Page 163 of A Heart of Bluestone

I stopped retching, though it still burns my throat.

But I haven’t stopped crying.

The sobs have dissipated at least, giving my twisted chest some relief, but the debris lingers enough that my bottom lip is wet and shuddered, and my vision milky as I stumble down the long, damp corridor.

Between every raspy, cutting breath is a moan, one that traps in my chest as I try to soothe myself. Hands fisted at my sides, I don’t do anything smart, I don’t leave the corridor and turn for the Living Quarter, I take a right for the stairs and break into a staggering, unbalanced run for the atrium.

Cheeks wet, I feel the streaks of manure trickling down my face. Can’t even wipe at myself without smearing shit deeper into my pores.

The moans ribbon out of me.

The rubber of my boots is loud on the floorboards, cluttered.

I stumble through the atrium with one destination in mind.

Not the dorm room, not the shower, not the office of a teacher—buthome.

I want to go home.

My face twists with the words that thrum through me.

I want my mother.

Across the atrium, the doors are firmly shut.

The metal level hooks the doors together. The winds outside rattle them both, deafening the grating sounds that come from my trembling, wet mouth.

I stagger into the doors and, reaching up on my toes, yank at the lever. It tugs free with a loudcrack!

I drop back onto my boots and fumble my frozen hands against the ice-to-the-touch lock. Dark metal is a glacier kiss to my numb fingers, but this isn’t the first time I have snuck out of Bluestone or tried to make a run for it, so I know to the turn the key clockwise twice, then counterclockwise once with the lever out of place first.

The doors unlock with a wall-shuddering groan.

I shove through and stumble onto the snow-caked stairs. My boots crunch on the thick layers too built up from the night—and the night has passed, mostly, with the early pinkish hues of dawn touching the horizon.

I spare it the dullest of looks from my wet, bloodshot eyes, and I’m sure I look like a walking corpse, a wayward consequence of a rogue ritual.

I run down the stairs.

I don’t cut right for the gondolas, they aren’t running yet. So I make for the lengthy road of cleared trees that declines all the way down to the village. It’s a long fucking trek, it’s hours in the cold, and my bones are already frosted over.

But I can’t go back, I won’t go back.

Even if there’s a teacher and two Snakes in my way—and headed right for me.

Master Novak hikes up the hill from the barn. Mildred and Landon are in tow—both of them a part of the snowball fight that sealed my fate.

I look at the teacher, dull.

Master Novak’s mouth tucks into a line as she eyes me over. She sighs a frosty breath that cools in the air, then gestures to the smirking Snakes to go on ahead.

They do, but not before they take in the state of me, and Mildred’s eyes twinkle that bit brighter. But neither of them throws a barbed word my way.

Exhaustion has subdued them. All night in the barn, doing whatever manual labour they were sentenced to, the fatigue wears them down too much for more than a smile or a scoff or a shake of the head.

I watch them from under my low-hanging lashes until they are out of earshot.

I turn back to Master Novak.

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