“Your friend…” she echoes, her face furrowing, her slow mind scrambling and churning to catch up. Then her jaw starts to tighten, and I hear the faint click of it. “Since when?”
I chance another look back at the queue.
Stormy faces are aimed right at us. Some check their watches; some are brave enough to groan loud and impatient—and they aren’t alone.
I wish she would hurry up, too.
The cold is nipping at my cheeks, burning them raw, and if I could get moving on the slopes, that will at least fight off the cold from my bones.
“Since I developed standards,” Landon says—
And fuck the weather, because that was colder than any snowy mountains I’ve ever known.
I blink at him, his cold smiling profile, the warmth of his complexion never matching the hardness of his eyes.
And that unwilling pity rises up in me.
Again, I almost feel sorry for her.
Landon pushes into step, and that shoves his shoulder into hers, pushing her back, out of our way.
I scurry behind him, keeping the snowboard lifted at an angle, a shield from her dumfounded look that could morph into rage at any moment.
Landon seems to think the same.
He ushers me onto the chairlift first, and only when my backside is firm on the seat out of Mildred’s reach does he clatter in beside me.
The chairlift offers no comfort to me as it jerks into motion, and draws me up the mountain, further away from Mildred—and her slack face.
Even when I can’t make her out much more than a blocky silhouette, the breath is tight in my chest.
The look I slide to Landon’s already frosty cheeks is dark. “I’ll be paying for that later.”
Landon doesn’t respond.
He stares straight ahead, and I don’t know if he heard me or just decided he doesn’t care to acknowledge the truth of what I said.
Mildred won’t let that go.
I hope Dray’s protection is strong enough to warn her away from me.
Above, the cable hums, and below, the academy shrinks. The mountains stretch, endless and white beneath the morning sun, the academy’s spires, like black stone teeth, shrink in the distance.
The ride goes on in silence.
I focus on the valley falling away beneath us—the silver thread of the frozen river, the black pines dusted with snow. The lift sways slightly, and I grip the snowboard tighter.
Then, finally, the bars lift with the groan of cold metal.
We slip out of our seats, boots thudding down to the flat concrete podium.
The chairlift continues onto the curved wires ahead, then going back down the mountain, all the way to the end of the slopes, where it’ll pick up more students, and take them back up to the academy.
Landon sets out the skis, then gestures me to step into them. I do, and clip in my boots as Landon clasps into the snowboard.
His profile is tense, a feathered jaw that lashes against the pale mountain sun, and I wonder, now that I look at him, if it hurt him.
Speaking to Mildred like that, saying those things to her, a friend he’s had almost his whole life, to snub her—I suspect it cut him deep.
