I lean around the tail of the coffee queue, and just around the velvet curtain, on the chair directly opposite Dray, sits my evil twin.
He hasn’t folded.
Oliver faces off with Dray.
A row of cards is face-up in the centre of the table, a small stack of black chips to the right.
Then Dray’s eyes shift to me, pale as winter ice. They catch the firelight and hold it, unblinking.
It pins me.
There’s no smile, no greeting—just that silent stare that prickles my skin.
I don’t know how long it pins me, but the locked stare is broken when Landon shoves through the coffee queue.
He’s moving for me, words on his tongue, about to fall from his parted lips. But then his gaze shifts to the poker game—and snags.
Landon tilts his weight away from me, closer to the poker table, the lure too quick to grab him.
The deal strikes through me, and I catch his wrist in my gloved grip.
He startles, eyes flashing down at me.
For a heartbeat, his face hardens, his pride rising like a swell over calm waters—
And before I can say anything, or decide to not help him at all and just let him go chasing his own demise, the door of the grand parlour bursts open so violently that it sounds like it’s been booted.
The door strikes the wall and shudders the whole room.
Voices silence.
Heads turn.
For a moment, all that can be heard are the fires crackling in the hearths—but then the bootsteps come, pounding down on the floorboards like hammers.
The coffee queue is in my way, and I can’t see through it to whoever is storming through the grand parlour, but I know.
I know it’s her.
My heart slingshots before the name even settles in my mind, before the realisation can fully register.
Mildred.
The fright jolts through me, rushes in through my flared nostrils, and I stagger back.
The spine of the hard sofa digs into me.
Landon whips around and looks over the heads of the students in the way.
His gaze lands on something—her head, her face, I don’t know, but his jaw tenses, tight.
“Go.”
That’s all he says—and I don’t need telling twice.
I shove myself from the couch, smacking into the back of a junior that I shove aside, and the moment the coast is clear, a cluster of four witches come out of the doorway from the girls’ dorms.
The swell of their entrance pushes me back a step—and that gives Mildred the time to catch up.
