
Upper class.
But the food is still better than the buffet spread in the mess hall, so I order from the menu—generously.
Before the food has even arrived, Serena launches into a tirade, a half-hearted attack on Oliver about his lack of interest in the wedding plans.
The season is coming, right after graduation, and all the aristos weddings are booked weekend after weekend, and the gentry have to squeeze theirs in on the weekdays, since all the wedding nights take place in the rooms at The Videralli Cathedral.
Now that I think on it, I know nothing about my wedding date—so I suppose I stole Asta’s.
That sinks my heart.
Beside me, Oliver jests something about men and weddings, his job is to show up.
Serena laughs a curt, dangerous sound, but I tune out her retort and watch as the server brings over balanced plates on his hands and arms.
Conversation halts as the dishes are set down, and only when the server has refilled our waters then gone again, does Serena turn on Oliver.
Before she can utter a word, he throws a tired look at her. “I trust your taste. As long as you’re not walking down the aisle in a fucking onion, what do I care?”
My eyes widen, and I lock my stare onto my syrup-drizzled French toast, pecans crushed and peppered over the plate.
“I don’t have my mother to help me,” Serena speaks through curling lips, and the danger is prickling around the table. “Forgive me for believing my fiancé might.”
My heart sinks.
My mouth turns down at the corner, and I throw a pleading look at Oliver, to be kinder, to be understanding—
But it’s Oliver, so I’m hoping for too much.
“My mother will be more than excited to help plan—or plan it altogether if you let her,” he adds in a murmur.
But it’s not what Serena was asking for. His support. His companionship.
I suddenly have a whole new understanding of their relationship—their constant fights.
It’s Oliver.
He’s a prick.
Dray’s question comes quiet, separated from the hissed argument ensuing on the other side of the cosy table, “Have you given any thought to your own?”
Beside me, Dray cuts his strawberry and cream-filled cannoli.
I suddenly want what he ordered.
My mouth waters at the fluffiness of it, then I blink back to the noise of the restaurant, of the hissed words on my left.
I look at Dray.
The question is light, polite. But it’s loaded.
His glacier stare is locked onto me.
“Not at all,” I say flatly.
He brings the fork to his pink lips, then bites the small piece of cream, strawberry and cannoli he cut for himself. “Do you plan on a last-minute rush?”
My fingers tighten around the stem of my fork. “I didn’t plan on getting married.”
He raises a brow, amused. “But I hear you have a suitor.”
It takes everything in me, everything, not to let a fright jolt my heart or my insides constrict or let a flutter of fear shutter my face.
I draw on every scrap and piece of a mask I can find within myself to simply stare at him, blank, the foolish deadblood who has no idea he is the suitor.
Dray sits there, perfectly composed, the golden boy with the cruel eyes.
The man I’m supposed to marry.
The one who has made my life small and sharp and unbearable.
And I have to settle the rage that itches to flare up in me, like violent waves crashing against a cliff.
I shrug, a simple tug of a shoulder. “I’m sure someone will plan it.”
“You are so disinterested in your own wedding?”
“Have you met my mother? My grandmother? I won’t get a say on my underwear, let alone the wedding.”
Dray’s smile slides into place—and for a beat, it hooks me. The sincerity of it. The humour, the genuine humour, like what I said was actually funny.
I turn my flushed cheek to him.
The silence that follows is heavy, awkward.
Serena glances between us, a cold curiosity in her eyes.
Oliver catches my gaze, his face utterly unreadable, and still I’m stolen back to the corridor, to his words of warning…
Or advice.
Dray needs my attention.
Whether it’s favourable or miserable or loathing, he feeds off of it.
Like at the window in the grand parlour, with scotch and cigarettes, when I started to move away from him, started the process of making my exit, he attacked—he came in with a soft voice, a hold on my jaw, an almost kiss, and cut me down with his words.
Mother wants me to learn these patterns.
Oliver simply told me them.
And now, because I did give Dray attention, because I let him follow me around the shop, then make conversation with me at the table, his cruelties are dormant for the rest of the day.
Still, I find it’s a hefty price to pay.