“That’s music to my ears.” I wink at her but all she does is roll her eyes. I push up from the corner to join her and make a sneak-purchase of the magazine. What’s the harm in looking, right?
The sun is shining brighter and hotter than usual today, even the slopes are closed to Bluestone students, so the village is bustling. We head back to the Academy early—the last thing you want is to get caught in the thirty-minute queue for the cars on the wire lines. Gondolas are damn slow.
Lucky me, we get stuck with an already occupied gondola car. Three teachers are tucked inside before we join them. Welham, Master Milton—the most badass woman I know, and a master of Makut—and Eric, teacher fancy-me.
He’s been ignoring me since our kiss last week.
I hop into the car before the door slides shut and seat myself opposite them. The other masters don’t pay us any attention and continue talking in low murmurs, but Eric keeps shooting short glances my way.
I catch his gaze and feel the prickles of an early blush blossom along my cheekbones. He looks away, then pretends to be completely absorbed by whatever Master Milton is saying.
The slippery teacher even marked my assignment at a Distinction, so we wouldn’t have to go over it again. Distinctions are the second highest possible grades and father was pleased with the score to say the least. But I wasn’t—because I know he’s just marked it to get rid of me.
But I need him to notice me more. I have hidden motives. I need proposals.
The faculty let us out first and we rush into the warmth of the Academy chalet. Snow catches on its peaks, but it’s already melting with the unusual heat coming from the cloudless sky that Sunday morning.
As we rush through the doors (climbing all over the students who’ve parked themselves at the steps for some stupid reason), another senior shoves a leaflet in my face. I flatten it out then pass it to Courtney.
Party, tonight, in the main common room. Something I want to avoid like the black plague or the witch’s stockades. No thanks.
Courtney side-eyes me. “I heard the senior elites are having a party of their own, out in the gardens.”
I scoff. “Why would they do something like that?”
“Because they’re not monitored over the weekends,” she says. “So, they can get in some snowboarding at night without teachers breaking up their fun.”
“So, they won’t be at the party?” I eye her suspiciously, my lashes lowered. “You’re sure?”
She nods. “That’s what Lolly said, and she heard it from Landon.”
I shrug. “Then I might make an appearance. Depends on the stack of assignments I have to get through.”
But who am I kidding?
Homework always comes after fun.
Just as the thought of the three demons left my mind, as we walk up the east staircase, they’re coming down it, the three devils. And as they look down at us, they look as menacing as they are.
Brad and Landon walk a step behind Dray, and it’s enough to make me want to stick out my leg and see the blond prat take a fall.
As we pass, I note that they’re all dressed for the snow. Dray doesn’t so much as look my way.
I force Courtney to stop off at James’ dorm on the way back to our own, and beg him to come with us. His funk is so dull and deep that all he manages is a mumbled, “no,” and he rolls over, turning his back to us.
I make another stop at the north tower to make sure I can see the shadows climbing the closest cliff-hill of the mountain and, sure enough, the elite snakes are headed for some out-of-bounds snowboarding in the gardens. But there’s one blond head of hair missing from the mostly dark dots disappearing up hill; Dray, probably forgetting something like his manners or any human decency.
As I make my way down the north-facing tower, I run into Eric. It stops me in my tracks. He looks just as taken aback and—it hurts to admit it but—a little crestfallen. His muscles tense beneath his tweed jacket and his hands bunch up into fists that he hides behind his back.
He makes to move by me. I step in front of him, hand on the railing, blocking his way up the stairs.
“Can we talk?” I ask.
He looks down the nearest shadowy corridor, leading to the senior boy dorms I just came from. James is the only one down there and he’s bedridden with the darkness of his shadowy mind.
“Not here,” he says and goes to pass me.
I step in front of him again. “Then where? You’ve been avoiding me.”
“It’s best this conversation waits—”
“No.” I slam my hand down on the bannister. “You kissed me as much as I kissed you. You don’t get to play innocent here. I’m owed more than you shunning me.” I get enough of that around this chalet.
He slips on a professional mask, all hardness and distant eyes. “I do not think there’s much to discuss, Ms. Laurent. Now, please excuse me.”
“Look.” I hold out my hand to steady him. “If you think it was a mistake, then tell me, and tell me why. If you like me, too, then tell me that. Either way, something needs to be said about it.”
He pauses enough for me to stop blocking his way, relaxing some. I bring my hands together and pick at my fingernails nervously.
“Was it the kiss?” I ask almost sheepishly, and heat gathers at my cheeks. “Was it … bad?”
“No.” His answer is too fast, too urgent, as if he wants to reach for me and assure all my insecurities. “The kiss was magical, you are—in your own way.” My face twists and I glower at him. “That’s not … What I mean is, the kiss itself shouldn’t have happened. And not just because I’m your teacher, Olivia. It can’t happen again because there’s no future for us.”
“Says who?”
“Your father.”
The answer strikes me like a slap to the fallen face.
He takes a step up closer to me, his hand nearing mine on the banister. “I’ve many a few offers on your contract, Olivia. For years. Every one of them has been turned down. It seems your father is looking for a suitor more in your league.”
A wealthy man, he means. And he’s not wrong.
I let out fingers to touch on the railing and look up at him. “Let me deal with my father.”
“How do you plan on changing his mind?” He sounds hopeless.
“Same way I always get what I want from him. Tantrums, bargains, deals, and a lot of bartering.” I point at him as I have a thought. “You can start by giving me top grades—that always helps.”
He smiles and I use the opportunity to slip by him. “Goodbye, Mr Shandon,” I say in a sing-song voice, renewed like injected into me like a serum. I skip down the stairs with a new spring in my step until I stumble across a shadow looming at the corner of the main corridor.
Dray. His piercing blue eyes are like blades, cutting at me from the darkness. His face is as stony as ever.
And he heard every single word between me and Eric.
I steady my beating heart and promise myself that it’s no harm done. Dray telling my father anything about what’s happened goes against the rules. Even telling Brad is cutting the rule-book close.
So instead, he steps out of the shadows and backs me into a wood post. “Moving onto teachers now, waif?”
His familiar, aristocratic drawl is colder than the garden’s sleet and sends chills down my spine. My back is pressed, hard, into the wood post.
“Or are you just picking up the scraps that’ll have you?” he mocks.
I scrape up more courage than I have and look him dead in the eye. But his gaze is made from storm clouds and lightning and danger. In them, there is so much fury that I almost think he might throw me down the stairs.
My breath holds. I let it out with whooshed words, “What do you want? Why can’t you just leave me alone and mind your business?”
He steps closer. Advancing on me. I can’t back away again, I’m stuck between him and a pillar. He knows it, too, and he moves slowly, like a wolf honing in on prey.
I can practically taste the hatred in his aura.
“I was just wondering,” he begins, almost conversationally, but the ice is there in his tone, like icicles, “the politically correct term for your … ailment … is, what, handicap witch? Deadblood isn’t terribly uncommon either.
“But the point is, the magic in your blood is … gone,” he says and makes a flick of the hands, like smoke vanishing.
“So, don’t you really know what you are, like the rest of us do? You’re a krum. You,” he says, stepping in so close that my head is pressing into the wood post, “are a little, meaningless krum.”
I part my mouth to bite back, but he slams his hands down on the bannister and jolts me into silence.
“While the blood that runs through your veins is ancient, it’s tainted by the abomination that you are. You are a stain—”
“I’m not,” I grit out between my teeth. Tears sting my eyes but I force my narrowed stare up at him. “There’s nothing wrong with me—I carry the magic, my children will be witches, I just can’t—”
He cuts me off with a voice like a snake’s hiss, “Are you calling me a liar?”
“No,” I breath, shaking my head. The tip of my nose brushes against his, barely.
“No what?” he hisses.
“No, I’m not calling you a liar. You’re just wrong,” I say with more confidence than I feel in my trembling hands.
“Well,” he smiles and my spine is seized by ice, “say I’m not wrong. Say you are the worm I think you are. It creates a bit of a problem for me, you know. Our families are so closely allied, but the sight of you sickens me. It pains me that they produced an abomination like yourself, and they have my deepest sympathies.”
Stinging no more, tears leak freely from my eyes now. This, this isn’t in the rule book. He’s crossing lines that have been there since the beginning of my torture. And that younger me whose doe-eyes were only for him is being crushed more and more with every word.
I shove his chest, hard. “Leave me alone.”
His hands come crashing down on the pillar, landing with thuds on either side of my head, and his face inches closer to mine, deadly close. “I’m not finished,” he snarls with hatred I can practically taste in the bitter air.
“If I had it my way,” he breathes against my wet lips, his breaths coming out choppy as if he’s just run a mile, “you would be banished from this school, our society, into the krums of the world where you belong, because not only are you a waif, there’s nothing elite about you, Liv.”
That nickname—the one that only he has ever called me, back when we fancied each other children in love—punches a hole in my chest. I almost double over from the pain. Fresh tears well and my mouth twists as I bite back sobs.
He pulls a breath of relief from me as he shoves back from the pillar and puts some distance between us.
Looking me up and down with a look to kill, he leaves me there on the staircase, face wet with tears, and my whole body shaking like a leaf caught in a blizzard.
Suddenly, I’m not in the mood for a party anymore.
Chapter 11
Courtney went with Lolly to the party and I can’t be more grateful. I have the dorm to myself to weep in peace.
It’s not just Dray and his cruel words. I’ve built up a resilience to them over the years. But it’s the small reminders of what we once were to each other and—I can’t deny it—that I once loved him.
†
I run after him through the hedge-maze where the wild flowers grow out the back of his manor house.
“Dray!” I call after him. “Dray, wait for me!”
He stops immediately and turns to watch me run for him. There’s not a speck of impatience on his young, smiling face. He waits for me like he always does.
My run slows to a leisurely jog.
“Come on, Liv!” he calls at me, his patient mask cracking. He hates losing chase games and Brad and Landon are well in the lead—a lead Dray gives up for me.
Just to toy with him, I slow to a walk and wander my way over to him, running the tips of my fingers over the wild flowers. He reaches out for my hand as I reach him and clasps his fingers around mine.
With his grip firm, he races by my side to come in last place with me, to the centre of the hedge-maze.
†
I have a new challenge to face; my father. If I want a husband who’s going to take me away from this elite, cruel society, it’s him. His modest wealth, his small life—it’ll be the perfect escape.
As I toss around on my narrow metal-framed bed, the canopies offering some sense of privacy though Courtney was out at the common room, I feel wholly vulnerable. I drift in and out of dreams and reality, where they blend together into murky waters.
†
The sun is bright and hot in the Sinclair gardens, and I cry at my mother’s side.
"What is the matter, dear?" Margot asks softly, placing her cup of pink tea on the round table.
"Brad said I can’t do magic," I pout, crossing my arms over my chest as Dray rushes to my side.
"Did he, now?" Elijah, my father, asks, his eyes darkening as he glances at Brad playing in the distance. "Pay him no mind, Olivia."
"But it's true," I whine. "I can't. Why can't I do magic?"
"You are a late bloomer, is all," mother smiles and cups my cheeks. "Your magic will appear in time."
I hope she’s right. I can’t be a waif. I can’t be—but … even if I am, what will change? They all love me, no matter what. Besides, I won’t have to ever worry about that—mother wouldn’t lie to me.
Tingles shoot through my arm as fingers entwine with mine. It’s Dray, moving to stand beside me, holding my hand in his.
Issac and Amelia share a meaningful look that I notice, but I can’t understand why they don’t look happy. It doesn’t matter. It’s quickly forgotten as Dray pulls me off the patio and to the wild flowers by the hedge-maze.
"Liv," Dray says, his tone soft as he stops by a patch of flower buds. "Some witches don’t find their magic for a while. I read it in a book, you know. It will come, even if you have to wait a little longer than others."
H squeezes my hand gently and I smile. I believe him.
"These," Dray says, his finger grazing over an open flower, "have blossomed already. But they were planted at the same time as those."
I trace his finger to a closed flower that’s still a bud.
He says, "But when that flower blossoms, it will be the greatest of them all."
Dray turns to face me, a blush on his high cheekbones, and he smiles at me. I hold onto his hand tighter, scared that if I let go, I’ll float away.
I ask, "Am I that flower?"
He nods.
"What is it?" I trace the purple petals with my finger.
"Saffron Crocus," Dray says, watching me in complete fascination as I drink in the beauty of the closed flower.
"I like purple," I confess, like it’s a great secret. “And silver.”
"I know.” He plucks a flower from the bush and hands it to me.
My hand trembles with excitement as I take the flower and hold it gently in my hands.
I wear a blush to match his fierce one that only seems to grow hotter. His mercurial eyes shift everywhere but me.
Then, he steps towards me, hesitation in his movements, and his hands clench into fists at his sides.
Nerves tickle my body, the kind you get when you jump too high up before hitting the pool, or swing to high at the park.
There’s no space between us now. The tips of our noses touch and I can taste the strawberries on his breath. Sweet. One of my favourites.
"Are you going to kiss me?" I whisper as he gulps.
"Yes," Dray breathes, his lips almost touching mine. “If you let me.”
I nod.
My tummy is summersaulting as my heart flutters and our lips touch ever so slightly.
Our breaths hitch as he presses his lips against mine. And we freeze. Both of us
, frozen there in the gardens.
He’s kissed me before, but on the hand, forehead, and cheeks. Never the lips.
Our lips don’t move. We’re not really sure what to do. So, we just keep our lips connected for a while, relishing in the softness of the plump skin joining together.
Suddenly, Dray pulls away, stepping back from me as he blushes. Then he pushes by me and runs down the stone path, leaving me here by the flower bush, a bud in my hand, my lips tingling.
I touch my mouth. A smile twists it.
Chapter 11
My dreams have the same theme. The same heartbreaking memories that ache my heart.
I groan, rolling around in the bed as if I can roll out of the dreams, of the memory. I don’t dream of him often, so when I do, I am compelled to shower. To wash myself of the sweetness of that memory; the sweetness that transformed into bitterness the very moment I woke.
So, that’s exactly how I spend the middle of the night on a Saturday—climbing out of the bed and heading for the quiet bathrooms by the main common room, where the party is still roaring on. The sounds of laughter sound like echoes of yesterdays to me.
I wash away sweat, along with the dream.
The memory that breaks me.
Chapter 12
I write to father after a dozen drafts over weeks and I eventually decide to keep it simple.
I need to get this engagement to Eric sealed as soon as I can. I need to move on and forget a love I once had and can’t justify now. Even if my torn heart doesn’t agree.
I put pencil to paper, as if this very letter, this writing and begging to my father, will save me from the heartache.
Dear Father,
I've been thinking a lot lately about my duties to the Laurent family, especially my future marriage to whomever you choose. I want to talk to you about the offers on my contract, about Eric Digger in particular.
I know that his family isn’t as wealthy as our own and he leads a modest life, but I think he would be a good and kind husband to me. If I’m to marry, I would rather it be to someone like him.
Bluestone Academy (A Bully Paranormal Academy Romance) Page 6
