I double-take on her.
But the overshare doesn’t surprise Landon.
“She’s just not very good at transformation,” he says with a shrug. “It doesn’t help that you’re excelling—and she might just get stuck with a gentry for a husband.”
My mouth tilts.
I didn’t think about that connection before.
Asta’s print isn’t powerful enough to be beneficial in the aristos world, like Serena’s is.
Serena can change herself, head to toe, wear another’s identity.
Asta can change a cup to a glass.
And if she marries gentry, like Eric, then her status will get a bit wobblier over time.
Her family are already inching towards gentry, stocks falling across the board, mansions in disrepair. Suppose her arrangement to Dray meant a lot more to her family than it did to her.
Yet there’s no pity in me for her or Eric.
And I’m stolen back to my own woes when two trays set down with a faint clink opposite me.
I look across the table just as Dray and my brother sink into the chairs.
My face crumples.
Dray arches a brow in answer.
But Oliver only has eyes for Serena… particularly the diamond earrings glittering on her lobes. “You changed your mind?”
Serena slides a dark look to him.
“I didn’t get the impression you particularly liked them,” he adds, and reaches out for the diamond earring closest to him, his fingertips grazing the air around it, delicate.
“Perhaps it was you I wasn’t particularly fond of that day,” she says, and though her tone is light, like bells and glitter, that’s all just fog around a sword.
Oliver’s smirk is hard as stone.
He turns his cheek to her, and the moment he does, the smirk disappears.
Whatever happened ‘that day’—which I’m guessing was New Year—lingers with them now, a week into at the academy.
My curiosity is prickled.
But then, maybe Oliver already told me. It could be about the internship.
Serena turns her pointed look on me. “What was your favourite gift this year?”
I blank.
I fluster.
I fucking panic.
My cheeks are hot, immediately, and I swallow down an answer of nothing.
Abigail delivered the stacks of wrapped gifts to my bedchamber the morning after New Year.
