Page 147 of A Heart of Bluestone

Neither do I.

I grab my books and, hugging them in one arm, I slip off the desk. “I’ll see you Friday?”

He flickers a blank look to me. There’s a battle in those honeyed amber pots, clashes of morals and decisions and consequences—

I don’t let them take root.

“Our tutoring session in the library?” I remind him and, taking a step closer, lean up onto my toes—and I plant a kiss on his cheek. “See you then.”

Eric just nods, a flush to his olive-toned cheeks.

I leave the tower with an undeniable bounce in my step and absolutely no inkling that, when Friday comes at the end of the school week, I won’t be at the library with Eric.

I won’t even be on school grounds anymore.

Brews and Theory is consistent in two things: Dray is still my partner, as he assigned himself to the role at the start of the semester, and the lessons suffer this eternal relocation to the gardens.

Tonight, I’m prepared for the cold.

Sheathed in a white parka, an ivory faux fur hat tugged down on my head, I wrap and fasten my woollen scarf around my neck, then tuck it under the zipper.

Winter has well and truly arrived—and I’ve been sat on this stool for less than an hour, but already stacks of snow have gathered on my shoulders and hat.

I swat at the snow and watch it dust away.

This evening, I scooted the stool closer to the cauldron, closer to the flames licking under it.

I look up at Dray, standing on the other side, as he leans over the open tome of instructions and ingredients that’s perched on a rickety wooden table.

Dray wears no hat. Snowflakes cling to the few damp strands of his sandy waves. I watch them land, then dissolve, land, then dissolve.

His tone is monotonous as he reads from the brew book, “The spit of a woman,” then he glances at me before, “and two spits of a man—in orders of one, one, one.”

It’s the first he’s spoken to me in the week since…

Since a memory I violently shove out of my mind the moment it dares to form.

He turns to the sooted cauldron and spits once.

A lock of his hair brushes over his brow as he looks up at me from beneath his lashes. His cold eyes are frosty waters. “Spit, Olivia.”

I push up from the stool. It topples over and thuds onto the snow.

Leaning over the rim of the cauldron, I let a gentle spit escape me and land right in the centre of the deep purple liquid. It bubbles instantly.

Dray is quick to add his second spit before he tugs up the zip of his sleek black snowjacket, halfway up the smooth sunkissed hue of his neck, and I hate how he carries his tan for so long, that the warmth of his complexion hangs around through winter, and when it’s fading back to pale—though not as pale as me and my translucent ass—we’re off on holidays again, and he steals the tan right back.

I hate it.

I hate him.

He moves for the rickety table. It’s wider than my bedhead, and littered with phials and jars and wooden spoons and open books.

“Cut this,” Dray orders with a pointed finger towards the wet, bloated eel. “Slices, one centimetre thick.”

My nose wrinkles. I make a face at him.

Dray just arches a brow at me in answer.

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