Lavinia snorted. “We should be asking Harriet. I heard she went up to his room.”
“Where is she?” Asked Presley.
Lavinia took a swig of her drink and shrugged.
“I dunno. But I do know that she said he left her speechless.”
Clever Harriet. That wasn’t a lie. She had indeed been speechless at his rejection.
“Valeria said the same.”
“I mean,” said Lavinia, “the poor girl tried to off herself when he dumped her it must be the biggest-”
Presley’s hand flew over Lavinia’s mouth and the girls toppled over laughing.
Maeve felt ill at the mention of Valeria, who never returned to school after the incident, but she kept smiling.
“Just tell us!” Laughed Lavinia.
“I can’t because we never have,” said Maeve.
Maeve realized that they likely weren’t the only ones assuming she and Mal were sleeping together.
“What about his lips?” Asked Presley. “Does he kiss with passion or so so softly?”
“I wouldn’t know,” replied Maeve.
“You’re such a liar,” said Lavinia. She tossed back the rest of the Bourbon. “All I can say Maeve is enjoy Mal while you can,” she slurred. “You’re going to need these books when you’re married to your own cousin.” She laughed heartily.
Maeve’s skin turned to ice. Lavinia’s face dropped as her hands flew to her cheeks.
Presley and Violet and Annacorta’s giggling ceased. The rest of the girls looked down at their drinks.
“Maeve,” she started, “I’m so sorry I shouldn’t have said that.”
The next breath Maeve took felt ridiculously long.
Last Christmas Astrea Movros and her cousin Kazir Greenbrier were engaged to be married. They weren’t the first Sacred Seventeen relatives to be engaged. And they probably wouldn’t be the last.
“I didn’t mean that,” Lavinia continued, her voice growing panicked. “It slipped out as a joke-”
Maeve’s glass vanished from her hand. She pushed off the carpet and Lavinia went to grab her hand. Maeve slipped away before she could, making for the doors of the dorm.
“Maeve!” They called after her.
But she ignored them all. She steadied her breathing and rushed across the common room, throwing open the ivory and gold double doors leading into the castle with the flick of her palm. They slammed into the stone walls behind her.
The corridors were dark at this hour. It was well past curfew. The storm outside rose, lightning flickering on the other side of the vaulted windows. Thunder shook in the distance. Low and steady.
She flew down staircase after staircase. She stopped only once she was outside, in the covered courtyard where stone archways allowed the ice cold snow to blow through freely chilling her to the bone.
There were no guards in sight. Thank Merlin.
She slumped to the stone steps beneath her, and pulled her knees up close, breathing in the toxically cold air. The storm picked up. Thunder slammed into the castle, jostling her heart.
She was a fool for letting her guard down in front of them. She should have gone to bed. Instead she was the butt end of a joke.
“Sinclair?”
