Page 2 of A Heart of Bluestone

Her gaze settles on me.

Then her face wipes. She lifts her chin a tad higher, then allows a curt nod before she turns her back on me.

I don’t know the woman.

Never seen her before in my life.

But she must know exactly who I am, or—more importantly—who my family is.

She doesn’t look over her shoulder again.

The wait is long.

The queue is slow-moving, as it should be on a Saturday in London. Too many families are out. Witches, male and female alike, with their sticky toddlers and their screeching brats. They are lined ahead of me in the dozens for the Stonehenge veil.

A quarter-hour trudges by before I relent and drop my boutique bags to the cobblestone. Some slam, others smack, a particularly heavy set of bags thud. Books.

I wince at the sound.

I’ll complain later if the books are wrinkled, but I can’t bear the weight of the bags pulling down on my forearm, not another moment. The flesh there is practically torn, it’s so red and angry.

I spent hours in London today. Those hours were filled with aimless wandering, parks and museums, then—of course—splurging on the black card. Funny thing about shopping my life away, is that I don’t particularlylovefashion. It’s just better sometimes than to sit in my room and stare at the wall. Those days suck the life out of me.

I don’t have a lot to fill my time.

I do have friends, you know.

Two, to be exact.

Courtney and James.

James is something of a token friend, one that comes with Courtney. But they are…

Well, they were born from krums;humans.

And that makes them bothmade witches.

There are tiers to our society. Made ones are at the bottom. My family—elites and aristos—we are crowns perched on top.

Can’t exactly fill my days with Courtney.

My father would have a fit if I invited her over. So I go the entire lengths of the school breaks without her. Without any friends, really.

Makes for long, quiet days.

And so this is what I do.

A whole load of nothing.

The exhaustion of nothing sags my shoulders with a sigh.

I kick my bags closer to the veil. All seven of them. Takes me a moment—careful not to topple them over. But the delay earns a huff from the man behind me.

I whip a dark look over my shoulder at him.

His eyes narrow.

But his hand tightens on his daughter’s, and he is silent in his simmering insults, the ones that flicker behind his eyes but that he doesn’t dare voice.

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