But it’s too late, because Landon heard my strangled chuckle, and his dark eyes swerve to me. “I have a theory that the witches who do rituals are poisoned by them each time. The more they do, the more they,” he clicks his tongue, “lose it.”
“Shame they are integral,” Dray adds, and his tray is clear of the chicken strips he cut up and the green beans. “Ritualists are our literal gateways to the gods—mad or not.”
“Can they ritual up a toffee pudding?” Landon speaks through a yawn stretching through him, and he swallows it down. “I’ll settle for butterscotch if I have to.”
The only desserts I saw down at the buffet were those horrible plastic cups of jelly and fruit.
Landon kicks back from the table. “I’m going to the kitchens for a raid.”
Oliver grunts as he struggles to lift himself from his own chair.
Serena is fast to chide him, the same thoughts that crumple my face, “Do you think you should be going anywhere but bed right now?”
His migraine must not be done with him.
But Oliver is done with us—and her.
He doesn’t even acknowledge that she spoke before he starts out of the mess hall, Landon at his side, and they go off in search of dessert.
Serena thins her lips for a beat, then forces a smile. “I heard Teddy has been buying up all the blackout powder.”
She tells the table in general, not anyone in particular. But it’s Asta who latches onto it—
And as she does, Dray takes his tray back to the buffet for seconds.
All that use of their prints have them hungry.
But it’s the out I’ve been waiting for.
I abandon my tray and, without a goodbye, leave the mess hall before Dray notices and decides to follow me.
The atrium is so empty that my steps echo up the walls and staircases as I move for the corridor that leads to the Living Quarter.
But just as my boots thud onto the runner rug, my head almost goes knocking off a collarbone—and I stagger back a step to glare up at him.
Eric Harling jolts with the surprise.
His face shutters.
He doesn’t move.
Doesn’t step aside for me to pass him, doesn’t give that awkward side-to-side thing the gentry often do before we finally slip by one another.
He gathers himself, his face softening, and still blocks my way down the corridor. “Did you see?”
His question hesitates me.
I falter, close enough to see the stirs of honey in his eyes, eyes I once thought so pretty.
“See…?” My brow furrows. “See your test?”
Those eyes glitter just that bit brighter. “It was good, right?”
The cringe reaches all the way to my bones.
For a flicker in time, I feel like an adult, listening to a child swell with so much pride over an accomplishment.
In that flicker, I see my future—
