Page 137 of A Heart of Bluestone

I know exactly what she wants to interview me about. The same subject of my life, like a chapter in a book that has her too tight in a vice-like grip, that she presses me on every damn year.

The closer we get to Solstice Season, the more her curiosity prickles. No matter her introduction into our world, she just doesn’t get it. Always asking the same questions, about our arranged marriages, power over love, contracts, wealthand status, the place of women, the manner of bloodline preservations, societal gatherings and their rules and traditions.

And she starts to press too early this morning.

I shut it down, because no matter how many times we go over it, she just can’t understand. She never will.

No matter her place in our world, she was raised with the krums, with freedom that isn’t available to any of us. Even now, being a made one, she has privileges I can only dream of. She can be anything when she graduates, be her own self before she is a wife or a mother, enjoy her life in any way she chooses. No arranged marriages, no suitors, no sneak attacks, no pre-selected career, no empire to nurse.

She haschoice.

A loose sigh ribbons from me.

We fall into a lull of moody quiet before, “Better watch your back today.” Courtney murmurs. “He’s clocked you.”

The change of topic is enough to lift my gaze.

I look over at Eric—and he smiles something small and perhaps guilty before he turns a pink cheek to me.

But then I really hear her words and my gaze swerves to Dray.

Still, he wears that faint frown on his brow.

She’s right.

He is staring at me. But not at my face, and not with the rage I expect.

He considers the collar of my shirt, tied with a black bow, and there’s nothing interesting about what I wear for my uniform, so I suppose he’s lost in thought, and I’m just in his way.

“Probably dreaming up ways to kill me,” I say and steal the smoothie into my hand. The glass is cool to the touch, a bit wet against my palm.

Courtney combs her fingers through her hair, lifting it into a messy ponytail with lumps and bumps. “Does your dad know?”

I roll my eyes back, an obvious disdain creeping over me.

There she goes, steering it back to the ins and outs of our society, the threads that weave an ugly pattern. No matter how many ways I explain it to her, or how many times, it just doesn’t sink in.

“My father knows Dray and I don’t get along anymore.” I twirl the silicone straw around the smoothie, watching the cinnamon powder merge with the thick yellow. “He supposes why, but we don’t talk about it.”

She hooks the elastic from her wrist over the bunched hair, then twirls it around and around until its locked in place. “You should tell him.”

My smile is strained. “If it was that easy.”

With a huff, she throws down her hands. “Well, why isn’t it?”

I run my tongue over my teeth. The look I lift to her is nothing short of a glower, and my leg itches to boot her off her chair.

I told her to leave it alone. And here she goes, trying to interview me in a not-so-subtle way.

And the answer I have for her is cruel.

I bolt the insults down.

She’s my only friend. And while she will never understand any of it, or perhaps she just refuses to accept that it is the way it’s done, then I will always feel alone around her.

Sometimes, I might just want her to listen without barraging me about how we need to change the system.

That’s how witches end up dead.

---