Page 125 of A Heart of Bluestone

I fumble down from the rubble and push on.

The substances have sure made the effort to knit into my very being. I’m trying my damn hardest to walk in a steady line, but mostly I use the crumbled walls as a crutch and stumble alongside them.

I manage a while of that, stumbling around the maze, before the sway of my surroundings finally stills me. I can feel my heartbeat in my brain, my actual fleshy brain, just pulsating and pulsating,thump, thump, thump—

A groan ribbons out of me.

Gonna be sick.

Leaning against a debris-wall, I slip down to the ground. Early dustings of ice are starting to grow over the hard, dried-out dirt.

Lazily, I trace my finger along the sheets of ice and write my initials. In the growing distance, I hear the faint echoes of shoutsand cheers, laughter, a screech—and so I know the party isn’t too far away.

Still, I’m in no position to move. The mere thought of standing has those pulsations in my head suddenly thundering.

But even sitting down, the weeds seem to shudder and whisper, the stones seem to suck in on themselves, then bloat back out.

I blink a few times, but it does little.

“Olivia,” the voice floats out from the weeds, familiar and not unlike the ice that wears my initials.

I frown at the long, spidery plant killers, trying to focus on where the voice is coming from.

Are they whispering to me?

Are they enchanted?

“Olivia.”

No, it’s not the weeds.

I look to my right.

From the shadows of the long path, he walks towards me, as striking as ever.

My heart falls as I realise it’s Dray. For a beat there, I almost hoped it was Eric, coming to save me from the maze. But of course, it has to be Dray.

I doubt he’ll do much saving.

I frown up at him.

Under the pale moonlight, shadows cut beneath his sharp cheekbones and above his clenched jaw. His jaw always looks clenched, as though he’s permanently angry at the world. Maybe he is, I don’t know. Maybe he’s just angry when I’m around.

Dray stops at my side and looks down his nose at me with gleaming blue eyes, paler than the moon this night.

My heart aches a little at the sight of him, at my drunken mind pulling memories out from the dust.

“Serena said you ran off into the maze.”

In the distance, I hear someone break out into song, a solemn tale about a man who eats a hundred children. Her melancholic lullaby climbs through me, spidery fingers teetering over my bones.

I squint up at Dray. “Here to bury me in the rubble?”

He just stares down at me. “I came to find you. It’s easy to get lost in here.”

“Oh, because I’m so incompetent—” Before the last word even slips from my mouth, my body heaves and I barely twist around in time before sick slaps onto the packed-dirt.

Dray looks down at the droplets, splashed onto the toes of his Prada loafers. Brown upchucked tequila with a faint sickly scent of cheap liquor.

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