Unless I ask…
Quiet, he says, “Yes.” His gaze sweeps over my face, my cheekbones, my lashes, the shape of my nose, before he adds, a murmur, “I did.”
His touch is gone.
In a heartbeat, he’s leaned his weight back onto one foot, his hand departed from my face, and the only touch of him left is the tingle on my lips from the threat of a kiss, and the crushed-glass stare.
“Goodnight, Olivia.”
My lashes flutter, the surprise rooting me to the spot.
For a moment, I just stare at him—waiting for him to strike.
But he doesn’t.
He watches as I take a tentative step around him. Then another, and another, until he’s turning to trail my steps to the staircase.
He doesn’t follow, like I almost expect him to.
He doesn’t shove me down the stairs, like I sort of feared he would.
He just lets me go.
11
All the seniors are rushing and scraping around the first week back, just to keep up with the too many assignments dished out too soon, which is supposed to make way for all the practice print exams.
But come Saturday, the first weekend of the semester, the rush and the chaos and the frazzled study has shifted to a buzzing relief.
The mess hall is packed fuller than it should be this early on a Saturday—and the atmosphere is humming. Literally, I walk into the residue of a fading spell, zapping and glittering up the tall walls that arch into a beam-slashed ceiling.
I lean my head back to watch the sparks fizzle, a glittering drape of golds and silvers, and through the ache of my neck arched too far, I wonder what charm I missed as I slip between groups of students moving by me in the doorway.
I pass tables packed with early risers, and almost every senior can be accounted for in the animated faces that alight like stars.
On my way to the buffet, I spot Piper, dressed in her snowgear, up early to hit the slopes, but Teddy wears his snow rugby uniform, and so he’s not one of the seniors who gave up sports to focus on the upcoming print exams.
Oliver and Dray did.
But that’s the thing about witches like them. For all I know, they didn’t actually give up all sports. They might sneak off to spar, or play hockey in the basement ring, and only pretend to have given it up because it looks better.
Appearances and all that.
Appearances don’t matter as much to the gentry—or is it that they just don’t calculate the same way?
Eric does.
As I join the buffet queue, I glance up at him, sitting at the faculty table—but I swerve my gaze away the moment he looks at me.
I stroll the length of the buffet, eyeing up the morning’s fresh spread, but I can see his reflection in the glass casing.
Still, he watches me.
That alone irritates me.
He’s probably chewing over responses he wished he said in the moment.
I won’t be giving him another chance to say those things.
