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“Did you enjoy the dance last night?” I say.
“I did,” she says. “And you?”
I glance at Cat as I reply. “It was perfect.”
A somewhat awkward silence follows, until Chay breaks it by saying, “Did any of you see Professor Penmark harassing Professor Thorn? He kept following her around and around the hall until she spilled her punch on his shoes. One hundred percent intentionally.”
“Good, fuck Professor Penmark!” Cat says, spearing a bite of French toast with unnecessary vigor. “I hope they were expensive shoes.”
I love Cat when she’s spiteful.
Grinning to myself, I likewise attack my French toast.
The strangeness of my presence at their table abates, and soon a pleasant hubbub of several simultaneous conversations arises, as Chay shows Anna and Rakel the boots Ozzy sent her for Christmas, Ares asks Cat if Zoe and Miles went back to Chicago for the holiday, and Leo shouts something over to Matteo Ragusa at the neighboring table.
“I heard you’ve been training with Snow,” Hedeon says to me. “Outside of our normal classes, I mean.”
“That’s right.”
“Lucky,” Hedeon says enviously. “I’ve never had a better teacher.”
“I agree.” I nod.
Hedeon pokes at his food moodily. He’s the only person at the table without a hint of a smile. I’ve always assumed he hangs around with Leo and Ares because nobody else wants to put up with his sulky silence. Even his roommate Kenzo Tanaka barely seems to tolerate him. And you’d hardly know that he and Silas were brothers, for how rarely they’re seen together.
“How come you never sit with Silas?” I say, indicating the table where Silas, Bodashka, and Vanya sit.
“Because I fucking loathe him,” Hedeon mutters.
“He’s not exactly a barrelof laughs, is he?”
Silas is the most humorless person I’ve ever encountered, and that’s saying something after living with my father the last several years.
“You can’t imagine what it was like growing up in the same house as him,” Hedeon says quietly.
I look at Hedeon, really look at him for the first time.
I see his blue eyes, strangely lifeless, and his face that ought to be handsome, but never seems to draw any girls toward him, because of the anger and despair etched into every expression. He’s like a reverse magnet, repelling anyone who would get near him.
It’s far too familiar to me.
“What about the Grays?” I ask him. “Were they good to you?”
Hedeon laughs bitterly. “Is a butcher good to his knife?”
“I suppose he’s careful with it.”
“No,” Hedeon says. “He sharpens it against stone, and then uses it any way he pleases.”
I think I finally understand.
“Silas is the stone.”
Hedeon meets my eye for the first time. The understanding that passes between us is unhappy on both sides.
Cat watches me from across the table. I’m not sure if she likes me sitting here with her friends. It’s a collision of worlds.
Especially when Bram passes our table, hair tangled and face still puffy from sleep, searching for somewhere to sit in the crowded hall.
