Page 6 of A Heart of Bluestone

We witches all have our talents—ourprints—and mine of course is nothing at all.

To step out of one’s print can be deadly, even catastrophic. So I suppose it’s a good thing for me that I don’t have a print on my soul, a blood magic bound to me. I would find a way to mess it up or kill myself in the discovery of my talent. Somehow summon adeity that will collapse the earth, or end up drowning an entire city with what the krums call tsunamis.

Silver lining, and all that.

“It’s not really Rituals and Sacrifices,” he says and cuts a sheepish look down to his brown leather boots. The look he lifts to me is one of unease, as though he let his joke go too far, orItook it too far and he’s reeling it back in. “Star Theory is my field of interest.”

I shuffle along with the queue. Only one witch in front of me now, the one who faltered in her glower what feels like hours ago.

I throw a look at Eric. “I take that class.”

He glances down the heads of the queue towards the city beyond the lane, a tinge of pink on his cheekbones. “Well, I’ll see you in class.”

I nod before he stalks off to be swallowed up by the sweltering city.

I watch him go for a moment before I move for the veil.

Finally, it’s my turn. Though I’m glad, maybe a little, that I waited in the queue and didn’t take my chances on a taxi all that distance home and getting stuck in car traffic instead, because then I wouldn’t have run into Eric Harling.

I have no foolish ambitions there.

Just a small crush.

It can never be more.

Eric might be of fullblood from ancient bloodlines, but he isn’t like us. Not like my family. Not worthy of my father’s consideration.

And father’s consideration is everything.

Without his approval, his name signed on the contract for my marriage, my dowry and my lifetime allowance, there is no marriage to be had.

Shame, really.

Eric would be what so few have the potential of ever being.

Good.

A good, decent man, a kind husband to be had.

Handsome, too.

That isn’t in the cards for me. Not in my crystal ball.

Someone like Eric wouldn’t blink twice at my status as a deadblood. My bloodline remains pure, ancient—and I am still an aristo.

I simply happen to have no magic.

Eric, if he meant to marry well, would accept that about me. But within my circle, within the company my family keeps, our allies, I am a stain.

I am one of the very few elite debutantes whose marriage contracts arestillunsigned.

I have no betrothed, no arranged future with anyone. I’m twenty-two years old, and I face a future stuck in the family estate, a burden to my parents, the unmarried deadblood.

Ugh. I’ll be demoted, too, in my own home.

Eventually, my brother will take over the estate—and he, with his wife, will be above me.In my own home.

Can you imagine?

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