I tune in and out of Eric’s lecture. I hardly notice the time creep by before movement rustles through the classroom, and everyone’s packing up all around me.
No one hangs back for me.
Everyone is in a rush to get down to the mess hall for breakfast. It’s always like that when Star Theory begins at four in the morning, early to monitor the constellations, the shifts in positions, the dimming of stars as the planet turns on its axis.
I just want breakfast.
But I stay put in my chair, slowly packing up my bag, and wait for the door to shut, for the students to file out.
When that final click echoes through the cold, arched room, I finally look up.
Eric is without the supervising of Master Milton this morning, and so he sits leaning against the main desk, facing me.
I consider the folded paper pinched between his fingers, the faint outline of red ink stains, but I can’t make out what the grade is.
“How are you?” Eric’s question comes with hesitation. His fingers pinch the folded paper that bit tighter. “After Mildred—I wanted… I wondered if you were… well.”
I blink at him, slow and dull, my face unchanging. But the anger doesn’t flicker through me as it did the last time we were alone in a room together.
Because, truthfully, it’s not Eric that’s the problem.
It’s not the grades.
It’s not Asta, it’s not even Mildred Green.
Dray is the root of all my problems, he’s the source of the poison spreading through my life—and now, after what I’ve done, after what I said to Courtney, I’m too numb to even snap at Eric.
I cut my gaze down to the ink stains on the walnut desk.
Eric pushes off the head table. “Did she come after you again? I can report her, Olivia.”
My smile is that corners-pinned-to-the-cheeks sort of grimace. “There’s a reason you didn’t report her then.” There’s nothing malicious in how I say it or how I look at him. I only state the truth. “We all play by certain rules. Even when we don’t want to.”
The honey of his eyes softens, and I swear I’m looking into pools of guilt.
His mouth flattens into a stroked line across his face.
The backpack sits firm on my lap, my fingertips drumming on the leather as I wait for my assignment.
I hint at it, with a glance that cuts to the folded paper, then I check my watch.
Eric’s tongue drags over his bottom lip, a pensive look settling on his face, and he hesitates.
There’s more he wants to say.
I don’t necessarily care to hear any of it.
Just because I’m not angry with him anymore doesn’t mean I want to listen to anything he has to say.
But that doesn’t matter, because he decides to voice his thoughts to me anyway.
“I owe you an apology.” The soles of his brogues come down on the floorboards, a casual advance on me. “For how I spoke to you last week. It came from a place of confusion. I should have been more… understanding of your position. I thought it was a rumour, though the pieces fit together, I just… I didn’t realise it was definite.”
He heard the rumours at the ball, so he told me. But rumours are just whispers. Now, Eric seems to know as certainly as I do how dreadful my fate is.
My smile is tight. “Who told you?”
The heat on his cheeks roars like flames in a hearth.
