23

Eric’s smile lifts over the edge of the paper. There are two edges to it, his smile, one sincere but the other forced.

He’s in two minds about my assignment, I guess.

In his teacher cloak today, he sits at the desk at the front of the classroom. The lesson wrapped up some moments ago, and I stayed behind to hand in the very assignment he has been tutoring me on.

Still, it’s not up to scratch. I know that because, when I was meant to finish it outside of tutoring, I made the mistake of calling home.

Hard to concentrate on meaningless essays and calculations that have no weight on my life, when my actual life and future is falling apart.

Eric sets the paper down on the desk. “It’s an improvement.”

True, but what he hides under the truth is ‘ it’s still not very good ’ and I think his standards are too high.

Just give me my upgrade and I’ll be on my way.

I could blame him. Tell him that it’s his own tutoring failure that created that assignment.

But that’s hardly going to lean in my favour.

I need to force my mind to focus on the bigger picture, beyond my exhaustion, past my pride. To see him as a potential future, not a teacher I want to ram a pencil into.

So let my most pathetic pout sadden my face. “I tried.”

And I did.

Being a deadblood, the prediction part to me is pure guesswork. I don’t have the inkling. Even witches who have prints outside of predictions have the niggle, the intuition, and they can learn how to read what is unintelligible to me.

I might as well be a krum for all that I can’t do.

Eric nods.

His eyes add, silently, but not enough .

A curt sigh escapes me before I roll my eyes. “I’ve been having trouble focusing.”

Eric lifts his frown to me.

“I talked to my father,” I add with a downcast glance at him in the chair.

He stiffens, somewhat, a slither of tension moving through him.

Mouth thinned, he holds still—as though this can go either way for him, and he’s just waiting on my reaction.

I fix the scales of balance between us. I confess I know all about his offer because, maybe, that will reflect kindly on my assignment when he grades it.

I pick at the sleeve of my cardigan. “He said you wrote a letter. He didn’t tell me what it said, but…” A one-shouldered shrug shrinks me. “I think he approved of whatever you wrote.”

Eric releases his lips from his bite. A breath of relief deflates his chest. “I only wrote the truth.”

“But…” I shift my weight, one foot to another, a complete mask of ‘ oh, I’m so innocent, so na?ve, a damsel in Chanel, have pity on me ’.

Seems to work on Eric, he likes me best when I’m not sassing.

I loosen a breath through a weak smile. “What is the truth?”

He hesitates.

“Look,” I drop my hands to my sides and fist them. “I don’t know what is really going on between you and Asta, or how deep things run there—but I don’t want to be anyone’s second choice, you know?”

Doesn’t change that I would accept him. Of course I would. Not that I really have a say. But the gentry don’t have the same values as we aristos do. A marriage to a gentry could mean a husband who strays.

Loyalty is absolute among the aristos.

Even if my aristos husband loathed me, thought me as ugly as a toad, and hated every word I spoke, he wouldn’t be falling into other beds. It would be my bed or nobody’s.

Loyalty is everything.

Disloyalty is one way to be shunned by aristos society.

It would be a greater shame to have an unfaithful husband than to have one who is gentry. That is a compromise I cannot make.

“Asta and I…” Eric’s voice fades, quickly, too quickly, and so from that alone, I understand their relationship to be more complicated than he can explain. “We have no future together.”

My gaze drops to the fountain pen on the desk. It leaks ink onto the edge of a scroll.

“Because she’s already engaged,” I say.

Dray and Asta, together, will have unyielding loyalty. So even if she felt the temptation to be with Eric, just once more after she is wed, it wouldn’t come to be.

Dray would kill them both for the betrayal.

But that leaves me with a truth. An ugly realisation.

I am the second choice.

Before my mind can settle with that realisation, Eric adds, soft, “I like you, Olivia. I have always had a fondness for you.”

I aim my moody look at him. It doesn’t soften.

“I didn’t expect your contract to open to the gentry,” he says. “Most of us didn’t.”

Most of us…

I have an image flash in my mind, the picture of gentry guys huddled around a table, discussing the latest contracts like we, the women, are nothing more than shelved items on sale.

He sinks back into the chair and runs his hands down his face. “I didn’t make a move on someone I thought would be forever off-limits.”

“But you did,” I challenge. “On Asta.”

His smile is small, tight. “Her future was less certain. When we met, she was not betrothed to anyone.”

Because at the time, Dray and I were intended for one another, never officially engaged, but an unspoken expectation that ended abruptly on my thirteenth birthday.

It was another few years before Asta and Dray were tied.

“And,” Eric sighs, reluctant, “with Dray, it’s…”

“What?”

“A lot of people around here think that… We expected that he would chase your contract.”

My face crumples. “Why would anyone think that?”

Dray hasn’t kept it secret how deep his hatred for me runs.

Eric tuts something unsure. His thoughts aren’t what is uncertain, but rather how to voice them.

Ill-at-ease, he shifts in his chair. “There were signs.”

“Signs?” I scoff. “Eric, you’ve gotta help me out here. Signs that he wants me dead, yeah. That’s about it.”

“Maybe things you didn’t see—”

“Like what?” I bite out the words, and the urge to smack the truth out of him is getting annoying, impatient.

“Well, we play snow-rugby. I’m not on the same team as Dray, but we all use the same locker room before and after the games.”

I arch a brow. “Ok…”

“Teddy might have said something a couple of years back, something about your, uh, backside.”

My cheeks flame.

His do, too. “Particularly something about how he can’t keep his eyes off it when you are wearing breeches.”

Ok, now my face is ablaze.

Eric simmers in the shame with me. He turns his hot cheek to me and looks across at the smeared chalkboard. “Dray was there, didn’t say anything. And Teddy is on his team, so when Dray slammed him into the barrier and broke his arm during the game, it got attention. It stirred whispers.” Eric shrugs. “A lot of the guys think he was retaliating for what Teddy said before the game.”

My brow is levelled with my stare. Dully, I summarise the ridiculous notion, “So Dray put Teddy in the infirmary for saying my ass is nice in breeches?”

The grin that tickles his face is guilty. He brings his gaze up to meet mine. “When you put it like that…”

“So… that’s it?” I flourish my hand. “That’s all that happened, and you didn’t pursue me because of that one crazy assumption?”

“Other things over the years, I guess, but… yes.”

I narrow my eyes on him, but there’s a playful edge to our chat now, and I’m mostly teasing him, because this—of course—is fucking ridiculous.

“Other things…” Eric slowly pushes up from the chair. “Like when you wear shorter skirts,” he says and advances on me, “he is often looking in your general direction.”

To emphasise, his gaze drops—but today I am wearing breeches, so Teddy better send me a thank you card.

“Or,” Eric takes another step closer, “when Eli asked you out to the VeVille, then went missing for a while before he was found in a broom closet.”

My memory jolts at the reminder.

Eli, a gentry from the year above, graduated and gone now, did ask me to the village back when I was just in my final year of high school at the academy, and he was in his junior year of tertiary education within the same walls.

But he never showed in the atrium.

After that, I always assumed it was a joke, that I was the butt of it, just another prank.

I never heard that he was locked in a broom closet.

I’m not quite in the know , of course.

Who would tell me any kind of gossip?

But locked in a closet for a while, that’s Dray’s classic move. He’s done it to me a handful of times over the many years in this hell.

Still, I can’t accept it as more than a ridiculous assumption that hardly holds up against the truth of my existence here.

I let a small smile slip. “You ignored me because… you thought that he liked me?” I grin around the words, and shove and shove and shove at the reminder of Dray’s tender gaze caressing me on the couch, his whispered confession before I slipped away to a sleep—no!

I banish it.

He was drunk. He must have been.

It was a prank, nothing else.

And I have another focus.

My future.

“What if I like you?” I whisper the words that burn my cheeks.

Eric’s eyes touch mine. They are so soft, so gentle, so unlike the freezing, blue eyes of Dray. Eric is caramel, Dray is sunkissed marble.

I twist around before pulling myself up to perch on the edge of the desk. “What if I have liked you for a while?”

Eric’s throat bobs.

He passes the corner of the desk until he’s standing right in front of me, so close to my dangling legs.

I watch him advance, the starlight above glistening over the rich mahogany waves he has for hair. His dark, honey eyes drink me in.

“I like that you are kind, and gentle, and fair—” maybe the last one is a lie, because that fairness hurts my grades “—and I like your mouth and your eyes, and the way you—”

In a quick heartbeat, he closes the distance between us with a single, swift step.

And his mouth is on mine.

My breath catches in my throat.

Instinct has my thighs inching apart for him, to draw him in closer. He chases the invite, his hand swift to find the nape of my neck.

I arch my neck to open our kiss, and our tongues touch.

He deepens the kiss.

Fingertips graze down the nape of my neck. His other hand finds the meat of my thigh, and there it rests, tender.

His touch is gentle.

Too gentle for a teacher touching a student, but just right for a gentry courting an aristos.

I decide now, that’s what will come from this.

And, I hope, a better grade.

Eric ends the kiss with a gentle close of his mouth, and mine follows. He lingers his lips on mine for a beat before he draws back and drops his gaze to the floor between us.

He says nothing.

Neither do I.

I grab my books and, hugging them in one arm, I slip off the desk. “I’ll see you Friday?”

He flickers a blank look to me. There’s a battle in those honeyed amber pots, clashes of morals and decisions and consequences—

I don’t let them take root.

“Our tutoring session in the library?” I remind him and, taking a step closer, lean up onto my toes—and I plant a kiss on his cheek. “See you then.”

Eric just nods, a flush to his olive-toned cheeks.

I leave the tower with an undeniable bounce in my step and absolutely no inkling that, when Friday comes at the end of the school week, I won’t be at the library with Eric.

I won’t even be on school grounds anymore.

Brews and Theory is consistent in two things: Dray is still my partner, as he assigned himself to the role at the start of the semester, and the lessons suffer this eternal relocation to the gardens.

Tonight, I’m prepared for the cold.

Sheathed in a white parka, an ivory faux fur hat tugged down on my head, I wrap and fasten my woollen scarf around my neck, then tuck it under the zipper.

Winter has well and truly arrived—and I’ve been sat on this stool for less than an hour, but already stacks of snow have gathered on my shoulders and hat.

I swat at the snow and watch it dust away.

This evening, I scooted the stool closer to the cauldron, closer to the flames licking under it.

I look up at Dray, standing on the other side, as he leans over the open tome of instructions and ingredients that’s perched on a rickety wooden table.

Dray wears no hat. Snowflakes cling to the few damp strands of his sandy waves. I watch them land, then dissolve, land, then dissolve.

His tone is monotonous as he reads from the brew book, “The spit of a woman,” then he glances at me before, “and two spits of a man—in orders of one, one, one.”

It’s the first he’s spoken to me in the week since…

Since a memory I violently shove out of my mind the moment it dares to form.

He turns to the sooted cauldron and spits once.

A lock of his hair brushes over his brow as he looks up at me from beneath his lashes. His cold eyes are frosty waters. “Spit, Olivia.”

I push up from the stool. It topples over and thuds onto the snow.

Leaning over the rim of the cauldron, I let a gentle spit escape me and land right in the centre of the deep purple liquid. It bubbles instantly.

Dray is quick to add his second spit before he tugs up the zip of his sleek black snowjacket, halfway up the smooth sunkissed hue of his neck, and I hate how he carries his tan for so long, that the warmth of his complexion hangs around through winter, and when it’s fading back to pale—though not as pale as me and my translucent ass—we’re off on holidays again, and he steals the tan right back.

I hate it.

I hate him.

He moves for the rickety table. It’s wider than my bedhead, and littered with phials and jars and wooden spoons and open books.

“Cut this,” Dray orders with a pointed finger towards the wet, bloated eel. “Slices, one centimetre thick.”

My nose wrinkles. I make a face at him.

Dray just arches a brow at me in answer.

A sigh huffs from me.

He wouldn’t have heard it under the violent bubbling of the cauldron, the murmurs of the other partners slaving over their potions, or even the high whistle of the winds at the peak of the mountain.

But he sees it in the cloud of air at my mouth and the slump of my shoulders before I stalk to the table.

I set the chopping board down, then fish out a large knife from the wooden box of utensils. Next up, the eel.

My face puckers before I reach for the mason jar.

I peel off the cloth lid, then—teeth bared—reach into the pickle juice and lift the ghastly black eel out.

A sickly sound chokes me and I stick out my tongue like I’m going to be sick. I shudder and let the eel slap to the chopping board.

Dray stirs the potion methodically, and I think he’s counting seconds that pass before he turns the stir counterclockwise.

I drag the measuring tape over the eel’s preserved corpse and keep it in place before I bring the knife down.

I chop, one-centimetre slices, from head to tail.

Dray is quick to snatch three slices then drop them in a heap straight into the potion.

I watch as it bubbles more and more—until a white frothy foam has layered the surface. It settles, slow, before it starts to clear.

Dray digs the spoon into the cauldron, then drags it back to himself, bringing a filmy substance with him. He discards it on the table.

“When it’s black, you spit twice, I spit once,” he says, dull and bored, just as bored as the look he lands on me. “In a minute or two.”

I nod.

I understand he’s telling me not to bother returning to my stool, to stay right where I am.

So I do.

And my cheeks puff as I blow out a tired breath.

Dray’s gaze hasn’t left me.

The table is tucked snug between us, but if I think for a moment that it is a sufficient barrier between us, I must have inhaled too much of the fumes. It’s too thin, and so he towers over me as though there’s nothing between us at all.

I lift my glower up at him. “What?”

Dray lifts his hand for my face.

Before I can do much more than blink, he steals a strand of my hair. He watches it twirl in his hand, turning it around and around, then—with a flick of his thumb—a piece of eel flesh goes flying from my hair and lands on the table.

“You haven’t thanked me,” he says.

He lures my gaze back to his. Still, he holds that strand of hair in his fingers.

“For what?”

“For saving you that night.”

“Saving me?”

“Who knows what would have happened to you if I hadn’t gotten you out of the maze.”

I pull on my best frown. A mask. A lie.

I didn’t know if this moment would come, but I prepared for the maybe. I was ready for the possibility.

I play stupid. “That was you?”

His lashes flutter.

He blinks, once, twice, but he doesn’t look away. His gaze holds, steady, and I feel the stare piercing into me, as though he searches my eyes, my mind, for the deceit.

But all that he finds is ice in his voice, “You don’t remember?”

I shrug a shoulder. The gesture brushes his hand away from my face, and he releases my hair. “I don’t remember much from that night. Just being lost in the maze… And a game, I think.”

My lie is simple and lame, but it’s effective.

He’s buying it, or at least doubting the accusations that clench his jaw, doubting his rising reaction enough that he doesn’t act on it.

For a long moment, he considers me. Jaw tense, he runs his eyes over my face, every inch of it, before his hand finds my face again, this time not to clean away eel flesh.

He runs the pad of his thumb under my chin. His hand pauses a beat before he pushes his thumb into me.

The gesture lifts my chin and angles my face with his.

“No memory of the night,” he says, darkly, “so it must have been a shock to wake up on the couch— with me .”

Liar .

That’s the accusation in his eyes. It burns with the icy urge to form his grip on my jaw and snap my neck.

“Yeah, no shit.” I push my mouth out into something that I hope resembles a disgusted pout. “Not one of your funnier pranks.”

“Prank,” he echoes, soft.

“I didn’t get it.” I scoff. “But I never do.”

His hand forms, firm, around the underside of my chin.

He holds me in place.

“I’m sure that it’s much more than pranks you do not understand. It appears that so much goes over your head, Little Life .”

A silent snarl curls his lips, just once, then his face is stone. He jerks my chin out of his grip.

My neck is quick to spring with hot pain.

I swallow back a gulp.

The gesture moves my lips, only slightly, but enough to lure in his gaze. And that’s what it does.

He lingers his stare over my mouth for a mere heartbeat, then he turns for the cauldron.

It’s black.

He gestures me over.

I spit once.

He spits.

Then me, again.

Dray waits a moment, watching the potion, the black tar start to churn, as though stirred from the bottom of the cauldron.

I look around the others, at panicked and flushed faces, at frowns aimed nowhere in particular, just lost, and at Courtney who, down the way with James, lets a great grin split her face. Her potion is a success, and she is quick to lift her stare to Master Welham’s back—and wait for his approval.

Once she gets it, she’s out of here for the night.

Me, too.

So I stare at Master Welham even harder.

He has his cheek to me, just two cauldrons down, peering into the sleek ivory brew that both Serena and Oliver are chuffed with, if their shared smiles are anything to go by.

Master Welham nods, firm, then makes a show of a purposeful tick on his clipboard.

They are dismissed.

Oliver grabs his satchel and tugs the strap over his shoulder. He drops onto the stool, then yanks Serena onto his lap.

They wait—for the other Snakes.

Landon and Mildred are approved next. Courtney and James are among the next few pairs. It takes a while for Welham to get his round ass up here. But finally, he does.

Dray and I are given the tick.

I don’t wait for anyone, I just leave them behind.

It’s not easy to get out of the gardens.

Stragglers gather in the narrow aisles between potted plants and netted flowers. I’m squeezing by the belladonna and stepping over toppled crates of small shovels and water bottles when, ahead, Teddy throws a smile over his shoulder.

It lands on me.

It wasn’t meant to, I know that by the quick disappearance of the smile and that he says, “Oh, sorry, thought you were Piper.”

He lifts his gaze over my head, his steps slow, almost stagnant, on the narrow path. I have half a mind to shove him into the fertiliser.

But then, Piper brushes by me with a muttered sorry, then slams into Teddy, hard.

He does fall into the fertiliser.

My face tightens with a grimace—but he just laughs, pushes up, then fixes his jacket. No harm comes to Piper.

He follows her out of the garden, some stragglers leading the charge, more falling into line behind us.

Courtney catches up, cheeks red and nose runny. “We got white.”

Her potion, I understand. She got a pass.

I nod. “Same.”

“Well,” she breathes, rushed, “Dray Sinclair got white. You’re lucky—”

The look I flare her way is enough to stumble her words, then silence her completely.

I’m not lucky to have him as a partner for this class. I would rather fail than be forced into his proximity all the fucking time.

The itch to shove her is strong.

But I don’t.

“I might go to the infirmary,” James moans his words from behind me, and I roll my eyes the instant I hear him. “All those fumes made me dizzy.”

“I have some headache tonics,” Courtney says. “Why don’t you have one, eat dinner, then see how you feel?”

I can hear the rub of his gloved hand over his forehead. “That won’t help. Hey, do you think Witchdoctor Urma can tell if there’s a brain tumour?”

Courtney’s voice is soft, reassuring, “You don’t have a brain tumour, James, you just want to avoid gym class tomorrow morning. It’s just gymnastics—”

I tune them out.

Silent, I move with the wave of seniors onto the path that curves down the West Quarter, all the way to the front entrance. Evening is slipping into night, and so dinner in the mess hall will be lame and soggy and lukewarm.

But worse is the light, or lack of.

All we have to illuminate this little side path is the moon, largely wisped in clouds, the orange glows from the windows, the little lanterns plotted over the snow and hung onto the wall of the academy, but mostly buried in snow.

Light is too diluted out here.

So I breathe a sigh of relief when, we follow the path around the bend for the entrance, and there, the bright lights of the posts illuminate the school grounds.

And a snowball flies overhead.

I duck with a wince.

It smacks into James, right on the face I assume by the muffled shout that comes after the strike.

Before I can stand upright, another one spears by me, then Teddy, just in front, shouts, “Snowball war!”

I throw myself against the wall of the academy.

James and Courtney are quick to join me, their breaths hoarse and ragged.

Teddy takes off running for the shrubs, Piper hot on his heels. They take cover and are quick to gather dusts of snow onto their gloved palms and cake them thick.

In a blink, movement strikes down the lethargic seniors—and all hell breaks loose.

Most run towards the battle, taking cover, ducking down behind the stairs to the entrance, some diving behind the shrubs to join Teddy and Piper.

I look back up the path.

The Snakes must have been last to leave the gardens, because they are all the way at the end of the two dozen students that were on the path moments ago. But they hear the chaos, and my brother’s frown is quick to brighten.

Serena breathes a noticeably deflating sigh. She doesn’t move—but Landon, Mildred and Oliver jolt into a run down the path and charge into the battle.

Dray hangs back, a bored look on his face, then turns to mutter something to Serena. She laughs, bitter.

I watch Oliver sprint by, followed by the two with heavier builds, Mildred and Landon both wearing that horribly familiar gleam in their eyes. Bloodthirst.

A whimper comes from James, beside me. He buries his face in his hands.

Because we are trapped.

If we even try to move around the wall for the stairs, we’ll be struck by any of the dozens of snowballs that spear through the mist like missiles.

“Olivia!”

I turn a frown over at the shrubs, frosted and dead.

Teddy waves his arms above his head—and the moment our gazes lock, his hands flap in an urgent ‘come over here’ gesture.

I just aim my frown at him, digging deeper into my skin.

“We need help,” he shouts, still flapping his hands.

“I don’t need detention,” I shout back at him. I was already given a week’s worth after socking my brother in the face, and that cost me a lot of time I could have spent on literally anything else.

Piper arches her neck to look over his shoulder at me. “Build our ammo!”

“No!”

Courtney leans around James to shoot me a bewildered look, one that asks why the hell those two are trying to recruit me.

And, with a glance up the path at the unmoving Serena and Dray, I see that they, too, wear the same dubious look.

I don’t know.

Maybe they learned I have mad skills when we built snowmen. I don’t consider them friends or anything.

“I’ll cover you!” Piper shouts, as though I have agreed, which I fucking haven’t, then she piles just five lame snowballs on one hooked arm before she takes a crouching stance. “It’s just a bunch of juniors—I’ve got you.”

Juniors are still university students. They are nineteen years old. I doubt they have weak, lame and unusable arms for throwing snowballs at my face.

But then Teddy adds, “I’ll do your history essay!”

I arch my brows.

He nods, urgent, “I swear on the moon, I’ll write the whole thing!”

I don’t give it another moment’s thought.

I just push from the wall and, ducked low, bolt for the shrubs.

Piper holds true to her word. She jumps up and starts swinging those snowballs as far as she can.

I’m struck on the hip, hard, and the bite of pain is sharp enough that I wince, and I know there was a stone in that one, little fuckers.

I dive behind the shrub. And the look I aim up at Piper is anything but kind.

“Sorry,” she hisses, then drops, empty-handed.

I flip onto my knees and start stacking snow into balls. I make sure to shove as much of the gravel and stones into them as I can.

And I work, fast.

Teddy and Piper and, down at the next lines of shrubs, my brother and Landon, pelt snowball after snowball at the now screaming juniors.

“Stones!” I shout down at Landon.

Mildred is quick to throw a snarl at me.

But they listen.

“They’re putting stones in them!”

Oliver’s face twists, furious, then he starts to dig under the shrub. I’ve made more for Teddy and Piper than they can use as quickly as I build them.

So I help.

I jump up and—did I mention I have a wicked aim? Shot put was an easy pass for me in P.E. and I’m a star at darts.

Now I want to know exactly which little junior put a stone in the snowball that struck my hip.

I don’t know who did it.

So I target as many as I can find.

Hidden behind trees, under the pews, on the other side of the staircase, some taking cover behind a snow-wall-fort erected in the middle of the grounds.

And we are merciless with every single face that pops out, until a lot of the juniors take off running.

Landon is quick to chase them down.

Mildred stumbles behind him, just chucking straight stones now, not even bothering to pack them in snow.

Oliver charges for a junior, a stocky guy with an enraged purple face. He pelts him, no mercy, over and over.

Teddy turns a grin on me.

Knees buried in the snow, I rush through making the next round of ammo.

“Get Dray,” he hisses, urgent.

I throw a bewildered look at him.

Then I shift my gaze up at the path.

Serena is still where I last saw her, but Dray now stands too close to the cowering James and scowling Courtney. He doesn’t watch the battle, not more than a glance here and there, but rather he watches me.

His frown is hooked onto me.

“That’s suicide.”

“Fuck him,” Piper scoffs, then jumps—and aims her pebbled snowball at Dray.

His brows raise just a moment before he twists—and dodges it.

Teddy fires the next, and this one strikes Dray on the side, hard.

Blue flames flare from under his lashes.

He looks right at me.

I didn’t fucking do anything.

But then, his mouth quirks at the corner—like he wants this, wants me to join them in an attack against him, like he’s daring me… and he knows I won’t, because I’m a coward.

Teddy and Piper are relentless.

Most snowballs don’t connect—Dray sidesteps, leans away, ducks, but each dodge brings him a purposeful step closer to our shrub, to us .

“Are you helping or what?” Piper shouts down at me.

Still, I am kneeling in the snow, a little pile of ammo in front of me. I turn my stunned gaze on her. “You’re out of your fucking mind!”

Teddy shouts a roar of annoyance. Guessing his strike didn’t hit.

“So what?” he snaps at me, then snatches from my pile. “That fucking guy is a right ass. He’s got it coming.”

With that, they are both back on their feet, firing off as many as they can. One smacks Dray on the chest before he breaks out into a run—right for us.

My insides constrict.

Before I even realise what I’m doing, self-preservation kicks in—or, more accurately, self-defence.

I snatch two snowballs and jump to my feet. The weight of them on my gloved palms tells of the pebbles stuck inside.

Dray falters.

His brows raise…

Then a grin sweeps across his face.

“Olivia, what the fuck!” Oliver’s shout bellows from across the grounds, out of breath and frantic. “No!”

But he’s too late.

I fire them off, both of them, in a blur.

The first one almost hits his neck, but he swipes it out of the way—then staggers back a step, his cheek turned to me.

Because the second struck him right on the mouth.

A single trail of red runs down his chin, thin and wispy, but striking in the white of the grounds. His lashes are low over the cutting gleam of his eyes.

“Oh, shit,” Teddy chokes on his words, swirled with laughter. “You actually did it.”

Piper huffs a breath behind me. Stunned silent.

The battle doesn’t stop. The surviving attackers still fight.

Distantly, I am aware of the thudding sound of punches flying. I don’t need to guess who took it too far, but Landon and Mildred.

And me.

Because I hit Dray.

Got him square on the mouth.

But all that comes from me is a breath of rushed relief, then a lazy smile.

Fuck, that felt good.

Dray rolls his jaw, once, twice, then his lashes flutter—and he turns a glacier look on me, lakes frozen over, pits of death ready to suck me in.

The thick black gloves that sheath his hands tighten into fists.

Then he’s moving for me.

“Olivia, run!” Oliver’s voice booms over the grounds, hitched and raspy, and I know he’s running for me, too.

I don’t run.

I drop to the ground and rush to pack another snowball.

I stagger to my feet, breath grating through me, my chest thundering, and I aim, but before I can release, an eruption of shouts thunders the mountainside.

“Teachers!” “Incoming!” “Every witch for themselves!”

Students scatter.

It’s a sudden shambles of witches fleeing into the treeline and bolting down the paths for the gondolas and the gardens, or practically galloping towards the old abandoned cabin.

Don’t get caught.

But I get caught.

“Don’t you dare move!” The booming shout of the headmaster jolts me. “Every single one of you, hands up!”

Teddy and Piper are gone.

I don’t flee with them.

I just drop the snowball and lift my hands.

Dray does the same.

A heartbeat after me, he just—raises his hands.

Swallowing thick, I turn my chin to look over at Oliver.

He’s halfway across the grounds, but by how harshly he’s panting and how he’s hunched over with his hands pressed against his thighs, I know he was stopped mid-run towards me.

I frown at him.

The brother who never comes to my aid. Who never shouts at me to flee. He doesn’t look at me.

His gaze is locked onto Dray.

We’re all still as Headmaster Braun shouts out detentions at every face he sees. Master Lockwood comes barrelling down the stairs, Eric at his heels, followed by Master Novak, and they splinter off in search of hiding students.

I drop my hands to my sides with a slap.

Dray does, too.

Mirrors me, my every move, and as I stagger around the shrub for the front of the academy, Dray is my shadow.

He keeps close.

Oliver waits. Gaze cutting between us, he doesn’t leave me to Dray’s mercy.

Headmaster Braun finally flings his pointed finger at me. “Detention, tonight!” Then it shifts to Dray. He echoes the words, then again to Oliver, “You too!”

He has to point the finger and speak the punishment. It binds us to our consequences. No matter how much I might try, I wouldn’t be able to stop my feet from steering me to detention.

I feel the enchantment clamp down my spine.

I go rigid, then turning on my heels stiffly, I march up the stairs.

Dray follows.

Oliver, too.

But no attack comes.

I return to my dorm room unscathed— for now .