Page 13 of A Heart of Bluestone

Suppose I’m lucky, then.

My family kept me. Mother embraces me, Father accepts me. I was not thrown out to the krum society, memory wiped, delivered to the door of an orphanage or a bribed family to take me in.

No matter how bad it can get sometimes, I am one of the luckier deadbloods.

Even now, here at dinner, the Sinclairs share a meal with us. They are still our family’s friends.

And they tend to tolerate me.

But when no one is looking, and I am trapped within the walls of the academy, it changes.

That will come tomorrow. I will begin my senior year at Bluestone, my last ever year trapped in that hell with my tormenters, and I clutch onto the knowledge that this is the last time.

After that, I will be brought back into the fold of my family. I will not likely marry. So I will be a home-daughter.

But I will be safe. Safe-ish.

There will be no time for the piano tonight.

A speckled darkness has wiped the sky by the time we are leaving the restaurant. I have no watch on me, and I am not allowed a personal phone, so I can’t check the time to be certain that it’s close to midnight—I just have to go off my senses.

My senses are telling me to get my ass into bed, now. Maybe that’s just my heavy eyelids, the ones I struggle to keep open.

I’m so dull about the land of awake now that it takes me some moments to feel the pressure on my back.

I frown up at Dray as he escorts me through the restaurant doors, after our parents, and Oliver strolling behind.

I look back at my evil twin.

He has no attention for me. His thumbs smack down on the glowing screen of his smartphone.

A prickle of envy disturbs my chest.

I want a phone.

Just another double standard of our world.

We part ways on the street, where two cars idle silently.

Harold shakes my father’s hand before he turns to kiss a farewell to my mother’s cheek. He keeps a reserved, curt nod of the head for me.

My knee aches as I dip into a short curtsey.

And I am glad to see them go.

Dray’s hand abandons my spine. But before he moves for the Sinclair car, he drops his head and lets a word hiss faintly from his full lips—lips I once kissed, lips that graze the shell of my ear and shoot tickles through my body.

“Waif.”

My lashes flutter.

My throat thickens.

It’s so quietly spoken that even I barely caught it. But I did, and so did Oliver. He snorts under his breath, and though he’s behind me, I can picture the rotten smirk he wears, because I’ve seen it so many times before.

Just one more year.

I have survived many years of this. My mind remains intact. My body unbroken.

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