I sit up a little straighter, itching to ask if she believes in magic but bite my tongue. She’s not a descendent, just one’s in-law. After she leaves, I pull up a search page on my phone about Brume and the Quatrefoil. If I’m going to be sitting here alone, might as well make the most of it. I’m scanning the webpage when the chair across from me scrapes against the brick-red tiles.
“I got bored drinking alone.” Slate sets down his goblet of . . .
I sniff the air but have trouble smelling anything over his spicy fragrance. “What are you drinking?”
“Chouchen.” He drops his coat on the back of his chair.
“Huh.”
“What doeshuh, mean?”
“That stuff will make you go cross-eyed.”
“Hmm. Doesn’t sound like such a bad fate right about now.”
As he scoots his chair in, I hear a cringy voice say, “He’s definitely not from around here.” Adrien’s girlfriend is sitting across the narrow dining room from us with two of her friends.
They’re all seniors at the university, all pretty, all annoying, and all looking in Slate’s direction. Charlotte catches my eye and shoots me a smile that really isn’t one. She doesn’t like me, even though I’m not sure why. It’s not like I’m much of a threat to her relationship with Adrien.
“Friends of yours?” Slate’s angled his chair out, arm draped around the back rungs, gaze on the trio.
“Nope.”
“Isn’t the girl with the short hair your favorite professor’s—”
“Shh. . . And he’s not my favorite anything,” I grumble as one of the girls flips her blonde hair over her shoulder, eating up Slate with her large, brown eyes.
He tips his goblet to her, then to his lips, and takes a lengthy swallow of Nolwenn’s mead, his Adam’s apple gliding up and down.
The blonde, whose name I can never remember—by choice—winks at him.
“If you’d rather go sit with them”—I shrug—“go right ahead.”
“If I wanted to go sit with them, I’d do it.” The wood creaks as Slate shifts in his chair. After a quiet beat, his voice rises over the cheery holiday tune, “So, I think I found a piece.”
My gaze snaps to his face. “What?”
He stretches his fingers as though they were cramping. “Damn ring lit up like Rudolph’s nose when I was close to the well. Not to mention, I got to experience all the pleasant symptoms your papa warned me about.”
I blink. “You’re kidding?”
“Sadly not.”
“I thought they would take a while to reveal themselves.”
“Apparently this one was in a hurry to be found.”
“Let’s go get it.” I push my chair back and start to stand, but Slate claps his palm over my wrist to keep me in place, the red stone gleaming like an unblemished ruby.
“Slow down there, princess. First off, I’m in no state to leap down a thirty-meter pit filled with Satan knows what. And secondly, I want to check with Rainier if it’s yours or mine.”
“You think it could be mine?”
He removes his hand from my arm. “Wells are technically inside the earth.”
“It’s in the well?” My pulse skips and strums. “Let me call Papa.”
“There are a lot of people around, Cadence.” Slate’s dark eyes don’t stray off mine. “Ask him when you get home.”
