I just can’t guess what that looks like.
Oliver suggested Dray might court me.
But that’s a laugh. Even when Dray was courting Asta, it was by the book, nothing sincere, no love in the gestures, just‘here is a diamond necklace’, a false smile when she crooned up at him, and that was that.
They had their way.
Their arrangement.
Dray isn’t a fool.
He would have known all about Asta and Eric.
He just didn’t care.
Didn’t give a single fuck whether or not she was just sleeping with Eric, or that she secretly loved him, or that their relationship has been on and off for years.
Dray knew, but he didn’t care.
It’s that simple.
I don’t expect much courtship aimed my way. And I don’t expect the same allowance that Asta got whenever she wanted to hook up with Eric.
I expect to be at the centre of a web.
Everyone has spindled and weaved a part of that web around me, and I’m stuck in the middle of it. And I’m supposed to accept this.
How can I?
How can I welcome the company of the Snakes after all they have done to me?
Mother would allow it, use it to scheme, manipulate it to balance the scales in her favour—and become the snake charmer.
Guess that’s why she’s on top now, when she started as gentry, a girl from some remote villa in the Italian countryside.
But I’m not like her.
My pride, my ego, whatever it is, or even just as simple as my pain, I can’t walk into the academy and welcome the friendships on offer to me.
I need a plan, an escape route, layers of schemes.
I’m at an absolute loss where to start—which is most inconvenient, since I return to Bluestone in just one day.
8
The slanted roofs of the village are caked in snow.
In the misty air, paths are packed with white dust, and the drizzle is ice nipping at my cheeks.
Winter has been harsh enough at home. I don’t relish in my fate of a cold, unforgiving semester in the alps.
I throw a look over my shoulder, moody and put out.
Down the path, the veil shudders at the clasp of the town, a steady stream of students piling out onto the snow-coated cobblestone.
The inkling tickles—the urge to turn on my heels and make a run for it, to barrel into the veil, past the security guard, and race through the streets of Edinburgh.
Don’t think that would go down too well for me, though. It’s been just moments since I came through the veil, so I would probably run right into Mr Younge on the other side—and I’m already in enough trouble as it is.
