The amber that glows from the fireplaces washes over the deep brown hues of the couches, where seniors are draped and lounged, crystal tumblers clink with ice and slosh with booze, like all the rules are out the window now that the final semester is here.
I side-step Piper who, as I make to pass, leans back in the claw-footed armchair to swipe out at me.
“Join us,” she croons, and the stink of cheap booze radiates from her. “We’re playing UNO.”
I start the forced smoothed look, the polite rejection of her darling offer, but then my brain and eyes catch up.
The colourful cards spread around the table.
She really is playing UNO.
Not a game often seen around the grand parlour. But there are about two dozen cards stacked in her hand, while across from her, Eric holds just two.
My eyes narrow on him.
He makes no effort to pretend, to smile, to welcome me or invite me into their game. Guess it serves no benefit for him this time around.
But his thumb is flat against one of the cards, and after a beat, he slides it out.
I watch it, the lowering of the card to the pile and, as Teddy holds out a bottle of cinnamon flavoured whisky, sloshing it around in an offer to me, Eric plants the card down.
The moment it happens, I jump on it.
I aim a smarmy look his way. “He didn’t say UNO.”
The rise of booming outrage and laughter and shrieking flinches me.
Teddy hollers and points Eric’s way.
Piper shrieks and shouts for him to pick another card.
Sara Horvat almost falls out of her seat.
It gives me a moment of satisfaction—and the opportunity to flee before Piper can drag me into the game.
I walk right into a blockade.
The queue for the coffee station. The machine whirs too loud, a screech that’s only welcome in the morning, not when the grand parlour is already too full, too loud, and I have to turn my body sideways to inch between Dragana and Mikhail Ivanov, a fallengentry with unkempt stubble on his narrow chin and brows so bushy it always looks like he’s scowling.
I edge out on the other side of the queue, but I reel back as a paper plane goes zipping right by the tip of my nose. The huff barely releases from me before a swarm of snow-suited students come spilling out of the door to the girls’ dorms.
The breath that grates me is unkind, impatient, and I step aside to let them pass. Not like I can shoulder my way through all six of them.
With my back pressed against the spine of a couch, I turn my gaze around the curtained length of the room—and I find Dray.
At the round, felted table, he reclines in his chair. Behind him, the row of three stained glass windows rises up, moody and dark.
But Dray isn’t interested in the windows.
His focus is on the poker game.
Cards are fanned out in one hand, and there’s a stack of black poker chips on the table that he idly fingers.
Snakes orbit him.
Gleaming in silvery silk, Asta sits beside him, her own cards face-down in front of her.
On the chair next to her, Serena’s nude nails glint like pearls as she picks at her pile of chips—but her cards are folded, too.
