Mr Ström’s sharp face is a fistful of knives, his complexion as pale as the mountains around him.
The look he slides to us is nothing less than misdirected rage. But the glance lasts just a moment before Mrs Ström steps out of the car, a mirror of Asta, and followed by their right-hand man.
The three of them step off the podium, onto the path, and start up to the academy.
Serena wastes no time.
The door starts to slide shut—but she jams her body against it, holding it open.
I lunge for the gap, staggering into the car, and not a heartbeat after, the door whizzes shut.
The winds are silenced.
Neither of us sit.
The gondola jolts into motion, going up the cords to the turnaround a few metres ahead, and we sway with it.
I reach up for the leather strap above my head.
Serena mirrors me.
And for a long moment, we just stare at each other.
We pass the next car as it stops at the podium, and through the layers of thick glass between us, I make out the soft angles of Amelia Sinclair’s face.
It’s as bad as I thought, then.
The whole fucking coven could be headed for Bluestone.
What I’ve done, more than the scrap with Asta, more than the mislabelled gifts, but with the article, is fucking catastrophic.
The shockwaves reach as far as the Ströms, the Sinclairs, and whoever else is on their way.
But the gondolas have a curfew.
And Serena confirms it with, “Five.”
I turn my gaze to her.
5pm.
Her thinned mouth traps in whatever else she might want to say—but her gaze is fixed down at her watch.
It trembles.
No, not her watch.
Her hand.
Her whole arm.
Her entire body.
She quivers, a leaf in a blizzard, with the panic of it all. And it’s not like we can relax yet, either.
We still have to get through the veil.
Past the guard.
