Maybe I’ll steal Asta’s.
Since she’s still at the party, I’ll be fast asleep by the time she’s back in the dorm—and the joke will be on her.
That’s it, decision made, firm in my mind.
And maybe, if I’m extra salty tomorrow, I’ll let it slip to Dray what Mildred did, what Asta helped her do, and see what happens there.
The article will kill all my influence stone dead.
Got to use my power while I have it.
The smile on my lips is tired, but sincere. “Thanks for the heads up.”
Eric’s cheeks still wear the rosiness from when he glanced down.
It’s new—the sudden interest in me.
Before, he was courting my contract. But I never felt any sincerity in it. I just needed it to work, feelings be damned.
Now… I swear the stirs of honey in his eyes are swirls of desire, of lust—and he fights his gaze from dropping back to my nipples.
Where was that in the park?
Might have made him more interesting to me.
I have half a mind to fuck him just to spite Asta.
Instead, my smile stays pinned on my face, glossed and peachy with everlasting balm, and I take a decisive step away from bad, drunk decisions.
“Goodnight.”
With that, I turn my back on him—and I feel him watch me go.
He doesn’t follow.
The corridors are mazes, but I have mapped them out over the years, and I make my way to the main staircase with a drunken stroll.
The staircase drops level after level, down to the atrium. I’m careful going down the wooden steps.
My heels clack and clack and clack, too loud in the quiet of the academy at midnight.
But the academy isn’t asleep.
Distantly, the calls and shouts and laughs of drunken students wandering around from party to party reaches me. I’m certain if I pulled open the doors of nearby broom cupboards, I would find at least a handful of students hooking up.
But I descend the main staircase alone, not a soul to be seen, only heard, and I make it to the second floor, the atrium in sight, just down a dozen more steps—
When a thunderous blast rips through the whole fucking building.
A shout pins to my throat.
I drop to the polished floorboards.
My hands come down on the poles of the banister, gripping tight, and I brace myself against what comes—
Billows of thick, total darkness.
19
