Page 114 of A Heart of Bluestone

She shrugs, and it’s all silk and elegance. “Things are changing.”

I wait.

But that is all she says.

And my face is blank. “That’s great. But what isn’t changing is that I am not going anywhere with you.”

“Is that so?” Serena turns her back on me and returns to her wardrobe. She sifts through the clothes on hangers, leaving the garment bagged ones untouched. “Not even once you learn that Dray, OliverandLandon will be at the sparring club tonight? And they all have games early in the morning? Mildred, too.”

“So?”

She carries an armful of dresses to the foot of her bed, then drapes them over the comforter. “So,” she sighs, “they won’t be wasting their precious sleeping hours on a party by the old cabin.” She looks up her lashes at me. “Beyond Asta, you have no enemies there.”

My mind scrambles.

The old supply cabin by the maze of ruins.

That area is tucked to the edge of the academy, just a ten-minute stroll from the entrance, but it’s abandoned, decrepit, and—last time I checked—a hotspot for out of curfew ragers. Teachers know all about it, of course. But beyond some patrols, nothing much is done.

It’s often light fun.

So I hear, since I haven’t actually been to one.

“Now, pause your self-pity. Put this on.” A lump of fabric lobs me off the head. “Fix your face, then come have a drink.”

The clothes fall to my lap in a heap.

My frown follows Serena around the foot of her bed to her dresser. She’s careful as she lifts a bag of cosmetics from the pile of scarves and shoe boxes.

“Bathroom,” she tells me, and it takes me a moment to realise that it’s an order. To go clean myself up, wash my face, blow my nose, before tending to my makeup.

For a beat, I just stay slumped on my knees. My frown is aimed at her, unwavering.

She sighs, soft, then sets the cosmetics bag on the vanity table, whose mirror stretches up trimmed with gold. “Look, if anyone needs a drink around here, a night away from all this, it’s you. I promise they won’t be there. Oliver told me himself. This isn’t a trap, this isn’t—it isn’t anything other than the fact that you belong.”

My mouth trembles.

She echoes those words to me, firm. “And tonight, you belong with me, showing those half-breeds how to have fun.”

The answer that comes from me surprises even me, “What about Asta?”

The only words that should be spilling from my lips are ‘no’ and ‘go to hell’.

“Oh, she has a date. She won’t be a bother.”

I pinch the mauve fabric in my fingers before I lift it from my lap. It unravels with a slap.

I look down at the floor where the black breeches landed, the sort that aren’t quite leather, certainly not latex, but still has a faint gloss to them.

The sweater I hold up is more of a soft, long-sleeved crop top, with a sort of sweetheart neckline.

Not exactly an outfit I would have chosen for myself.

Not my colours.

Besides, I can’t go.

I shouldn’t.

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