Page 20 of A Heart of Bluestone

I frown a moment before I realise that she’s out-cold.

Passed out on her back, a splayed book on her chest, and a trickle of drool that glistens on the edge of her cheek.

I pass my bed, the same one I have had at the academy every year since I first arrived. I toss my bag onto the trunk at the end. My movements are slow, careful, and I reach over Courtney for the book that rises and falls on her chest, in sync with her peaceful breaths.

I peel it off of her.

Before I set it on her nightstand, I turn it over to read the cover. It’s just an atlas.

My mouth puckers and I think my best friend (onlyfriend) might be a little strange.

I set the atlas down then move for my trunk. My luggage is stacked neatly beside it. We hand over our cases at the veil nearthe village, long before we take the gondolas. The larger luggage, thankfully, comes ahead of us.

Makes for less chores to delay much needed sleep before classes officially start tomorrow.

And I need sleep.

There’s something so tiring about veils, like we never really found a way to witch-travel without absolute fatigue. Guess there’s a price to pay for moving through space, and that price is all your damn energy.

Mine is drained.

The fatigue has me in its grip, and it pulls me down, down to the ground, to the rug beneath my feet, to any place I can rest and sleep.

But I fight it. I fight it enough to change into a matching shorts and top pyjama set, tug on a pair of bedsocks, then climb into my fresh sheets.

I don’t need to glance over at the two canopy beds against the wall opposite me. I know the other dormmates haven’t left the hall yet. Both Serena and Asta were still there, last I saw them.

I hope they aren’t too loud when they come in.

Though at this rate, I think I could sleep through blackout dust. And those things just have a menacing feel about them.

A yawn splits me as I pull on my eye-mask, then flop down on the feathery plushness of my pillows.

Sleep finds me in less than blink.

4

The classroom floods with the raucous chorus of textbooks thudding onto tables, the rustle of backpacks and the low murmurs of dying chatter.

The legs of my chair screech horridly as I kick it back and throw my bag onto the table at the back of the room.

As I wrestle out my own textbook, Master Welham bowls into the classroom.

I spare him a passing glance before I drop into my seat with ahmph, then toss my abused backpack onto the wooden floorboards, so freshly polished that I can almost make out Master Welham’s bulbous reflection on them.

He’s a short, round thing, with a villainous moustache that almost seems comical. Looks like he should be running corruption on Wall Street, not here teaching us Brews and Theory. Maybe he was doing just that before he came to teach at Bluestone.

A hundred or so years ago, he would have fit right in on Wall Street. His corduroy jacket pinches at the middle of his bulbous belly, the buttons looking about ready to ping off and take someone’s eyes out, and he wears a bowling hat to cover his balding head. Looks exactly how I would imagine a corrupt witch hiding amongst the krums of the finance world would have looked a century ago.

Master Welham turns to face us, his cheeks and nose all ghastly shades of red, and he rolls on the balls of his feet.

I instantly tune out the moment he starts running over the curriculum this year. It’s the same every year. Brews, salves, ointments, blah, blah, blah.

I hate Brews and Theory.

My father insisted I take the class, since there’s so few I can study without power. And when father insists, hecommands. His word is final. No negotiation, no discussion—he says, and thus it becomes.

So, I do what I do best.

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