Page 121 of A Heart of Bluestone

I place the flask on her stomach.

She makes no move for it. Just stares up at the cloudy film of the bubble. The moon looks warped from our cocoon. A smeared ball of white.

For a while, she sits in the silence with me.

Until—

“It’s a shame to burst our bubble.” Serena points her nail and grazes it over the wall of the film. “But your brother is coming.”

I push up and the sound jolting through me would be a grunt if I could make noise. The bubble slips and turns under me, and so I can’t sit up on my elbows. Giving up, I drop onto my back and turn my cheek. It smooshes against the wet, filmy wall.

I trace Serena’s dark gaze to the trail.

Two shadows are headed down it.

Through the milky substance, I can’t make them out beyond the broad muscles of their shoulders, the blur of black that they wear, and that one has darker hair and the other, fair.

They are headed right for the clearing.

Serena nicks the bubble. Pinches it right between her nails—and the frosted ground is rushing up to meet me.

I land on my back. The impact jolts through me.

The groan, as I roll onto my side, doesn’t come, silenced.

But the look I give Serena as she sits up on her knees, it speaks volumes—

‘You said they weren’t going to be here.’

‘You lied!’

She reads me too easily.

“Oliver said he wasn’t.” Serena shifts her frown to them, though the two shadows are too far away to see that look of annoyance she wears, too far to even see that it’suson the ground.

My guess is that she only recognises that it’s my brother because of the gold wrapped around his wrist, the gold Rolex she gifted him for his past birthday, the one that dances in the firelight.

I push up from the salted snow. My boots slip out from under me and I crash back down. For a beat, I lie face-down. Then I try to stand again.

This time, I manage my footing. But the dizziness has rooted deep in me, and I sway.

It wasn’t so bad before the bubble, or even in the bubble. I thought the swaywasthe bubble.

Guess I’m just a lot drunker than I knew.

Even the winds have changed in the past hour.

Before, it was a breeze, chilled and gentle, almost stagnant on my cheeks. Now, it whistles, it disturbs the fallen strands of hair around my face, it pierces through the part of my lips and sharpens the cold in my mouth.

I squint through it to the shadows, the ones coming nearer on the trail—and now, I can make out their faces. Both look straight up to the bench, where a dozen or more students are gathered around the game of potions. They look for Serena.

Oliver and Dray.

The last faces I want to see tonight.

Oliver’s, I ache to slam my fist into again.

And Dray…

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