He’s predictable.
More than how he looks, I expect the question before he even asks it.
“What were you and Harling talking about?”
A scoff catches at the back of my throat.
My steps down the corridor are unhurried, since we have our truce, but I don’t stop to chat, either.
“How great he is.”
Sandy hair strokes over his furrowing brow.
My smile is filth. “He was baiting me for praise for his practice exam.”
The corner of his lips curve. “Paper men need others to prop them up.”
“Is that what you need from me?” I slide a dark look to him, all signs of my smirk vanished. “To tell you how impressed I am with your print?”
He turns his faint smile on me, an echo of it softening his not-so-murderous eyes. “I need nothing of the sort. I know it frightened you.”
Words gather in my throat—but before they reach my tongue, a string of girls skitters by us, full of whispers and hushed giggles.
The one from the gondola queue is among them, the girl that Oliver checked out after we came through the veil.
I was certain then that she dropped her glove on purpose, but as I watch her now, I see no real intention in her, no schemes or grand plans of stealing an aristo’s attention.
Her cheeks are flushed with the rush of no-good-deeds, and though she is at least eighteen years old, there’s something more youthful about her, like she has an innocence not yet poisoned by the Videralli world.
I lean back into the wall, letting the girls pass without getting my shoes all trampled.
They scamper up the way to the atrium.
It’s passed their curfew.
By the colour and patterns of their uniform ties, I can tell they are not yet juniors. A year shy of university years, I guess.
Definitely up to no good.
But it’s Friday night, and they should have their fun. So long as my shoes are unharmed, it doesn’t worry me.
“You wanted that.”
Dray’s words snag on my mind for a beat before I turn a frown on him. “What?”
“The camaraderie in our earlier years here.” He leans against the opposite wall. “The fun, the mischief, the connection. But you have it now.”
The smoothness of his calculative face is too calm, too soft.
That senior exhaustion is getting to him—or he’s just really unbothered by my existence now that he’s set on marrying me.
I push from the wall and start down the runner rug.
He follows at my side, matching my pace. “I expected you would be happier about that.”
“Happier about my bullshit friends?” I choke on bitterness. “Serena who uses me, my brother who hates me, Landon who’s there because it serves him?”
“Isn’t it what you wanted all these years?”
