I’m famished.
Courtney goes ahead to the dorms as I hurry with the belly-rumbling crowd into the canteen. The first years are off getting their orientations.
I push to the front of the crowd and rush my way to the peak of the line. After I pile a load of butterscotch puddings and boiled potatoes—I know, a weird combo—onto my tray, I park myself at a small round table near the exit. There’s not a wasted moment before I’m tucking into my supper. I don’t like to give my enemies too many shots at me, and already my eyelids are starting to feel like lead.
A few tables up, Mildred—a particularly stocky elite who doesn’t come from too much money and whose witching family aren’t all that great at wealth-making rituals—starts to eye me. I shrink in on myself. Her family might be beneath mine, but she’s a lot bigger than I am, and no amount of dangerous rituals my dad performs will save me from her right hook. Believe me.
Before she can paint a target on me, I scoff down a too-large chunk of potato that immediately gives me heartburn. I chase it down with a strong tea.
Only the dessert left to go. But by the time I’m digging my golden spoon into the butterscotch pudding, one table ahead of me, Dray and Brad join their friend, Landon, and Dray’s stormy blue eyes find my stare. His silvery-blond hair falls over his forehead and brushes over his shaped eyebrows. It only increases the intensity of his icy stare. Beautiful on the outside, ugly on the inside, like fruit on the cusp of rotting.
I look down at my tray. No parents or decorum to save me here, and eye-contact is an invitation to him and his torture.
I’m saved by fast eating. I leave my tray for the cleaning staff and get the hell out of the mess hall before anything can kick-start the year of torment.
By the time I get to the dorms, Courtney is fast asleep with a book open on her chest. I peel it away from her, set it on the nightstand, then slide into my canopy bed. Sleep finds me eventually.
Chapter 4
I’m pulling out my textbook and supplies as the Brew’s teacher comes rolling into the room.
He’s a short, round thing, with a villainous moustache that almost seems comical. He looks like he should be running some corrupt business on Wall Street, not here teaching us the Theory of Brews.
His corduroy jacket pinches at the middle of his bulbous belly, the buttons looking about ready to ping off and take someone’s eyes out, and—for whatever reason—he wears a golf cap to cover his balding head.
Master Welham turns to face us, his cheeks and nose all ghastly shades of red, and he rolls on the balls of his feet. I instantly tune out the moment he starts running over the curriculum this year. It’s the same every year. Brews, salves, ointments, blah, blah, blah.
I hate Theory of Brews. My father insisted I take the class, since there’s so few I can study without power. And when father insists, he demands. His word is final.
So, I do what I do best. Hide. I’m tucked away in the shadowy corner of the classroom, with a double table all to myself. It’s as much distance that I can possibly put between me and Dray at the front of the class without running out the room.
Well, shit.
The moment I think it, it’s like he reads my mind. Dray looks over his shoulder at me and slowly drags his books into one hold. My heart drops like lead to my stomach. Dray carries his things over to my table and drops himself into the seat beside me.
I blink at him, stupefied. With a worried glance over at the Master, I don’t see any objections, so I turn my now-furious stare on Dray.
“What are you doing?” I hiss at him.
“He told us to partner up,” he drawls, disinterested. Neatly, he arranges his books and pencils beside me, sort of making a divider down the middle of the table.
I pinch my mouth and fuss about with my own things. Should probably pay better attention from now on.
Master Welham rests his purple hands on his belly. “You may begin!”
Startled, I clench my fist around a pencil and study the rest of the class. Heads dip all around me, and everyone starts to copy the notes from the chalkboard.
I copy the headline.
‘DRAUGHT OF THE UNDEAD’
It’s a deadly poison, one that someone like me could never master, even with power. Like I said, everyone has a talent. We can study other skills, but by nature we each excel at just one particular thing. For me, that’s being a target. For Dray, though he’s arrogantly good at most things, his talent is makut—the ability to hex without hexbags, charm without chants, and create veils without full rituals. An exceptionally rare talent. I only know of two others who can do it—the master at the Academy, and my father.
Yanked out of my thoughts, I watch a piece of pink-tinted paper appear on my notebook. Slowly, it transpires from thin air. Then, ink in perfect cursive starts to stain the page.
‘Watch your back this year, Waif. You might just find a knife in it.
Sincerely,
A true elite.’
My head jerks up and I glower at Dray.
He’s writing calmly on his notebook, and I don’t see any sign of pinkish paper near him. My slitted stare does a turn around the class.
And then I find him.
He’s already looking at me, leaning back in his chair and a devilish smirk on his lips. A smirk father would smack off if he knew what Brad just sent me. But I have no evidence. The pink paper is gone when I glance back down at my notebook and all that’s left in its place is pink dust.
I flip off my brother with a nasty sneer, then turn back to my work. Beside him, the sandy-haired Landon snickers under his breath. I roll my eyes, pencil to paper.
If the first few minutes of the first class of the year was anything to go by, this year will be a rough one. And that was my brother. Lord knows what it’ll be like when Dray finally has the bother to turn on me with them. But he is quietly working beside me, not so much as throwing a glance my way.
I know Dray and I know he doesn’t back down. I get the feeling he is gearing up for my worst year yet.
Holding books to my chest, I rush down the corridor, my shoes sending a clacking noise bouncing from the wood floors to the papered walls of the chalet.
The chalet is quiet, except for the alp winds whistling through the black-paneled windows and my racing footsteps. I’m late for Astrology Theory. I spent too much time this morning prying chewing gum off my skirt (see, I told you Dray was up to something, and it started with chewing gum on my seat in Herbalism class after Theory of Brews).
Thankfully, Astrology is a quiet class. Not many witches bother with the stars and the planets.
But I’m late, which means all the good seats will be taken, and I might not get to sit next to Courtney. I round the corner to the corridor too fast and slam into a fleshy wall. My head knocks off a chin, and I stumble back, dropping all my books. Rubbing my head, I squint up at the one I ran into and a scowl settles on my round face.
“Watch where you’re going, O,” Brad complains, his hand sliding along his jaw as if to heal it.
I sneer at him. “Watch where you’re standing, asshat.”
I drop to my knees and brush all my textbooks back into my arms. Cradling them, I jump to my feet and shoot my brother one last sneer before I brush past him and Landon for the next corridor. I make it by a hair before the Master of Astrology closes the door.
My face is smooth with a false apology at the master before I rush to the empty seat beside Courtney and drop into the wooden chair. I dump my things on the table and slump, catching my breath.
At the head of the class, by the chalkboard and all the metal hangings of planets and stars, there’s a second teacher facing us. As I lift my gaze, it hits me like a blow to the gut. I forgot all about Eric’s apprenticeship this year!
His gaze drifts over the class, lingering on me for a moment, a small smile on his lips, before it’s like he never looked at me at all.
Butterflies erupt in my stomach and I squirm in my seat. Anxious bite
s make me fidgety.
Eric—Mr. Digger—addresses the class, “Open your workbooks to page fifty-four. We’ll be starting with Orion’s Belt.”
A curious murmur crawls over the dozen students. We all recognise him.
He straightens his tweed jacket. “Some of you may know me. As you are aware, I am a former student of Bluestone Academy. However, this year, as an apprentice of astrology, I will be practicing as your instructor and expect to be treated accordingly. Do not mistake my familiar face for any opportunity to cross boundaries. I will treat you all as any teacher would.”
Visibly, I deflate, slumping in my chair. All hopes of flirting my way to the top of the class flew out the window like bats out of their cave. I was sort of counting on that possibility, since my grades are barely scraping by as they are.
Mind you, it’s not like I need the grades. I’ll never work a day in my life, I’ll never want or need for anything.
My whole life I was raised to be in the elite society, and one day, to be a wife to a husband, uniting two empires. But the wife part doesn’t seem all that certain, so I’ll make do with a socialite for my life and that’s enough for me. But decent grades keep father off my back and that would be nice.
Eric waves his hand and mutters a chant under his breath. The metal fixtures above start to shift, and all the planets do a swivel around the room. The true Astrology Master sits at the back of the class, observing silently.
When Orion’s Belt settles above Eric, he lowers his hand. “Part of Orion, the twenty-sixth constellation in the sky, the Belt can be seen from—”
Boringgggg.
Already, I’m losing interest. Not even with the hot, new teacher can I hold attention for another moment. My mind is on the pasty-white stain on my school skirt and how the hell I’ll get it out without my servants to do it for me.
Worst part about Bluestone Academy? No personal maids or footmen. We’re taught to do it ourselves. It’s torture and I wonder if I can hex Principle Fairweather for creating such a ghastly rule.
I lean forward in the chair and take my purple pencil to the notebook. If I write my name, at least I’m sort of responding in class.
Eric is blabbing on about the myths of Orion and his bronze club. For the first semester, this class is all theory. The next half of the year, we get to spend hours on the chalet’s roof and study the stars at night with hot cups of coco and thick blankets rugging us up. Only in the second semester is this class my favourite.
I tune in and out of the lesson.
“—the Belt position in a tilt, which many believed to signify the direction in which Orion was intended. Who can tell me who this giant was believed to be pursuing?”
I raise my hand. I remember the answer from last year. “The Pleiades sisters.”
Eric’s smile is small, but I catch it. He inclines his head, then addresses the rest of the cosy class again.
A smile of my own plays on my lips. Now Eric might think I’m smart. I’m not. I’m not dumb either, but I’m not exceptional in school. To be fair, I don’t try very hard, but some things stick.
Still, does it even matter what Eric thinks of me? He’s an of-age now, and though he’s only one year older, he’s an apprentice master and I definitely can’t cross that boundary.
Besides, before today, we’ve barely spoken to each other a dozen times in all the years we’ve been sharing the Academy. He’s friendly enough, but that’s it.
Father once told me Eric’s dad proposed an engagement between me and Eric, but in my world that means very little if anything at all. It means an alliance, like the old ways they had in the krum world. We haven’t quite caught up with their free ways, yet. To us, it’s all empires uniting, dowries, arranged marriages, and strategy.
No romance, no love.
Just business.
Dinner in the mess hall is bustling.
Everyone’s out to get their meal at the same time. I might push my eating schedule out later for supper instead. I can barely squeeze myself in between James and Courtney at a small round table by the tray bins. It stinks of fish juices and oranges.
Slouching over my tray, I prod at the gooey goat mince drenched in gravy with my spoon. The mashed potatoes are too runny, and the white is starting to seep into the dark gravy. I make a face before I let my spoon clatter to the table, then look up at the long brown table at the far end of the mess hall where the staff eats.
Eric is at the table, sitting next to Milton, the Master of Makut. They are in deep conversation, hunched over and talking in low voices. So deep that he thankfully doesn’t notice my long stares.
But I realise someone else has noticed when I turn my gaze around the room and find Dray looking right at me with eyes like silver blades. He’s flanked by my brother and Landon as usual. Serena sits with them, too. Once a friend of mine, an elite that never quite turned on me, just turned her back on me.
Dray’s eyes are like molten silver, and his strong jaw is clenched tightly. Whatever I’ve done to piss him off is a mystery to me. It might be just that I’m here, alive, breathing, and he’s decided to up the ante, leaving chewing gum behind.
Not that it matters. Battle is headed my way regardless of the reason.
Anxiety pools in my tummy and I look down at my tray. Eight years and I still long for the days Dray was kind to me, when he would steal soft kisses in flower gardens, and we had secret codes that no one else was allowed to know, and he’d give me wild flowers and tell me my curls were just like them, wild and beautiful.
Dray hadn’t changed since then. He only changed towards me. Before the Academy, I was left alone by his cruelties, and watched others suffer without so much as blinking my eyes. Now, I guess I’m getting some bad karma sent my way.
The dread-pulling sound of snickers yanks me out of my thoughts. Hairs all over my body prickle, as if disturbed by a mass of spiders swarming me.
I instantly latch my attention onto the most elite of the ancient bloods. Dray’s face has darkened, but he isn’t looking at me. His stare is fixed above me.
Waves of nausea wash over me, hitting me like storm’s waves, and I trace his stare upwards. Just inches from my head, a tray carrying gooey gravy and mash hovers its way towards me.
“Move!” I shout, pushing at Courtney and James, and scramble back out of my chair. I trip over the legs and land on my backside—
The tray falls and smacks me on the head. I hear the slap of the foul dinner hit me before I feel it running down me in warm, gooey globs. It’s everywhere—everywhere. The urge to scrape globs of the gunk out of my cleavage itches my fingers.
I shut my eyes on the murky-brown running down my face, lumps of meat caught on my lashes, and I let a shudder rattle me.
The sniggers stop. Laughter booms out instead and the heart-racing, echoing sound of it is clawing at my ears. Courtney is half-covered as she kneels at my side and picks the tray off my back—it was stuck there, glued by the poor excuse for dinner. James picks pieces of mash out of his hair standing at my side.
Grabbing onto the edge of the table, I hoist myself up, the soles of my shoes slipping on the slimy floor. That damn laughter still rattles me, echoing against my fucking eardrums. Another shiver rattles me, and my grip on the table tightens. My fingernails leave crescent dents in the wood.
Goo clinging to my lashes, I look up at the elite table and let my glower simmer on their cheerful faces. Even Brad is pink-faced, doubled over from his laughter. I hide the pang of hurt that punches my chest.
Guess Dray really is kicking this year off with a bang. The official first day and I’m already heading off for my third shower.
Chapter 5
The anxiety is relentless.
Feels like worms writhing in my belly. It pumps through my veins, tearing me apart as though icicles spear through me.
Dread. Sheer, total, and utter dread consumes me.
You’d think I’d be used to feeling this way by now. But all I want to do is curl u
p into a ball and hide the rest of the year away. I don’t want to leave the dorm room I share with Courtney. I want to stay tucked up under my blankets and furs. But I have to go to the bathroom, bad.
Slight problem. I have to either walk through one common room or past the larger common room to get to a toilet. Dray might be in either one. But he’ll be with Brad if he’s still up at all—it’s past midnight—and Brad likes an audience, so I’m guessing—and hoping—they’ll be in the grand common room, where the large fireplace roasts everyone, and there is all kinds of card and pool tables to distract us from our assignments.
The smaller common room is mostly for reading, so I head to that one. There’s a room full of toilet cubicles there, and in my shorts and t-shirt, even with the heating on blast in this chalet, it’s still the Swiss Alps, and I’m freezing my ass off by the time I creep out of the dorm.
The corridors are quieter than a graveyard before a ritual. All the doors I pass are firmly shut and few have little slivers of light wedging out from under them.
I make it to the closest common room whose door is slightly ajar. It’s quiet inside. I wait by the door for a heartbeat or two before I gingerly push it open.
No one is inside, except a half-breed senior who sleeps on the cosy couch by the radiator. I slip through the crack of the door and hurry to the other end, where the door to the toilets is tucked behind a tapestry. The silly pranks of the year have begun.
I don’t find moving tapestries and furniture all that amusing, but sometimes an original prank rears up from the mundane ones and I might smile a little. This is not one of those times.
Quick on the toilet, I rinse my hands in the porcelain sink, then hurry back to my room. Only, I make it as far as the common room when I’m stopped dead in my tracks.
The half-breed who slept on the couch is gone. In his place, the dark-haired beauty Serena is sprawled out, picking at her fuchsia-painted nails. She doesn’t bother to look up at me with her bored, olive-skinned face.
Bluestone Academy (A Bully Paranormal Academy Romance) Page 2
