Oliver side-glances at me. “Word hasn’t gotten out yet about the engagement—not more than a few whispers among the aristos.”
My face twists, unkind. “So?”
“Landon and Serena know.” His voice is low, gravelled, like he’s sharing secrets with me in the fog. “Asta suspects, but no one elseknowsyet. And they won’t, not until Dray formally announces it. You have time on your side.”
I draw the sable-fur hood over my head. “Word will get out, and you know it. Just like it did with Landon, just like it did with Serena.”
Oliver’s mouth moves with a subdued murmur, “I confided in Serena. Landon hears more than he should. And yes, whispers will spread, if they haven’t already, but as long as Dray believes you are still in the dark, you should go on as normal, as though nothing has changed—”
“That’s why you’re still walking with me?” The force of shoving my fists into my pockets is violent. “To ask me to be everyone’s target again?”
Oliver considers me out the corner of his eye. “You’re underestimating Dray’s influence.”
A bitter scoff catches in the back of my throat.
His influence.
What a laugh.
Dray is just a beast marking its territory.
“Mildred,” Oliver says, and he says it so simply, so purposefully, that I think he expects me to just get whatever he’s saying.
I don’t.
I flail a hand trapped in my pocket. A gesture that says,‘what about her?’ in not the politest of ways.
If I had a lamington…
Oliver’s cheek is turned to me, blushed and burnt from the cold already. “Before everyone realised you’d left the academy early, Mildred got some itching powder from the village. She was bragging about her plans to sprinkle it in your underwear, in your socks, sheets, hairbrush…everywhere.” He shrugs. “Dray warned her off.”
A blank look settles on my face for a heartbeat, then, “Warned her? How?”
“He told her not to,” he answers, and the ease of the words, the explanation, the tone, itches me with the urge to push him over. “He just saidno.”
I stumble over an uneven cobblestone, arched under the snow.
“Wow, what an impressive tale,” I say. “I’m so grateful you told me the adventures of his heroism—how could I have lived without knowing such valour?”
Impatience is a sharp glint in the gaze he cuts to me. His jaw tightens for a beat. “It’s how he said it—in a way that implied he would ruin her entire family empire if she went against him.”
“Oh, so classic Dray, then.”
His mouth curves. “Classic Dray, yes.”
A heartbeat passes before I loosen the weight pulling down on me. “He’s determined. It’s almost not worth the bother to take down a winery.”
That’s all the Green empire is.
Vineyards and wine production.
Good enough business that the Greens are gentry—but it is just wine.
Oliver lingers a patient consideration over me, as patient as we must be for the long hike up the cobblestone, made longer by our early arrival. Less students this early, that means a smaller queue to form at the gondola line.
And that means tackling the hike in one go.
“Dray’s already acting like I’m his property,” I say. “He’s blocking Mildred and even Grandmother Ethel.”
