19

The drapes around the postered beds are enchanted to muffle outside sound coming in. That enchantment is not applied to the curtains of the phone booths.

Unlucky for me.

“Someone isn’t even talking in this one.” The clack of heels comes before the booth shudders with a fisted knock. “Hello? Others are waiting. Stop booth hogging!”

Booth hogging.

When a student takes up a booth for one call then tries to make another after. The rules are to rejoin the queue if there is one. Can’t just make back-to-back calls.

That’s not what I have been doing in here, in the thirty minutes since Father unkindly hung up on me.

I’ve been marinating in a box of my own self-pity.

Before I can even wipe the back of my hand over my nose, and rub away the snot and tears that gather there, the curtain whips open with a screech along the railing.

I sniff, a thick and gooey sound, then turn my bloodshot eyes to my intruder.

Asta eyes me over dully. Then, with a scoff that catches in her chest, she flaps her hand at me.

“Move, gimp,” she snaps. “I need the phone.”

I swallow, thick and wet.

No fight surges in me.

Father might as well have beaten me with a club, I feel so… defeated.

My breath is a shudder as I push from the bench. It creaks from the loss of my slumped, sagged weight.

I stumble past her, my shoulder knocking hers.

Asta gives a harsher shove in retaliation.

I hardly feel it.

I stagger, but I hardly feel much of anything in the post-sob haze that’s a cloud of numbness settled over me.

Opposite the booth, Serena leans against the wainscoted wall, picking at her manicured nails. The edges are chipped. The gloss has scraped off. She scratches at the clear varnish and lifts her gaze to me.

I turn and head down the corridor, deeper into the Living Quarter. Turns out, I’m not so hungry anymore.

I bottle the tears as I hurry through the corridors.

My face is hot, and it takes everything in me to not to boot out at Landon who, sauntering past me three times my pace, is already tugging off his tie and wears a weary look to him.

Like he has anything to be tired of.

I swallow back the tears I shed in the booth, the ones I have paused as my breath shudders through the corridors.

I turn for the hallway leading to the grand parlour.

Don’t let them see you crumble.

I’ll always remember when Serena said that to me, softly, a mere murmur in passing, but she was passing me huddled up in a bathroom stall, and my knee was bleeding. Her whisper came through the gaps of the door.

Don’t let them see you crumble.

Such simple advice.

It shouldn’t have struck me as fiercely, as deeply, as it did. But those words have carried with me through the years.

I listened—and I still do, as best as I can.

Now, I fight back the sobs that jerk my shoulders, that jolt through me like hiccups, but they don’t take hold.

Because, while Landon has disappeared ahead, gone already into the grand parlour, Serena is still nearby.

I throw a twisted, wet scowl over my shoulder at her. “Are you following me?”

The look she spares me is dull. “As it happens, we share a room.”

She might be the one who gave me the advice.

But she also is one of them .

So I gulp down the tears and shove through the solid, lacquered to the grand parlour. I’m quick to rush through, though—except Serena on my tail—there are no Snakes in sight.

I make for the dorm room, fast.

Serena keeps too close all the way up the stairs and down the corridor to our room. The door hasn’t even shut before she’s pushing inside after me, and the cold air is quick to invade the room.

I don’t bother looking at her as I climb onto my bed.

Serena strides across the room.

“No,” she says and kicks open her wardrobe. “You won’t be moping. Get up.”

She snaps her fingers at me, and the shine of a cartier bracelet winks at me from her wrist. New. Probably gifted from Oliver.

My thoughts are slow, her words even slower to sink in. But when they do, I lift my face from the comforter and frown at her. “What?”

Whipping her hair, she lowers her long lashes at me. “Get up and get dressed.”

My face crumples. “I knew you were following me.”

“Amazingly perceptive as always,” she says, and it’s a dig. I don’t get it.

I push up onto my knees.

The go-fuck-yourself is in the scowl I aim at her as I reach for the nearest drape and start to tug it in place.

Serena’s glare darkens.

Slowly, she moves into step—right for my bed. “Do you or do you not need a drink?”

My hand stills on the tugged drape. “What?”

She looks at me like I’ve knocked my head and forgotten my own name. “I,” she starts slow, “am going to the party by the old supply cabin. You are coming with me.”

“Why? I mean, why me?” The uncertain words spill out of me.

Why me and not Asta? Why me at all?

First, she’s luring me into her dare games in the grand parlour, then sitting with me for a meal in the mess hall, just once, but it is still an oddity, and now she’s dragging me along to a party?

I sink into the mattress, legs folded, and my bottom flattens on the heels of my boots.

Serena arches a brow at me, waiting.

“What the hell is up with you?” I ask, blunt. “We aren’t friends, Serena. We haven’t been friends for a long time. I’m not going to a party with you.”

She shrugs, and it’s all silk and elegance. “Things are changing.”

I wait.

But that is all she says.

And my face is blank. “That’s great. But what isn’t changing is that I am not going anywhere with you.”

“Is that so?” Serena turns her back on me and returns to her wardrobe. She sifts through the clothes on hangers, leaving the garment bagged ones untouched. “Not even once you learn that Dray, Oliver and Landon will be at the sparring club tonight? And they all have games early in the morning? Mildred, too.”

“So?”

She carries an armful of dresses to the foot of her bed, then drapes them over the comforter. “So,” she sighs, “they won’t be wasting their precious sleeping hours on a party by the old cabin.” She looks up her lashes at me. “Beyond Asta, you have no enemies there.”

My mind scrambles.

The old supply cabin by the maze of ruins.

That area is tucked to the edge of the academy, just a ten-minute stroll from the entrance, but it’s abandoned, decrepit, and—last time I checked—a hotspot for out of curfew ragers. Teachers know all about it, of course. But beyond some patrols, nothing much is done.

It’s often light fun.

So I hear, since I haven’t actually been to one.

“Now, pause your self-pity. Put this on.” A lump of fabric lobs me off the head. “Fix your face, then come have a drink.”

The clothes fall to my lap in a heap.

My frown follows Serena around the foot of her bed to her dresser. She’s careful as she lifts a bag of cosmetics from the pile of scarves and shoe boxes.

“Bathroom,” she tells me, and it takes me a moment to realise that it’s an order. To go clean myself up, wash my face, blow my nose, before tending to my makeup.

For a beat, I just stay slumped on my knees. My frown is aimed at her, unwavering.

She sighs, soft, then sets the cosmetics bag on the vanity table, whose mirror stretches up trimmed with gold. “Look, if anyone needs a drink around here, a night away from all this, it’s you. I promise they won’t be there. Oliver told me himself. This isn’t a trap, this isn’t—it isn’t anything other than the fact that you belong.”

My mouth trembles.

She echoes those words to me, firm. “And tonight, you belong with me, showing those half-breeds how to have fun.”

The answer that comes from me surprises even me, “What about Asta?”

The only words that should be spilling from my lips are ‘no’ and ‘go to hell’.

“Oh, she has a date. She won’t be a bother.”

I pinch the mauve fabric in my fingers before I lift it from my lap. It unravels with a slap.

I look down at the floor where the black breeches landed, the sort that aren’t quite leather, certainly not latex, but still has a faint gloss to them.

The sweater I hold up is more of a soft, long-sleeved crop top, with a sort of sweetheart neckline.

Not exactly an outfit I would have chosen for myself.

Not my colours.

Besides, I can’t go.

I shouldn’t.

It’s probably a trap.

And Serena doesn’t deserve my time. My company.

But she isn’t wrong when she says I need a drink. More than that, I need to forget. Forget all the ugliness that sours my mood for weeks on end, that rots my insides.

I want more than a drink.

I want… an escape.

And so, with a weighted sigh that deflates my shoulders, and nothing more than defeat in my eyes, I push off the bed.

And I do as she says.

I wash my face first.

Then, when I’m back in the dorm room, I dress in the clothes she tossed at me. I pull on suede boots that will ruin if the snow is sludgy down by the cabin. I gloss my face in the lightest touch of makeup, then paint my lips mauve to match the top.

Finally, I follow Serena out the door.

I make it to the steps that descend from the atrium into the school grounds, and I make it in one piece. The risk of it has my insides writhing, a pool of worms slicking and slapping around.

My hands are clammy, and I have that ill fever-like sensation all over my body, too hot and too cold at once, like my nerves battle the winter air beyond the academy doors.

Serena notices.

She pauses on the steps and hands me a silver, glittering flask.

I unscrew the lid, but before I do anything as silly as take a drink from her, I lift it to my nose and sniff.

Satisfied, I pour the clear vodka into my mouth, chin lifted, and welcome the sear down my gulping throat.

I hand it back.

Before she tucks the flask away, she downs a hefty amount herself.

I lean onto my right boot, my weight shifting with me as I peer down the trail that splinters off to the ruins. Snow has powdered over the rubble, a thick coating of white dust, and now the ruins of an old castle make some sort of snowy maze behind the cabin, mostly weeds and debris.

Serena secures the flask into the sleeve of her high boots. Flashing me a grin, she jumps off the stairs.

“Come on,” she calls and starts down the trail.

I shouldn’t.

But I do.

I shadow her down the trail for the full ten minutes it takes to pass the shrubbier trees and reach the clearing.

There are more half-breeds here than elites or even made ones. That, I can tell by all the games I don’t recognise and the krum fashions.

Made ones are sent so young to the Home for the Misplaced that their cultural connection to the krum world is limited.

This is a half-breed party with krum-world sparklers and kegs. I don’t have the faintest idea how anyone smuggled a keg onto school grounds.

My steps are slowed by the uncertainty biting at my heels. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t belong.

Then, before I can turn around or even come to a firm decision—

“Olivia?” A voice snakes out from the crumbled cabin.

I startle, and look over at the fence, mostly fallen, but some stubborn planks stay standing.

Beside the boulder that’s littered with liquor bottles, beers and paper cups, Eric pushes from the rotting fence.

Serena arches a brow—and aims it at Eric’s flushed cheeks, the cold biting at him. Slowly, she turns that look on me.

I mumble, “I’ll catch up.”

There’s a hmph that snares in her throat before she turns and makes for the rotting picnic bench. There, cups and dice and empty beer bottles are scattered around.

I force a tight smile onto my face as I head for Eric.

He premeditates me. Got a drink ready and everything.

He hands me a paper cup filled with the stench of sugar.

I peer at the drink, nose crinkling as I eye the cheap fizzed wine.

“It’s nice to see you out here,” he says, delicate. The question underneath is ‘ why are you here?’

I nod, faint. “And you. Getting in as much fun on your student days?”

His smile is tight, the crease around his eyes awkward. He looks to the ruins beyond the abandoned cabin.

Silence pulses.

“The count who built this castle is the reason the VeVille was built,” he tells me, and gestures his own paper cup to the maze, the ruins pushed aside to make paths. It goes on too long, all the way up the East Quarter of the academy.

“It wasn’t a witching village then. Just workers. Krums,” he adds with a guilty grin, “trying to make a living.”

I know. I don’t like that he thinks I don’t.

“And the villagers turned, burnt the castle to the ground,” I say with a nod.

Eric’s lips thin and he gives a faint nod.

An uncomfortable silence settles over us.

The rest goes unsaid about the story, that witches came to slaughter the krums, and settled in the village themselves.

VeVille was one of the first witch-only settlements in our histories. Started something of a movement.

Eric brings the rim of his cup to his lips. He sips, and I’m sure he only does to do something in this awkward silence.

Don’t think he liked so much that I finished the story for him. Eric must be one of those men who like to share information, not to be matched in it.

Probably thinks I’m some sort of idiot, now that he’s privy to how poorly I grade, and that I don’t know anything at all.

I shift my weight from boot to boot and start picking at the rim of the paper cup. I cut my nails into it, leaving crescent-shape dents.

Eric can’t take another moment like this.

He just blurts it out. “So we’re good, right?”

I turn my chin to face him. I nod with a slight shrug of the shoulder. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

Because you downgraded me in Star Theory, then barely speak a nonprofessional word while you tutor me? Like our moments never happened, like you didn’t ask me to join you on the snowfields?

Guy’s giving me whiplash.

“It’s just…” His words falter.

The pinkish hue of his cheeks turns red. He cuts a look up the trail behind me, then fast brings his gaze back down.

“I just wanted to make sure, that’s all.” The shrug that lifts his shoulder is lame. “Maybe it’s… harder to juggle the teacher-student hats than I expected.”

Still, my smile is tight, pinned to my cheeks, and I feel a bit like Frankenstein, all clumsy and guttural.

“I should…” Eric gestures over my head, away from me. “I need to go. Sorry.”

I nod, then—leaving the stiff awkwardness behind—march up the salted ground. The soil beneath my boots is hard and cracked, and I sidestep the sludge patches to better care for the suede.

The fires that lick up from the metal bins dotted around help battle the freezing temperatures this far up the mountain, but not enough to stop me from wrapping my arms around myself.

I make for the bench with paper cups strewn about it, some knocked over, and a ping-pong ball bouncing once—then it clatters into a cup with a bubbling purple liquid.

Serena jeers with the rest of the students crowded around that game.

I approach, uneasy, and toss my cup of crap wine to the ground.

Serena aims a smile at me.

It eases me a little, lures me in closer to her, but for the most part, I just stand here, holding myself.

No one spares me more than a questioning glance or a lingering look, and only once. Then, it is just accepted that I am here, and no one seems to think more about it.

Yet I am heightened in my awareness that I haven’t gone to a party before at Bluestone, and that maybe, just maybe, I should turn back for the path and go to bed.

At the thought, the temptation, I twist around to eye the trail—

A frown furrows my face.

I blink, lashes fluttering once, twice, then a scoff jolts me.

I drop my arms to my sides.

And for a moment, I just stare at them.

Eric leaning against the surviving fence posts of the cabin, a lazy grin spread over his mouth—a mouth that brushes over Asta Strom’s lips.

My mouth hangs open.

I’m gaping, I know it, but I’m frozen and can’t do anything about it. Like the mist of the mountain wisps around me, freezes me, I am motionless as I watch Asta’s red-painted lips graze gently, lovingly—familiarly—over Eric’s grin, as she leans into him, her full slender weight relaxed on his chest, her neck arched to croon at him, the position of his hands on her hips, how his fingers disappear under the hem of her leather jacket.

I blink.

A gust of breath billows through me as I stagger around and, in two staggering steps, grab Serena by the arm.

My sagged voice is as bewildered as my gaze. “What the fuck is that?”

Serena shoots me an odd look. “It is a game. Potion Pong. We’re up next, if you must know—”

“What?” I glance at the table, then shake my head. “No, not that. That .” I look down at the old, rotted post near the cabin.

Serena traces my glower to the fence.

“Oh.” Her mouth pinches. “That.”

Still, Eric slouches against the fence. And leaning into him, Asta croons up at his smile, her hands fisted in his sweater.

“They have been hot and cold for years,” she tells me, and there’s a sigh to her voice, a huff of disproval.

Asta has a date…

That’s what Serena said.

I never imagined it would be with Eric.

My Eric.

But then…

My heart flutters in my chest, the echoes of an ache.

‘They have been hot and cold for years.’

Asta watched us.

She watched Eric and I build snowmen, fall and laugh and play in the snow. Then, clinging to Dray, there was a solid week she wouldn’t leave her betrothed’s side, all the while shooting glares up at the faculty table and—

“ What the fuckkkk ,” I hiss, hands flailing at my sides.

I don’t ask something as silly as ‘ what about Dray ?’, because first, who cares about him, and second, this happens with all the betrothed pairs. All of them. Even if they like each other, as I expect is the case for Oliver and Serena. They will be happy enough when they are married. And when they are married, they will be faithful to one another. But not before the nuptials.

Sleep around but be respectful. The betrothed should always come before the flings.

It’s not that that has my attention, that has my face slowly twisting into a scowl. It’s that Asta has my backup guy melting into her, his smile brushing over her lips, and not mine!

“Fuck!” I curse the word under my breath. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Serena eyes me for a long moment, then shakes her head with a loosened breath. “He is a fortune hunter, Olivia. Aim higher.”

My teeth grit but words snake through, “I can’t. I can’t reach any higher.”

Serena’s sidelong look at me is fast accompanied by a flattened mouth. “You might be surprised how high you can reach,” she says. “But enough of that, it’s our turn.”

“Huh?”

“I need a partner,” she says, and—taking me by the wrist—she steers me to the edge of the bench, right in front of the self-filling cups.

My mind splits in two.

A furious glance I aim down at Eric and Asta, canoodling, and wondering if he is mine, or he was hers for longer, but my words are of a different matter entirely: “What’s in these?”

Serena glances down at the self-filling cups. She lifts a dark look at me, a smile slicked over her lovely mouth. “ Potions ,” she whispers dangerously.

A smile twitches my mouth. Barely, but still.

I bite it down.

The wariness sticks to me, to the stiffness of my bones, the steel of my muscles.

I keep my cheek to the cabin, to the lovefest down there I want nothing more than to set on fire.

Serena starts off the game. She bounces the ball onto the centre of the bench—it arches before it lands in a cup.

Teddy curses under his breath at the other end, then snatches the cup up. Beside him, Piper’s nose crinkles as Teddy downs the potion.

He burps—long and loud and a stream of bubbles release from his parted lips.

I match Piper and wrinkle my nose.

Serena hasn’t changed. Not in all the years we were last friends. She clenches her fist and gives it a quick jab to the air.

“Ha!” she calls. “One-nil.”

“Still competitive,” I murmur as Piper takes her shot.

That lures out a small smile from her. “Me? Never.”

The ball lands in a black brew.

Serena tuts, then shots back the brew. If I had any question of what it was, it’s answered the moment she tosses aside the compostable cup.

The olive hue of her complexion darkens and darkens and darkens—until it’s the deep shade of a purple grape.

My mouth thins just to bite down the grin threatening to split my face.

Serena shoots me a menacing look. “Your turn.”

Annoyed that I find humour at her expense.

“How long will that last?”

She scoffs. “All night. Most of this stuff washes off in the shower,” she reassures me. “Or it’s something small and silly, like those—” and she jerks her chin to gesture over at Teddy, doubled over now. He heaves out a bubble that just keeps on growing. “Once the big one is out, he’s cured.”

“Oh.” I wipe my hands on the hips of my trousers. “Ok.”

I’m not thrilled.

Serena hands me the ping pong ball.

I pinch it between my fingers and lock my sights onto the cups across the bench.

Lucky for us, my aim is gold.

I fling it. It doesn’t bounce. It curves over the cups before it lands in one, firm. A splash of green is quick to spew out after it.

Teddy releases the final burp, and with it, a gigantic bubble floats above the bench. I watch it bob through the air, like a ball on the water.

He huffs a sigh.

Piper downs the green stuff that my ball landed in.

She turns green.

Then Serena is back up again, after Teddy’s failed shot that he announces to everyone within earshot was because of the bubble potion, and not at all anything to do with his skills, and Serena makes her shot. Teddy’s eyes roll back after he drinks the potion, then start to swivel out of control. I almost think he’s having a seizure—until Piper shoulders him out the way for her turn.

She makes the shot.

I drink the potion. A milky substance, thick down my throat like syrup, then I am quick to snatch up the ball before the potion can kick in.

“This is it,” Serena whispers, tense, hushed. “If you make it, I will adore you. If you miss, I will kneecap you.”

I believe her.

My mouth twists.

And I throw.

Hands tensing in the air, I watch as the little white ball, hollow and soft, hits the middle of the bench, then arches through the frosty air. It arcs for the potions.

And lands right in the festering brown one.

Serena cheers and grabs onto me. I rattle with her shove and pull.

Still, my face brightens with a silly grin.

We won.

3-2.

Then, my breath sucks through me. I grab onto Serena just as the gigantic bubble bobs too close—and swallows us up.

The bubble floats over the heads at the party. There is no one direction it takes, no goal it has in mind. It just floats around and around.

Faces angle up at us, Serena and I, and they brighten with a grin, some rude gestures chucked our way, others wave or laugh.

But Serena and I just chill.

On our backs, we lounge, watching the filmy substance cocoon around us, warp the shadows of the students under us and glisten with the moonlight.

Beside me, Serena rattles on, “Asta is fine. She is,” she shrugs, “ aristos .”

The meaning isn’t lost on me.

I nod.

Asta plays by the rules, schemes, gossips, not to be trusted with secrets, but a well enough companion for shopping and spa days.

Asta is aristos.

“She is a friend,” Serena goes on, her voice soft, “but not… What did that made one call it…” she pauses, her mind churning, then she clicks her fingers, “a soul bond.”

Whatever that means.

I understand soulmate as a term.

Soul bond must be of the same cloth.

Again, I nod.

With so many aristos, with Asta , there’s no true personality beneath the polished surface of the masks we all wear. There’s rarely a sincerity in the laughter, or in the smiles, there’s no depth in the conversations shared over coffee or champagne.

Asta has all the shine of a diamond, but with the core of a crystal.

And I’m a lump of coal on the wrong shelf.

“I missed you,” Serena sighs the words, soft.

I turn my cheek to her. My mouth pushes into a pout and, silent, I prod at my throat.

Her eyes roll, a smile dancing on her lips. “No, not because the potion stole your voice. I sincerely missed you.”

I take the flask she offers.

I down the last of the vodka in it, every last drop. And the potion stole more than my voice, it’s all to do with my throat. I don’t even make a gulping sound as I shot back the drink, not a burping gurgle as the air bubbles up my throat.

Silence.

I place the flask on her stomach.

She makes no move for it. Just stares up at the cloudy film of the bubble. The moon looks warped from our cocoon. A smeared ball of white.

For a while, she sits in the silence with me.

Until—

“It’s a shame to burst our bubble.” Serena points her nail and grazes it over the wall of the film. “But your brother is coming.”

I push up and the sound jolting through me would be a grunt if I could make noise. The bubble slips and turns under me, and so I can’t sit up on my elbows. Giving up, I drop onto my back and turn my cheek. It smooshes against the wet, filmy wall.

I trace Serena’s dark gaze to the trail.

Two shadows are headed down it.

Through the milky substance, I can’t make them out beyond the broad muscles of their shoulders, the blur of black that they wear, and that one has darker hair and the other, fair.

They are headed right for the clearing.

Serena nicks the bubble. Pinches it right between her nails—and the frosted ground is rushing up to meet me.

I land on my back. The impact jolts through me.

The groan, as I roll onto my side, doesn’t come, silenced.

But the look I give Serena as she sits up on her knees, it speaks volumes—

‘You said they weren’t going to be here.’

‘You lied!’

She reads me too easily.

“Oliver said he wasn’t.” Serena shifts her frown to them, though the two shadows are too far away to see that look of annoyance she wears, too far to even see that it’s us on the ground.

My guess is that she only recognises that it’s my brother because of the gold wrapped around his wrist, the gold Rolex she gifted him for his past birthday, the one that dances in the firelight.

I push up from the salted snow. My boots slip out from under me and I crash back down. For a beat, I lie face-down. Then I try to stand again.

This time, I manage my footing. But the dizziness has rooted deep in me, and I sway.

It wasn’t so bad before the bubble, or even in the bubble. I thought the sway was the bubble.

Guess I’m just a lot drunker than I knew.

Even the winds have changed in the past hour.

Before, it was a breeze, chilled and gentle, almost stagnant on my cheeks. Now, it whistles, it disturbs the fallen strands of hair around my face, it pierces through the part of my lips and sharpens the cold in my mouth.

I squint through it to the shadows, the ones coming nearer on the trail—and now, I can make out their faces. Both look straight up to the bench, where a dozen or more students are gathered around the game of potions. They look for Serena.

Oliver and Dray.

The last faces I want to see tonight.

Oliver’s, I ache to slam my fist into again.

And Dray…

I doubt I’ll get the chance before he fillets me.

Staggering back, I turn for the ruins, the maze of stone and debris and weeds, and I run.

Serena makes to call after me, but a horrid retch doubles her over and—as I glance back over my shoulder—she’s sick all over the frost.

I leave her to my brother.

He’ll look after her.

I scramble for the opening of the snowy ruins—and right there, on the stone before the maze, is a bottle of liquor. I don’t pause, my steps don’t falter, I just scoop my hand out for it and steal it into my grasp, then keep running.