Pinched between my fingers is a scrap of paper.
I did fall asleep with assignments around me on the bed. Looks like I maybe didn’t brush my hair before wrangling it up this morning.
Asta’s nose crinkles, her gaze glued to me as I flick the scrap of paper into the sink.
My huff is impatient. “What do you want?”
Asta is tight-lipped as I snatch out a paper towel and, unkindly, smack it along my hands. I’m too rough with it, and I can hear the echo of Mother’s voice, ‘Hands tell age where a face does not.’
In other words, I’m worsening the future wrinkles and roughness of my hands, and there’s no botox to be injected into my fingers to make them look youthful.
I toss the paper towel into the bin, then turn to face Asta. I lean against the sink, my hip digging into the porcelain edge, and fold my arms.
“Go on,” I say. “Now’s your moment. Say what you need to say—and get this over with.”
Her lashes lower.
Slowly, like a curling snake, she turns to face me, and her hand comes down, firm, on the edge of the sink. “Serena does not like you.”
My lashes flutter, just once, but enough to betray the surprise flickering through me.
Not quite where I thought this would go.
My shuttering mask encourages Asta.
“She never did. Even when we were children, and no one knew you were a deadblood,” she says, and states it plainly, like a fact, as truthfully as stating that the mountains are snowy and cold. “Serena was your friend because she had to be.”
There’s something not wholly malicious about the way she’s telling me. The words themselves are cutting at me, papercuts slashing through my insides, but Asta’s delivery, her tense expression, her rigid fingers on the basin, and even the hesitation in the clench of her jaw as she takes a beat, it’s all quitenervous.
“Do you have a point you’re getting to, or are you just jabbing?” I tilt my head, smoothing out the hurt from my face. “I do have other places to be. Literally anywhere but here with you.”
“Serena is out for herself.”
“Aren’t we all?”
Her smile is terse. “If she is cosying up to you, there is a reason for it.”
Is this Asta’s way of hinting at my engagement? Her push in the direction of the revelation?
Dray has orders out there, orders to not tell me anything about my secret engagement.
I’m sure Asta doesn’t want the blame of telling me outright, so she’s hinting and guiding me to the right thought process—but I already know.
So I sigh something impatient, then glance at my watch. “We all have our motives. Is that all?”
Asta’s mouth purses for a beat, and it’s a look I’ve never seen on her perfectly beautiful face before. A face that now ends with a cat’s bum.
It’s unseemly, her parents would chide her for it, my mother might too, but it sticks as she glides a menacing step closer to me.
“Serena, for all her confidence, is as scared as any of us.” She takes another step closer. “Serena cannot stand alone.”
Asta stops at the sink, her hand firm on the edge of the basin, and her nose just a minty breath away from mine.
“Serena has had motive to befriend youfor a decade.” Asta arches a preened brow. “Considering she’s engaged to your brother, she could have at least maintained a friendly acquaintanceship with you—and look at all those events over the years, all those opportunities to speak to you, when it would have been most acceptable for her to do so… did she?”
My face tightens. My teeth clench together.
I don’t answer.
