My grip firms around the syringe.
The hard metal digs into my palms, and the needle pinches me.
I look down.
A bead of blood swells from my middle finger, then rolls down between the others, until it reaches the curve of my pinkie.
A sinking sensation weighs me down.
Because I watch the regular glimmer of my blood—and I wonder if it would glitter with magic if it was midnight, and the wash of the moonlight came cascading in from the tall windows.
My eyes shut, slow.
Three phials already in the briefcase, the witchdoctor at the academy never allowed to treat me here—
“Olivia. I’m going with or without you. And you don’t have time to think on it. It’s literally now or never.”
Still, I hesitate.
This life is all I have ever known.
I am not so sure two aristos witches can survive out there on their own. I have never done laundry before, or washed dishes, or cooked dinner or paid a restaurant bill, or even ordered for myself at a restaurant.
But then my brother flashes in my mind.
How he stood there, turning his clenched cheek to me after Dray struck me down to the floor.
He is our father, a replica of him, in more than appearance.
And my father will come to Bluestone, and he will take me home, and he will punish me for what I’ve done—he will see it as an evil, as a tantrum, not as the desperate escape that it is.
And still…
If Serena is right, and Dray doesn’t end our engagement over this, then all of it will have been for nothing.
I answer, and I know that answer comes from a place of fear and impulse.
But it’s a word that softens Serena’s face with relief.
“Ok.”
24
Asta could come through the door to the dorm room any minute, now.
Detention was given until dinner—and that’s in less than an hour. But Asta might not stick to the order, because it wasn’t the headmaster commanding it.
The threat of her early return lights a fire under our asses. Serena and I are tornadoes ripping through the dorm, packing as much into our bags as we can fit.
I move so frantically that I hardly realise what I’m even doing—what it means to do this.
Serena snaps at me, breathy, “One bag!”
My hands still on the second backpack crumpled on the foot of my bed.
Bitterness twists my face before I toss it to the floor, then kick it under the bed. I scramble for the bedside table instead, rummaging for my black card.
I find it scooted all the way at the back, sticky to the touch. But before I can pack it, Serena hisses, “Are you out of your mind? You can’t bring that.”
