Page 73 of A Heart of Bluestone

I smile something forced. “Want to do something tonight?”

She glides her ink-stained hand over the papers. “I am.”

“Something fun,” I sigh. “We could get some wine from the village, hang out in the dorm? Oh, or go to the tower—”

“I have assignments. You do, too.”

With that, she’s putting pen to paper again.

Bold to use pen. I stick to pencil, I make so many mistakes.

“Ok.” I slump. “Well, see you later.”

I push from the bench, then leave her to her studies.

Dray doesn’t look as I pass.

I go to the library and pull out all the ancestral trees of the aristos. If I’m going to waste my Saturday—and I will—it will be on this. Learning all the possible suitors it could be.

I look for names I know to be unattached to any debutantes, I look for names of older aristos men who have been widowed, or the rare ones who never married at all.

It’s a dull Saturday and utterly useless. I give up in the afternoon to find my dinner in the mess hall, alone.

And when I go back to the dorm, I spend so long flicking through catalogues and books and brochures and magazines that my eyes are burning by the time I kick them off the bed.

I flop down on the pillow.

I outwitted myself. Because before any of that familiar anxiety creeps into my guy, that I will be married off to a wicked man, and my future is in the hands of others, I pass out.

I dream of monopoly men.

12

I’m at the precipice of learning Dray’s ignorance of me.

His weeks of the dare have been and gone, and then some. Almost three weeks now since the game in the grand parlour, and nothing—not a look, not a slur,nothing.

It’s too easy.

My suspicions stay sharp. Can’t let myself lower my defences or drop my guard, not even a little. His attention could turn on me at any moment now.

Especially now.

Because, now, after lessons have wrapped and classes are dismissed for the weekend, I am about to take a risk.

One I have been building the courage for.

I got enough scraps of it to leave the atrium doors and stand on the top step of the stairs that descend into the grounds.

The path for the gondolas snakes around the front of the academy, all the way to the wires that cut above the dustings of the first snow. The stone paving is all sludged with wet bootsteps from the earlier traffic of students this morning who have already left for the village.

I don’t.

Not today.

Today, I have my mind locked onto one spot of peace and serenity. The rockpool.

But to make it there, I have to walk further onto the grounds. Down the steps, away from the paved path, and through the ankle-deep snow to the trail beyond the frosty trees.

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