Page 62 of A Heart of Bluestone

Again?

What the actual fuck is up with these people?

If I’m playing it safe, which I will, the obvious choice is truth. So one might think that they aren’t playing it safe, and yet I get this tense, sickly feeling in my stomach that they are.

I understand now.

They avoid truth, because the questions might be worse than the dares. There’s no lying to be tolerated in this game.

Yet, the dare hangs in the air.

Still, no one speaks. No one even shifts in their seat to make a rustling noise, or clears their throat, or sips their drink—nothing.

I’m sure that if I looked over my shoulder, I would see that nearby witches have fallen to a safe silence, too, loiter too close to the couches by the fireplace, gazes sliding over us.

“I dare you,” Oliver starts, and he doesn’t think slowly, he just considers his wording, “to act as though Olivia is not here—” His mouth spreads around his pearly white teeth, and it looks more of a threat than a grin. “—for two whole weeks.”

My heart slingshots.

My fingers tighten around my glass.

To keep the players to the dare, the sick draught will stick to the lining of the stomach. That’s why we drink it. It will hang around for two weeks—and if we go back on our dare, the sick will start.

I might just get two weeks, a whole fucking fortnight without so much as look from Dray. Because no one is picking the black vomit, not even Dray.

I dare a small smile.

I have to suck my lips inwards and bite down on them just to keep it at bay.

Then Dray turns a dark look on me.

His gaze runs me over, slow and careful, before he says, “And what of her round? She’s after me, and so I’m the one who’s to ask her which she’ll chose.”

“No, no,” Oliver still has that grin pinned to his face, that unsettling look. “She isn’t here,” he adds in a whisper.

My mind is whirling to catch up.

My brother is doing something, but what exactly, I don’t know. Is he fucking with Dray for the sake of it? That’s not unusual for them. Is he blocking him from whatever schemes he quickly conjured up for my round in this game? But if that’s what Oliver is doing, then the better question is why?

Oliver has never thrown a net of protection over me. Never gone out of his way to shield me from Dray.

I cut a glance to Serena.

Her eyes are alight, and she’s perched on the edge of her seat. She holds her shot glass, but her entire being is swallowed up by whatever is happening between Oliver and Dray.

Dray loosens a breath. A slight sound, reluctant, and his jaw clenches, tight. Beneath his t-shirt, the flex of his muscles tensing is a slight, unnoticeable thing to anyone not paying attention.

Then, he lifts his glass—and downs the draught-spiked vodka.

Oliver turns his sharp gaze on me. “What are you still doing here?”

My lips part around silence. I look probably like a gaping fish for a moment. “It’s my turn—”

“Not if you don’t exist to the player before you,” he says it as though I am five years old and thoroughly slow. “Fuck off.”

Don’t need telling twice.

I squirm out of my chair and drop the glass to the coffee table. It topples over and spills, but I don’t spare it a moment’s glance.

---