Page 160 of A Heart of Bluestone

Never got me off the ride no matter how I begged.

Oliver laughed at me.

In the orange glow of the dungeon room, I’m taken back to that once-lost memory.

I slump against the door. “So what do we do?”

My gaze is glued to Dray as he fishes out from the pocket of his sweatpants, a cigarette. Long and white.

I frown as he brings it to lips, then lights it with a touch of his fingertip to the tobacco end.

He pinches it between his finger and thumb before he draws it away from his lips, and a ribbon of smoke snakes out after it. “Start sorting,” he says, as though it’s obvious.

I run my gaze over the mess of the circular room, then linger over the debris that’s tucked around the small, arched fire. The smoke billows up into the hole in the ceiling.

“This is servant work,” I mumble before I push from the door.

Dray makes no move for me, not to attack, not to help. He watches from behind the silvery vapours, perched on the stool, and utterly relaxed.

I start with the pile closest to me—and furthest from him tucked in the other end of the room. This pile, as I nudge my rubber boot against the bags, is little more than litter. Empty sacks of salt stirred in with broken brooms and burlaps.

I sigh and drop to a crouch. I grab a burlap sack, then start to shove all the others into it.

Dray’s gaze burns into the back of my head.

I set the burlap sack aside before I dig out all the junk from under the table—the sort of round, rustic table from the mess hall, not a desk from class. I eye its legs but see no sign of injury. I wipe the surface clean of debris, and spot the crack down the middle, not unlike stray, young magic struck it and seared a hole right into the wood.

I decide it can’t be repaired, because I can’t be bothered with another thought, and I need a place to pile all the broken things beyond repair.

Dray just smokes that cigarette, watching me work.

And I work until the table is piled high and, under it, all the burlap sacks are carefully organised. I finally stand from mycrouch. The aches spring in my knees, fast. The cold worsens them.

I wipe my hands off on my sweatpants, then look over my shoulder at Dray.

Still on the stool.

The breath that escapes me is small.

Dray flicks the cigarette across the room. It lands in the flames.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” I say, but the confidence isn’t in my voice, so it’s more of a mumble than anything.

“I don’t,” he sighs, then stretches his arms out, as though there is tension balled in his shoulders to unwind. “I’ll have one every so often.”

The wordwhyis on the tip of my tongue. I bite it down.

He lets a stretch run through him.

Fleetingly, I think of a panther stretching out before it rushes at prey and rips it apart.

I just grunt, then—without a choice—move for the other side, the one I avoid, the one that brings me directly across from him, right into his line of sight.

I kick through cases and crates of old, rotten books. The pages are musty and mostly nibbled away by termites and woodspiders.

I shudder, as though those insects are on me now.

I drag the cases to the table of waste, of things to be burned and tossed away.

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