Page 134 of A Heart of Bluestone

I should head back to the dorms, down a bunch of tonics and water, then get my rotten ass into a shower. But fuck that, the walls are moving and bending and I am barely keeping myself upright as I stagger into my dorm room and move for my bed.

I fall onto it, face-first.

I croak a wispy sound as I force myself back up onto my knees. The pulses aren’t confined to just my head anymore, but thumping through my whole body, and even just keeping my eyes open now is a trigger.

I fumble with the curtains.

I tug them over, firm, then flop down with an acidic burp.

I hope to sleep through it. Not just the sick, but Dray’s outrage when he wakes up, too.

22

“So did you read it?”

At the buffet, I grip the spoon’s handle and bring it to my tray. Fruit salad slaps into the bowl. Then I swap out the spoon for a tub of boysenberry yoghurt.

Courtney pushes down the buffet alongside me. “It’s due Saturday.”

I take a smoothie from the banana-labelled line. “Want one?”

In answer, she frowns and shakes her head.

“You should eat more fruits and veg,” I tell her. “All that grease will kill you.”

As though I haven’t said a thing, Courtney ignores the fruits and yoghurts and smoothie selection and pushes down the buffet, closer to the heart-attacks-waiting-to-happen. Piles of sizzling bacon strips and too greasy eggs and lard smeared toasts.

It’s not that I judge those foods. I eat them myself. But Courtney is always tucking into oil and fat and fried gunk that’ll clog her arteries too soon in life.

I wait for her to pile that crap onto her tray.

With the hour so early, the mess hall is peppered with only a handful of students. Master Milton and Eric are two of the threeteachers who made it to breakfast before the rest of the students rise for the start of the school day.

But I can see, out of the corner of my eye, that Eric’s gaze flickers to me every so often.

I don’t look at him.

From the long, mahogany faculty table, the flutter of his gaze brushes over me. I catch it in the reflection warping the glass of the buffet. His attention comes and goes.

Where Eric’s gaze feels like a little itch, a feather or a petal drifting down my cheek, somewhat annoying, but not the worst thing, Dray’s stare is the tip of a knife, it’s the cold burn of icicles pressing into my skin, that dent that a needle makes on flesh a quick moment before it actually pierces.

I ignore them both as best as I can.

Dray watches me from the table my brother is slouched at.

He picks at his almond porridge, but the burn of his stare is ice scraping over me, and I hate that he is one of the first students in the hall this morning.

Whether he has something to do before classes begin, or he got up nice and early to find the right opportunity to take his shot at me, I don’t know.

But I had little choice in being dragged out of bed before the sun was even up.

I couldn’t let myself sleep in my own sweat and grime much longer. I needed a shower, a scrub, and something fresh to eat, not the crap that the imps brought me.

My bitterness for those grey-skinned, skeletal creatures is soft this morning, though. My saving grace over the weekend was that the imps can be bribed.

I dished out a dozen copper pieces in exchange for meals brought to my bed.

Got the idea from Serena.

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