I’m about ready to call it a night. I’ve rewritten my Astrology assignment, joined the club, and finished the final quiz for the Theory of Brews. After such a success, I need a reward. Treats from the canteen, maybe. But definitely not more work—which is exactly what Country is trying to rope me into doing.
Instead, I busy myself with my response to my father’s letter. “Courtney, what’s a better way of saying Brad’s a lying piece of crap?”
Courtney’s smile is tight, the kind that says ‘do not disturb’. I roll my eyes then set pencil to paper.
“Why not just tell your dad the truth?” she asks, distracted by the five open books sprawled out around her. “Dray tried to kiss you and you rejected him.”
The scoff that comes from me matches the ridicule written all over my face. “He would have a fit if he knew I rejected Dray. That’s a marriage made in elite heaven according to dearest dad.”
Courtney shakes her head. “I’ll never understand your world.”
“It’s the same world, Courtney. It’s just a different side to it. Your mother left our society when she married a krum, that’s just the way it is. If you want to stay in, play by the rules. And a general rule is, don’t reject or slap an eligible bachelor when you’ve barely a proposal to your name.”
“Surely your father wouldn’t want you to marry him, though? I mean, he’s only been torturing you for years—”
“It’s not about that. It’s not about love or desire or hearts singing. It’s all about alliances between families turning into unions. Dray and me marrying? Bringing together the Sinclair empire and the Laurent empire? That would be the marriage of the decade.”
And it would, too.
Courtney will never understand it, our ways, because she was raised on the outskirts, with a shunned mother and a krum father. I envy her for it at times, to be told she can be anything when she graduates, to be her own self before she is a wife or a mother, to enjoy her life in any way she chooses. No arranged marriages, no suitors, no sneak attacks. It’s all out in the open.
“Surely he knows how Dray treats you,” she presses. No matter how many ways I explain it to her, or how many times, it just doesn’t sink in.
I shrug. “He knows we don’t get along. But we don’t talk about much more than that.”
“That’s horrible. You should tell him.”
My smile is strained. “If it was that easy.”
She throws down her pencil. “Well, why isn’t it?”
“If my father even chose to do something—which I doubt he would since we’re so heavily tied to the Sinclair’s—it would destroy an alliance older than this school. Our families have always worked together. Do you know how many companies and hotels they own just together, how many banks they run, how many trades their hands are buried in? All of that would collapse if our families severed ties.” I shake my head. “You just don’t get it.”
Courtney considers me a beat. “Arranged marriages are almost never heard of in the krum world,” she says. “Just run away after school finishes up and you’ll be free.”
I smile at the thought. Free. Something I’ll say, speak, but never possess.
“I get offers of marriage,” I say. “But father thinks it’s my dowry that attracts most of them, so he won’t consider any proposal from a man whose wealth is less than three times my dowry. Makes for slim pickings.”
“Does wealth matter that much?”
“Yes.” I won’t pretend it doesn’t. I was raised in wealth, it’s all I’ve ever known, and for it to be stolen away from me by a poor husband I don’t love? I can’t imagine.
Courtney thinned her lips and brought her attention back to her too-many books. She flicked the page, but I can tell she’s not really reading—her mind is tangled in my world again.
I finish up the letter to my father and start to pack up. I have my first Brew Club tonight. With dreaded Dray heading the club, I’m sure to have a blast.
Behind a chipped wood desk, I scuff my feet on the floor and eye my brew of balm. It’s a little on the watery side and a nervous mist gathers on my face.
With a short glance around me, I can tell almost all the others in the club have gotten the balm right or at least pretty close to. But I followed the steps one by one, perfectly, and still as I stir the balm, its texture betrays itself as more of a translucent lotion than an ointment.
Each of us—all two dozen of the popular club, second only to the combat club—stands behind our small cauldrons and wait for Dray to score us. It is a moondust balm, meant to ward off infections from wolf bites and speed up their healing. Mine looks like toilet water.
My face is pinched by the time Dray reaches me and my brew hasn’t gotten any thicker.
He gives it a swift once-over before he scribbles a note on his clipboard. Then his stony eyes lift to mine. “You skipped a step,” he says. I watch his pencil move to a small jar on my table, hidden behind the propped-up book. “You missed the moondust.”
I feel the heat burning my face. Such a slight overlook, but something colossally stupid. I want the wood floorboards to swallow me up whole.
His cold greying eyes look like frosty storm clouds brewing. A lock of his pale hair brushes over his brow, escaping the perfect combover he wears. He sweeps it to the side out of his eye.
“Better luck next time,” he says frostily, then moves on. I study the mason jar behind the book after he goes and the longer I stare at it, the more I’m certain it wasn’t there before.
I think he bewitched it so I would overlook it.
And if I’m right, it means the next cycle is only just beginning.
Chapter 9
Over the paper, Eric’s smile is sympatric as he skims my new and improved essay.
“I did go to the club,” I tell him, my cheeks aflame, “but they don’t exactly tutor, and I’m a week behind on their course. I did the best I could with the notes you gave me.”
Today, I learn that Eric is a terrible liar.
“It looks well enough,” he says, then sets it down on the desk. “You should have a little more faith in yourself.”
I zip my satchel, then sling the strap over my shoulder. “I think I still might need a tutor.”
He doesn’t argue it and, instead, looked over my shoulder at two students who’ve just come into the classroom. Dray and Brad.
I frown at the pair of them, and the reception I get back is frosty. Dray’s eyes look like frozen-over marbles and Brad pretends not to notice me at all. He knows that I know he snitched on me, and I guess guilt weighs his gaze down.
The icy glower that Dray shoots my way doesn’t go unnoticed. I turn back to Eric. “Thanks, Mr. Shandon, I’ll look for a tutor.”
He just nods once at me before I leave, brushing past the two prats on the way. Dray makes extra sure his shoulder is as unmovable as a wall and bumps me as I pass. I throw him a snarly look before I kick out of the classroom.
I head straight for the dorms. Not enough time to eat lunch on the break, so I snag a few chocolate bars from my drawer and drop down on the bed. Courtney is getting in some reading in her own narrow canopy bed, pushed up against the opposite wall.
“How’s James?” I ask through a mouthful of chocolate. “Didn’t see him in Herbalism today.”
“No, he’s resting.” She turns the page slowly. “His leg is fine, but he’s starting to get homesick again.”
He does this every year, always at the start of the year, too. He’s fine for a few days then, bang, he’s bedridden for weeks. One time, he actually did go home. He was almost expelled for it, too, because he just up and left and told no one. His mother only just convinced the board to let him stay.
So, great, he’s going to be such a bore for a while now.
Unwrapping my second chocolate bar, I prop myself up on the pillows and angle myself to face Courtney. “Eric thinks I need a tutor still. He didn’t say it exactly, but—”
“Eric?” Her eyebrow arches my wa
y. “As in, Mister Shandon?”
“If you like.” I shrug. “I prefer to think of him as ravish-me-last-year’s-senior-turned-hot-teacher, but that’s just me.”
She closes the book with a gentle sigh that tells me already I’m grating on her nerves. If it wasn’t for our shared shunning and dorm-room, we probably wouldn’t be friends. We’re so unlike each other that it hardly makes sense.
“Come on,” she says and sets the book aside. “We’ve got Brews and I want a table up front.”
Of course, she does.
But I’m not complaining. With James in his annual funk, I get Courtney to myself in that class. No more sitting with the lately stoic and silent Dray.
We make it to the class with the rest of the early birds, some who still stink of the lunch in the canteen. From the burnt salty air, I know toast was served with baked beans and square sausages.
By the time the rest of the class has filed in, Courtney has our workstation set up, cauldron, instruments, and all. I just slump in my chair, using the handle-edge of a spoon to pick at my nails. They’re all chipped and the paint is peeling off them, and there’s not a good manicurist within miles of Bluestone.
Master Welham instructs us to get started heating up the cauldron. I leave the precision of the flames’ temperature to Courtney. She’s not a top student for nothing. And I head off to the store cupboard for the supplies, a rarely-opened brew book tucked under my arm.
I hate the dusty store cupboard. It carries a nose-tickling smell like pure chemicals, the kind they use to clean hospitals and infirmaries and bathrooms, and all the gold-plated labels are dusty from years of misuse. I wipe my way over the gold plates, searching for newt bile salts. Once I see the size of the jar, I use my book as a tray and start to pile ingredients on top of it, careful to keep it steady.
I pause when I hear—no, feel—someone come up behind me. All the little hairs on the back of my neck prickle as a warm breath runs over my skin. I know that unique mix of strawberries and expensive cologne anywhere. I look over my shoulder at Dray, keeping my face as smooth and unstartled as possible.
His piercing blue eyes cut through me, and I know with that one long look, the cycle is back on again.
I turn to face him. “Am I in your way?”
He takes a step closer to me, until the book’s side presses into his hard chest. He walks me back to the shelf, and the edges cut into my back. With his steady, unfeeling gaze, he says, “You’re always in my way.”
His hand comes around me and rests on the shelf. I’m caged in, between shelves, hard bodies, and an arm blocking my escape. Icy, grey eyes have me planted to the spot as my heart starts to pick up, pumping too hard and too fast in my chest. He leans closer, gaze pinning me down, and whispers against my lips, “Get out of my way, waif.”
The invitation spurs me forward and I duck under his arm, balancing my make-shift tray of ingredients. He doesn’t stop me as I rush out of the cupboard and back to my table.
After class—which I soared through with an easy win, given Courtney was my partner—I take the risk of using the closest toilets to the basement classrooms. The toilet where most of the first-years end up strapped to sinks or tied by their shoelaces to the ceiling fixtures.
Still, I’m so bursting that the risk seems small. I do my business in peace, but on the way out I can hear the cackles of some seniors crawling through the dim corridors. I don’t make it two halls away before they catch up to me. Some of their faces fall as they realise who I am, not some first-year stumbling about dark corridors. But it doesn’t stop them bothering me.
“Ordinary Olivia,” one of the girls greets with a grin too wide for her crooked teeth. Melody Green. A right pain in the ass.
Melody drops to the ground, strange enough to startle me for a moment, and it’s a moment too long before I realise what she’s doing. Chanting—chanting at the rug under my feet.
I’m swept off my feet before I can move, and hit the wooden floorboard, hard. The rug was pulled from under me, literally.
Cackles erupt like flames on a dried log, and the noise grates me. They run off, shouting their original insult, “Ordinary Olivia, Ordinary Olivia!” all through the bowels of the school.
I lie on my back for a while, feeling the throb at my shoulder that pulses through my nerves like punches from within. Finally, I force myself to sit up. Aches erupt all over my back and I know I have to go to the infirmary for the swelling that’s starting to plump up around my shoulders. Worst, my tailbone feels like it’s been snapped into pieces.
Gathering my books, I force myself to stand on wobbly knees, and stagger down the corridor. I blame Dray. He didn’t do this, but Melody Green—a half-breed, mind—wouldn’t have the nerve to attack me if it wasn’t for my public shunning at Bluestone. Shunning makes you fair game, and all it takes is Dray’s back turned on me for those little half-breeds to get a little too cocky.
I make a mental note to pay her back. But I probably won’t. Once the anger simmers down, it never seems worth the fight. Best just survive the year, then slot neatly into my place of elite socialite. They can’t shun me when the Academy is done with.
I make it to the end of the corridor when Eric finds me. He steps out of what seems to be his temporary office, a dank little room with sparse light and no windows, much like the rest of the basement rooms.
“Olivia?” He takes in my slanted posture, and how I hold my shoulder as if to bandage it with fingers. “I thought I heard—” he trails off and shakes his head. Then, he steps away from the door and ushers me inside. “—Come on in, I’ll see to your wounds.”
He loops my arm around his shoulder and hoists me up. It brings more pain in hot, searing blares that blind me with white spots dancing in my vision. I lean my weight on him, though my shoulder cries out in agony as he leads me into his dank little office where there’s sparse enough candlelight to see papers, never mind grade them.
With his help, I hobble over to the chair he deposits me onto, and let my satchel fall to the floor. He is quick in the closet before he returns with some bandages. I guess those are for my bleeding elbows—they must have taken a brunt of my landing.
I stretch out my arm as he perches himself on the edge of the table. His honey eyes hang on my scrapes.
He kneels in front of me and dabs some salve on a clean cloth, then, as I brace myself for the sting, dabs it over my scratches. I bite back a wince. I watch him, his face pinched in concentration, the slight tan to his European skin, his dark, honey eyes that look amber when the light catches them just right. His fingers are gentle on my skin. Too gentle for a teacher touching a student. My breath catches in my throat, but every nerve in my body is alive, burning with need. Sure, I’ve been with guys before, other shunned ones, but I’ve never reacted like this, not since Dray…
I shake the thought from my mind as Eric’s—Mr. Digger’s, I hear Courtney correct mentally—eyes touch mine. They are so soft, so gentle, so unlike the freezing, blue eyes of Dray. And yet…
Eric’s fingers move to my other elbow, electricity jolting through me as he touches me. My heart starts to thump in my chest, hard, not fast. I feel it thrive to my throat, where I can hardly breathe. He spreads the salve over my burn-cuts, then pulled back as if stung. He quickly screws on the lid and sets it on the table.
With his back to me, he says, “There.” A simple word, but one that’s undoubtedly a dismissal. He knows he went too far.
I come up behind him, leaving my satchel on the floor. “Thank you,” I say softly, a voice meant to lure him in. He turns to face me, his back against the desk. “It was very kind of you.”
I have him snared. I lean up to align our faces. His hands grip on to the edge of the desk, but he doesn’t stop me. And I kiss him, and we freeze against each other.
He shatters the still moment as his hands come up to cup my face and he deepens the kiss.
It’s short lived. There’s a knock at the door that has me scrambling bac
k and snatching my satchel from the floor. I’m slinging it over my shoulder when the door opens. Master Welham waddles his way inside, nodding at me as he passes.
“Thanks for your help,” I say to Eric and, with a curt nod at both of them, I leave with a small smile on my tingling lips.
Chapter 10
The best part about Squall’s End—the little village further down the mountain—is that it sometimes caters to tourists. Krum tourists. So, it carries all the supplies they might need.
I tuck myself away in the corner of the shop, poring over fashion magazines from the krum world. Our worlds are closely linked, tying in and out of each other like choppy weaves, but still—denim. It’s not something that caught on with the witches. According to the magazine, krums make it into all sorts of things. Trousers, jackets, jumpsuits. Denim overload has me hooked on the mags, and I think that if these designers can make a name for themselves in the krum world, I could rule it. If only I had what Courtney did—freedom.
I mean, it’s not that I want a career or pin-pricks all over my fingers as I try to create the greatest clothes ever known—I’m much more of a buyer than a maker—but it’s the option, isn’t it? That’s what makes it freedom. And I have no choice but to be a buyer for life.
Freedom is a funny thing. With all the money in my empire, with the best suitor possible, it doesn’t matter. None of it is enough to buy me what I want—to be my own person.
Courtney finds me where she left me. Hugging a stack of books to her chest, she nudges me with her foot. “Ready?”
I just grunt then slowly turn the page. “What are these called?” I ask and angle the page at her. “The trousers.”
“Jeans.” She frowns at me, then down at the denim trousers wrapped around her legs. “I wear them all the time, O.”
I laugh. “No, the things you wear are ghastly. These—” I tap the page “—are black and narrow, and very fashionable. I can see how they caught on.”
“That’s because those ones are designer jeans.” There’s a huff in her voice. “Very expensive. Disgustingly so.”
Bluestone Academy (A Bully Paranormal Academy Romance) Page 5
