Page 116 of A Heart of Bluestone

I startle, and look over at the fence, mostly fallen, but some stubborn planks stay standing.

Beside the boulder that’s littered with liquor bottles, beers and paper cups, Eric pushes from the rotting fence.

Serena arches a brow—and aims it at Eric’s flushed cheeks, the cold biting at him. Slowly, she turns that look on me.

I mumble, “I’ll catch up.”

There’s ahmphthat snares in her throat before she turns and makes for the rotting picnic bench. There, cups and dice and empty beer bottles are scattered around.

I force a tight smile onto my face as I head for Eric.

He premeditates me. Got a drink ready and everything.

He hands me a paper cup filled with the stench of sugar.

I peer at the drink, nose crinkling as I eye the cheap fizzed wine.

“It’s nice to see you out here,” he says, delicate. The question underneath is ‘why are you here?’

I nod, faint. “And you. Getting in as much fun on your student days?”

His smile is tight, the crease around his eyes awkward. He looks to the ruins beyond the abandoned cabin.

Silence pulses.

“The count who built this castle is the reason the VeVille was built,” he tells me, and gestures his own paper cup to the maze, the ruins pushed aside to make paths. It goes on too long, all the way up the East Quarter of the academy.

“It wasn’t a witching village then. Just workers. Krums,” he adds with a guilty grin, “trying to make a living.”

I know. I don’t like that he thinks I don’t.

“And the villagers turned, burnt the castle to the ground,” I say with a nod.

Eric’s lips thin and he gives a faint nod.

An uncomfortable silence settles over us.

The rest goes unsaid about the story, that witches came to slaughter the krums, and settled in the village themselves.

VeVille was one of the first witch-only settlements in our histories. Started something of a movement.

Eric brings the rim of his cup to his lips. He sips, and I’m sure he only does to do something in this awkward silence.

Don’t think he liked so much that I finished the story for him. Eric must be one of those men who like to share information, not to be matched in it.

Probably thinks I’m some sort of idiot, now that he’s privy to how poorly I grade, and that I don’t know anything at all.

I shift my weight from boot to boot and start picking at the rim of the paper cup. I cut my nails into it, leaving crescent-shape dents.

Eric can’t take another moment like this.

He just blurts it out. “So we’re good, right?”

I turn my chin to face him. I nod with a slight shrug of the shoulder. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

Because you downgraded me in Star Theory, then barely speak a nonprofessional word while you tutor me? Like our moments never happened, like you didn’t ask me to join you on the snowfields?

Guy’s giving me whiplash.

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