Page 89 of A Heart of Bluestone

I roll onto my side—and startle at the face of a skeletal imp.

The breath cuts through me as I jerk back on my pillow. The face of the little beast is curved over the side of my bed.

Its mouth curls around black teeth before it slides out from the gap in the curtains. The drapes don’t fall back into place. The gap stays, enough that I can watch the imp drag an envelope off the nightstand—and lets it fall to the floor.

I narrow my eyes, but the critter just hisses at me before it falls away to the floorboards and scurries across the dorm room to the parted brass gate.

It dips through the gap, then slams the gate shut.

Gone back into the tunnels that lead all the way to the basement. The tunnels are too narrow to push a person through, but the imps use them to get around and tend to all the little chores, like delivering luggage and parcels, or in this case, letters.

The trick with the little critters is to attach a bronze coin. Gold and silver upsets them, it must be copper. Attach the coin to whatever parcel is delivered and an imp will take great care to deliver it immediately.

That explains why the dawn hasn’t broken through the gaps in the curtains yet.

A yawn twists me around the bed before I stretch out my hand for the edge. I lean all the way down to graze my fingertips over the floor, because nothing will get me out from under the heat of the blankets and into the dark morning chill.

The moment my fingers graze the thick envelope, I feel that it’s detailed and grooved.

I bring the envelope onto the bed and rip off the wax seal. There is only one piece of paper inside, folded, and it is a contrast to the luxurious touch of the envelope. Thick and cream, but the grooves are scattered and too coarse, and I think of the kind of stationary found in five-star hotels or airport lounges. Not custom.

Mother calls those ones pseudo-luxuries, because they mimic the quality we have at home.

I unfold the letter.

And my heart is quick to plummet to my writhing gut.

‘Olivia, I would have called to discuss this matter with you, but as it is, I am not yet returned to England from business. The connection from Japan is unreliable and I do not wish to run the risk of being misunderstood in my severe disappointment of your actions.

Thus, I think it imperative that I write to you now.’

Oh fucking drown me.

The writhing in my gut churns thicker, like a pit of worms flailing and slapping about in a tub of tar.

I read on.

‘You will—and I meanwill—maintain your propriety and dignity at all times, even at the academy. You are a representation of your family, of aristos, of the heart of the Videralli, and I will not hear another whisper about you ‘rolling around the snow with a fallen gentry’.’

My face twists.

Fallen gentry.

I didn’t know that about Eric.

I always thought he was merely a gentry—and, like all elite (ancient blood) gentries, his family would have once been at the core of the Videralli, like ours, and they would have had wealth.

I just assumed what happened to the Harlings is what happens to many aristos over the centuries. Bad investments. Lazier arranged marriages. Weaker prints appearing with time. And so, the loss of wealth and power.

But to befallenis different.

Fallen is punishment.

That means that, somewhere up Eric’s family line, a witch didn’t agree with the Videralli, enough to at least attempt to change the way it’s done.

That witch was probably killed, and the rest of the family stripped to the bone of wealth, stripped of their privileges, and forced to start again. No allies, no friends, no help.

But that is Eric’s problem.

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