Page 95 of A Heart of Bluestone

I’m left all alone, and though being with people hasn’t saved me from Dray before, being alone definitely makes me feel a lot more vulnerable,exposed.

I’m out in the open, a sitting toad.

Then it gets worse.

Lockwood, Master of Mathematics, announces a pop quiz.

Fuck my fucking life.

I bury my face in my palms as he dishes out the papers.

They move from one table to the next to the next, and I wonder how much trouble I’ll get in if I burn mine, or eat it.

I don’t do either.

I slump over my notebook.

The scratching of pens on paper is fast to fill the classroom. Sometimes, there’s a cough, or the creak of a chair, but it’s mostly silent as we tackle the questionnaire.

Gods, I can feel my mind rotting. Turning sour and bitter.

And when the timer chimes, a ringing that sets my teeth on edge, and we are dismissed, my mood has only worsened to the state of rotten pears.

I know I did horribly on that test.

Shame it’s graded.

Father will be on the phone in a matter of days about it. Depends on when he gets the results.

No doubt he’ll mention how well Oliver did.

My mouth puckers at the thought, the reminder of how much better my twin is. Maybe in the womb he ate my magic and my brains, and that’s how he’s bloody special.

Prick.

My mood is rotting the more I let my mind stew on it, on all of it. Oliver, the test, my father, Dray, even Serena sitting with me the other week has some meaning to it that I can’t figure out.

Wish I could lure the Snakes all onto one sled, then push them all off a fucking crevasse.

The rest of the day doesn’t help.

Brews and Theory is still in its relocation to the gardens—and I did not dress for the outside. I forgot, alright?

So now, I’m hugging myself on the stool, rubbing my cardigan-shielded arms and watching my breath mist in front of my face.

A dozen cauldrons and stools line the netted gardens.

Dray stands on the other side of the cauldron, I’m sure to have a direct line of sight to me, and he stirs in the warts and spider eggs. He can’t stop stirring, not for the rest of the hour. The potion has to congeal under the Hallows Eve moon in just a couple of nights, but before that, it takes a week to get the potion to the deep, rich shade of purple it must be.

I huddle up near the flames that lick under the cauldron and hug myself so tight my bones should snap.

If the gods thought they might give me a break, they then laughed at the notion, then fired more torment my way.

In Star Theory, I get my assignment back.

Graded.

Marked in red ink.

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