Chloé’s is the best boutique in VeVille, all natural fibres, handmade, imported—and on the pricey side, so I’m certain it’s the aristos students who keep this place afloat.
But the dress isn’t for my body type, so I appreciate it for a moment before I watch the village come to life in the window’s reflection.
The streets are flooded with students.
Every witch that passes is a picture of scarves and hats and gloves, long coats, puffy coats, or the braver locals who simply wear sweaters as they rush down the crooked street to the bakery—before it’s swarmed by us, the invaders.
“I could never live here.”
The confession is a misty breath from my lips—glossed and prepared for the bite of the cold—and the moment I confessit, Serena turns her cheek to the shop window that held her attention, and she looks blankly at me.
I watch the window, the reflections in it.
Behind Serena, as though I didn’t speak at all, Oliver is checking over the palm-sized notepad with game scores inked all over it—games from outside of Bluestone.
Dray looks it over, but it only loosely holds his attention, because the moment I do utter that confession, his gaze lifts to mine in the reflection, and the game scores go forgotten.
Serena’s confusion threads through her slow tone, “Was that ever an option?”
The smirk I give her is smarmy. “I’m just saying. The locals can’t move without stepping on a student most of the year. They get, what, a few months of peace before we’re back?”
Oliver’s grumble is smooth, and I suspect he lost whatever bet he had going on, “Then they shouldn’t live next to an academy.”
“The village came first,” Dray says and takes the notepad from Oliver. He folds it, then slips it into his coat pocket.
As though no one spoke, Oliver throws his arm around Serena’s slender shoulders, disturbing the faint wet dusting of snow on her coat. “Are we going in?”
Dray checks his watch—and it hooks my gaze. “The reservation is in thirty minutes.”
His watch is a Vacheron.
But not the one I gifted him.
That puckers my mouth.
If he’s going to wear a pricey timepiece like that around VeVille, why wouldn’t he pick the new one?
Oliver doesn’t wear his either, but that’s because he’s more of a collector, and so his watch is in his own personal vault.
Dray, on the other hand, wears quiet wealth with indifference.
I can’t recall a time, ever, where he has been dressed in outward labels. I recognise the brand by the look of what he’s wearing, like now, the dark grey blouson and the pleated trousers are Bottega Veneta, and the boots are John Lobb.
The watch is a Vacheron Constantin.
But not one item of clothing he wears right now screams its brand. He would never wear red painted soles for all to see with every step he took. He would never wear a sweater with BALENCIAGA printed over it.
Tasteless, tacky, new money behaviour.
Dray wears craftsmanship, not labels.
But he would—and does—wear his brand watches, he wears them quietly, doesn’t show them off, lift a cuff or a sleeve to reveal them.
So it startles me that he wears a watch he has had for two years in favour of the brilliant timepiece I gifted him for New Year.
Dray and I never get each other’s gifts wrong.
There has never been a time we haven’t liked what we’ve gotten.
