3

The veil took me from Stonehenge to London, then another to Edinburgh, and then the final one to the village nestled high up in the Swiss Alps.

By this point, my patience has had a razor taken to it. A thread, frayed, ready to snap.

I can’t stand another moment in a queue.

So as I hike up the hill that runs along the village, and look ahead to see that the line zigzags from the gondola, halfway down the village, my face crumples with a scowl.

I have no choice but to join it.

Here, if I tried to cut, without the protection of my brother or the likes of Dray, I am dead-meat-walking.

Here, rules fade along the seams.

And I am game.

Tired game. But a hunted one all the same.

With all the queues slowing down time itself, I wonder if it would have been quicker to just fly here by plane. We left the manor after breakfast, and now it’s almost dinner time, I am starved sickly, and I wait alone in the gondola line.

I hug myself against the drizzle.

Snow doesn’t fall yet, but moisture clings to the Alps—and it freezes my bones to brittle.

The line moves slowly, the same glacier pace as the gondolas. I stand in it too long, but as I get closer to the end, and students just keep on piling out of the veil down the hill, I hear a familiar shout.

“Olivia!”

I turn just as a body hits mine. Arms come around me—

I gag.

Courtney stinks .

The stench is a blow to the face.

“Gods, Courtney.” I peel myself out of her bony arms. “You reek of manure. What is that?”

You could half convince me she rolled around in faeces before she went through the veil.

Her cheeks flame. Not shame, but indignation.

James, her brother, reaches out to touch my shoulder. That’s as close to a hug as I’ll ever get from him. If anyone could be more awkward than Courtney, it’s him, all skinny and gangly, eyes that never meet anyone’s for longer than a second, and always his clothes seem ill-fitted.

One might think them a poor family.

But they aren’t. Average, I suppose, in terms of money. The Home for the Misplaced—sort of an orphanage, prep home for made ones—is very well funded by our society. And so, I know they do not go without.

James pushes thick-rimmed glasses up his nose. “Someone pushed her into the fertiliser bags.”

I look down the way to the winding path, the ones that lead to the barns of the witching village. Suppose there would be some animals kept that way, bagged manure and fertiliser for some plants that would grow in this barren temperature. The sort of plants only witches have the touch for.

My mouth puckers as I turn back to Courtney. “Didn’t happen to be my brother, did it?”

“No,” she sighs. “But it was a Snake.”

Snakes .

The common school term for those banded seniors, the select elites who don’t seem to ever be apart. Dray, of course, and my brother, and Serena Vasile, Landon Barlow, Asta Strom and the psychotic Mildren Green.

I reach out for her sleeve and, with no apologetic look spared on the students behind me, tug Courtney into the queue.

James slinks in with her, his face aflame.

He looks anywhere but at the silently glaring students behind us, those a tad younger than us, so not as brave as they could be.

“Who was it?” I ask.

“Mildred,” she says and fixes her ugly pink gloves, patterned with yellow smiley faces.

“At least she didn’t break anything.” I sigh and look her over, and I find only a scrape on her cheek, but it could have been worse.

Courtney tucks her hair behind her ears, the sort of hair that always looks a little on the oily side, but she’s made it worse this year.

I grimace at the sight of the uneven fringe that cuts along her brow, and fleetingly wonder if she snipped at it herself with some craft scissors. It wouldn’t surprise me.

She’s impulsive that way.

The cold steals away the conversation, and we slip into silence.

By far my favourite part of traveling on the gondola up the mountain to Bluestone is the view.

You’ve never seen the Swiss Alps until you’ve seen them from the highest possible point off ground before the clouds and mist swallow you.

Courtney and James pile into the gondola car with me, along with a silent redhead I don’t know, but whose youthful, freckled face places him early in his school years.

He is quiet in the gondola of seniors, and so I quickly forget he’s in here with us at all.

I lean my head on the window and watch the lush green of the mountains climb higher and higher, into a dusting of light, off-season snow, the kind that melts into sludge within moments of touching the earth.

Opposite me, James doodles on the thick white page of a sketch book, blotchy charcoal stains all over his shirt and fingertips.

I glance between the siblings, seeing the resemblance in their heart-shaped faces, delicate thin lips, and dark brown hairs. Their complexions are pasty, the kind that blotchy reds show up on whenever they’re rushed or embarrassed.

They look alike. More like twins.

Oliver and I are twins, but we sure don’t look it. There’s a family resemblance, but distant, like cousins.

I look most unlike my family.

Father and Oliver are doubles of each other. Their hair colour is a rich brown, soft and glossy, Mother’s is sleek black, mine is a pale brown and sort of dull. My eyes are hazel, Oliver and Father share emerald eyes, and Mother’s are as black as ink. My complexion is pale, but red if I spend too much time in the sun— yet all the others in my family take a sunkissed tan quite nicely. I get burnt and freckles.

Those differences might seem small.

But I always thought it meant I was a little less pretty than I was meant to be. If I had been prettier, then maybe it would have made up for the deadblood shame.

I’m sure I bring shame to my family.

It’s a gut-clearing thought, one I throw away as quickly as it landed in my mind. Never let myself simmer in that.

I loosen a breath and blink back to my surroundings.

The gondola is only halfway up the mountain.

It’s starting to steam from the cold outside the higher up the mountain we glide. But I can make out the snow-dusted blur of Bluestone in the distance.

An odd structure. Somewhere between a chalet and a chateau. Restorations and expansions over the centuries have created this mansion of blackwood, of towers, of eight levels and spanning grounds.

I look at it now, and I should see the warmth of orange glows behind the windows, of lit lantern posts and excited students spilling out of the gondolas.

Instead, I see hell.

Icy prickles crawl down my bones, all the way to my toes. Instinct curls them in my boots.

I hug myself, the fur of my coat tickling my nose the way those tendrils of anxiety irk my insides.

Dread.

Pure, unfiltered dread flooding me.

And I can pin it all on the Snakes.

Dray, specifically.

I wonder if it wasn’t for him, would the others come after me as fiercely as they do? Or would I be subjected to mere pranks, little things like sticky, smelly potions poured into my backpack, or sweets stuck to my hair?

I let myself wonder, if he hadn’t triggered it all that very first day in the gondola waiting zone, our very first day at Bluestone, when we were thirteen—would my life be as miserable as it is?

The ache shreds my chest.

The memory is as fresh as yesterday, or even fresher, because yesterday I was shopping on Regent Street, and I have to concentrate to recall the shops I visited, but for the memory of Dray’s turn on me, I remember everything. The way the rain fell onto his tousled, sawdust hair, the glass-blue of his eyes softer in the striking backdrop of the Alps, the pink of his full mouth faded in the cold.

I remember the way he turned on me in the queue. The way he looked down on me, a furrowed crease between his brows, a mix of confusion and utter outrage.

Then the shove.

The slam of his hand on my chest that had me tumbling back—and I landed on my bottom in the snow.

“Waifs go to the back queue.”

The stares are forever burned into my mind. Etched into the curves of my brain. Serena, my friend, the closest friend I had, she just looked down her nose at me. Her expression was unchanged, unfazed, as though I was little more than a menu that was set down too loudly on a table at a restaurant.

Landon scoffed, and it jerked his shoulders.

My brother frowned. I thought—for a quick-to-die moment—that he was going to reach out for me, offer me his hand and help me up.

He didn’t.

He just frowned at me.

Now, I understand.

He was regaining balance in this turn of dynamics.

I was never isolated before that moment. Never shoved by Dray, or even taunted.

I was Dray’s favourite.

He was mine.

We stole kisses in the gardens of his estate, he gave me flowers on sunny days, watched me all the time, blushed once when I tugged on his hair, and always let me win our games of chase.

Dray liked me.

Now, he ostracised me.

Publicly.

There was no question about that moment, what it meant, that it happened in the queue full of academy students.

The frown my brother wore was one of reassessment.

Then he turned his back on me.

The others followed.

Dray, too.

I remember sitting on that snow for too long, and the bottom of my leggings were soaked by the time I got to my feet. I dragged myself to the end of the queue, stopping every other moment to look back at them, as though they would laugh and tell me I was silly and call me over to them.

That never happened.

I went to the end of the queue.

That is where I met Courtney and James.

And it’s been that way ever since.

I swallow down a thickness in my throat.

It’s only when I blink, and a blur keeps to my vision, that I realise I am weeping. Silent tears, gathered on my lashes, the heat of one on my cheek.

I turn my cheek to my shoulder and shrug the tear away.

Neither Courtney nor James notice.

James, too consumed by the sketchbook balanced on his lap.

Courtney, finishing off texts on her cell, the last ones she’ll be able to send for a while, since Bluestone’s condensed magic interferes too much with the devices.

I look out the window and see that Bluestone is drawing near. Just some minutes, and we will disembark the gondola.

And I spent the half-hour ride thinking about Dray, like I have nothing better to do with my time than waste it all on him.

The wretched humour of it isn’t lost on me. I spend my time in the gondola thinking about him, but Dray probably never throws a thought my way when I’m not right there in his face.

There’s of course no introduction to the academy once past first year, so it’s straight to the mess hall or the dorms, depending on how hungry one is.

I am famished.

Too ill in the gut this morning to eat more than a nibble of toast and I thought I was going to sick that up onto my plate. I also didn’t have dinner the night before.

My stomach is paying for that now. I am half-suspicious that it’s started to eat itself.

James and Courtney go ahead to the dorms.

I hurry with the belly-rumbling crowd into the mess hall.

The first years are off getting their orientations, and since there are about fifty students in each year, and most have splintered off to the Living Quarter, I am quick to push and weave my way through the atrium and into the mess hall.

I rush my way to the front of the still-forming line.

With so many stragglers and everyone shouting over the heads of others, calling people over, cussing others out to revive old rivalries, I sweep by unnoticed. Too much distraction in the air.

But also not enough teachers.

As I snatch a metal tray from the stack, then move for the buffet, I notice that it’s unattended. No staff to monitor the food—and no faculty has yet to take a seat at the long table on the podium ahead, the one that overlooks the rest of the hall.

I need to be quick.

Distractions will settle soon, and then I might be noticed in that lull. Really, it’s the Snakes I have to watch out for. Not many other witches bother with me.

But the Snakes are enough of a threat that once my tray is stacked with chicken, fried potato chunks and perfectly blanched green beans, I steer back to the entrance of the hall.

There, I settle on a small, round table near the doors.

Always good to be close to an exit.

One of the few things I’ve learned at the academy.

There’s not a wasted moment before I’m tucking into my supper. I don’t like to give my enemies too many shots at me, and already my eyelids are starting to feel as heavy as lead.

Still, I force my tired gaze to sweep the mess hall.

A few tables up, Mildred—a particularly stocky elite whose witching family aren’t all that great at wealth-making rituals—falls into her wooden chair and runs the back of her hand over the blotched skin of her freckled cheek. The cold burn is fresh on her pinkish face, drizzle dusted all over her auburn hair pulled back into a stern bun.

I forget her, since she hasn’t noticed me yet, and scan the queue at the buffet.

I spot my brother first.

Oliver has his arm slung around Serena’s slender shoulders.

He draws her into him, closer to the damp front of his black jacket, and through a crooked grin he mutters words that I am certain would make any other witch blush.

But not Serena.

The indifference is palpable. The grey steel of her eyes lift—and even I can see from this distance, and in her silence, that look says so much.

It tells Oliver he is dull, unimpressive, uninteresting.

But she doesn’t pull out of his hold.

Betrothed, those two are. Some days they act like it. I’m sure they fuck. But there’s a freedom in their ways. Freedoms that draw them to the beds of others.

I watch them now and see the best that any aristos can hope for in an arranged marriage. Respect, dignity, loyalty—and friendship.

And this is how they tease each other.

I slide my gaze to Dray.

He’s one ahead of them in the queue, but his attention isn’t on the buffet that I have no doubt he could just push his way towards, shove all the other students out of his path, and very few would speak up.

I find the reason he stays put in the queue.

Asta Strom.

On Dray’s level in terms of elite, ancient ancestry, but less power in her family and much less wealth than most of the aristos. Her family, the Stroms, teeter on the edge of gentry, the class below aristos.

Asta makes up for it in beauty, in silvery-blonde hair that falls like a sword down her back, in the delicate cut of her jaw, in the lush lips she has filled at the salon, and her frame so slender that I can even tell she’s fit and small under the puffy coat that blankets her.

Dray has his unreadable gaze on her.

He could be hearing the opera detailed from her lips, he looks so uninterested. But his fingers toy with a strand of her hair, and that is interest enough to fuel her into her ramblings.

I cut my gaze to the faculty table overlooking the hall, a sudden hollow pit in my stomach.

I see no signs of Eric Harling anywhere.

Suppose he’s gone off with the faculty, or arrived earlier than the students, since he’s to start a part-time apprenticeship this year.

Doesn’t matter anyway.

We wouldn’t speak if he was here in the mess hall. At most, we would share a look, a small moment that flees as quickly as it came.

He might smile.

I would look away.

Turning back to my smeared tray, I start on the dessert. Butterscotch pudding.

Time is fading. I need to be quicker, finish up here and scurry my cowardly ass to the dorms.

I swallow back a sudden lump lodged in my throat. It isn’t the pudding. It’s the pair of brown eyes notched onto me from across the hall.

Mildred has spotted me.

And she’s watching me.

I shrink in on myself.

Her family might be beneath mine, a gentry beneath aristos, but she’s a lot bigger than I am, thanks to all the ice-hockey and snow-rugby she plays. No amount of dangerous rituals my father performs can save me from her knock-out right hook. Believe me.

I scarf a too-large chunk of pudding that immediately gives me heartburn, then chase it down with a too-strongly brewed green tea.

I fumble for my white-fur hat, discarded on the seat beside me, then—as I reach down between my boots where my bag rests—Dray catches my gaze.

I took too long. He’s finished at the buffet, now setting his tray on the table, next to Mildred, and I’m hyper aware of a now-double threat.

Dray’s glass-shard eyes find my stare.

The snowy wind outside leaves its mark on him, in the tousled hair that falls over his brow, and the pinkish hue that warms his cheekbones.

I drop my gaze, fast, and yank my bag onto my lap.

No parents or decorum to save me here, and eye-contact is an invitation to him and his torture.

I abandon my tray for the cleaning staff and get the hell out of the mess hall before anything can kick-start the year of torment.

The welcome heat of the dorm room rushes me inside.

The moment I open the door and feel that punch of warmth, I’m quick to stumble in and shut the door behind me.

I shrug off my coat and, with a quick look around, spot Courtney on the canopy bed beside mine. The fireplace roars on the wall across from the doorway, casting a menacing orange and shadowy light over her relaxed face.

I frown a moment before I realise that she’s out-cold.

Passed out on her back, a splayed book on her chest, and a trickle of drool that glistens on the edge of her cheek.

I pass my bed, the same one I have had at the academy every year since I first arrived. I toss my bag onto the trunk at the end. My movements are slow, careful, and I reach over Courtney for the book that rises and falls on her chest, in sync with her peaceful breaths.

I peel it off of her.

Before I set it on her nightstand, I turn it over to read the cover. It’s just an atlas.

My mouth puckers and I think my best friend ( only friend) might be a little strange.

I set the atlas down then move for my trunk. My luggage is stacked neatly beside it. We hand over our cases at the veil near the village, long before we take the gondolas. The larger luggage, thankfully, comes ahead of us.

Makes for less chores to delay much needed sleep before classes officially start tomorrow.

And I need sleep.

There’s something so tiring about veils, like we never really found a way to witch-travel without absolute fatigue. Guess there’s a price to pay for moving through space, and that price is all your damn energy.

Mine is drained.

The fatigue has me in its grip, and it pulls me down, down to the ground, to the rug beneath my feet, to any place I can rest and sleep.

But I fight it. I fight it enough to change into a matching shorts and top pyjama set, tug on a pair of bedsocks, then climb into my fresh sheets.

I don’t need to glance over at the two canopy beds against the wall opposite me. I know the other dormmates haven’t left the hall yet. Both Serena and Asta were still there, last I saw them.

I hope they aren’t too loud when they come in.

Though at this rate, I think I could sleep through blackout dust. And those things just have a menacing feel about them.

A yawn splits me as I pull on my eye-mask, then flop down on the feathery plushness of my pillows.

Sleep finds me in less than blink.