Page 135 of A Heart of Bluestone

Like me, she spent the whole Saturday festering away in bed. The dorm reeks of booze, of acidic potions and sweaty sheets.

Sunday came, and she unearthed herself from the blankets.

I stayed in bed.

The hangover dissipated enough that I could work on my assignments and read over the draft of Courtney’s article, but I stayed concealed for reasons other than a headache and its friend, nausea.

I hid from Dray Sinclair.

Hardly much point to it, since I’m only delaying the inevitable.

I pull away from the buffet.

Courtney’s shoes scuff on the floor as she rushes to keep up. “So did you? Read it?”

Stifling a yawn into my shoulder, I mumble, “Yeah.”

Dray’s watchful stare follows me like frost trickling through the air.

“And?” Courtney lowers her tray to the table.

I let mine crash with a clatter, one that jolts my half-sleeping brother out of his daze. He shoots me a scathing glare that I ignore.

Dropping into the chair, I hide a smile behind my coffee mug.

“What did you think?” she asks.

I shrug. “I dunno—it’s just another article about krum culling.”

It’s not even Bluestone-related, so what a krum culling article has to do with the school newsletter, I don’t understand.

Courtney flattens her hands on the table. She leans over her tray. “Their food is literally poisoning them.”

I drop my pointed stare to her tray. “You are eating the same thing, Courtney. You made the choice at the buffet not to take the healthy, filling and nutritious breakfast. You chose the poison, knowing what it is. They do, too.”

No one is culling the krums.

Not, at least, by poisoned food.

They choose to stop at those restaurants with meat patties that have no meat, with bread that never moulds, with wilted lettuce that tastes of pesticides.

Just as Courtney chooses to consume the same poison in a different form.

“I was raised krum,” she said and sinks back into the wooden chair. It creaks under her weight as she folds her arms. “Hell, we didn’t know we were witches, James and I, until our twelfth birthdays.”

A frown pinches her face; she drops, hard, into thought.

I fight the urge to roll my eyes. Of course her upbringing has affected her, the choices she makes, large or small. I just don’t think it’s that deep.

“What was it like?” I stab my fork into the perfect crunch of a watermelon cube. I bring it to my mouth. “Finding out you were witches?”

“Like everything just made sense.”

That’s all she says.

I don’t pry any more than that.

Courtney and James don’t return to their krum home outside of school. None of the made ones do.

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