Page 40 of Bone Year

“Clementine?” I ask.

“She made three people cry. Three in the first hour.” Lux lifts her head enough to glare at me. “And now I have my dad’s class. This day is a nightmare.”

“At least you survived,” I offer.

“Barely.” She sits up, stealing a piece of bread from my plate. “I need sustenance. And therapy.”

Another figure slides onto the bench beside Lux. Blonde hair, a glint of metal at her lip, and an expression that says she knows exactly what kind of entrance she’s making.

Ellavee.

“So you never made an appearance at the party last night.” Lux says, before taking a drink of water.

“I had somewhere to be,” Ellavee says, completely unbothered. She picks up a spoon and examines it.

“Somewhere being a boy’s room,” Lux adds.

“A gentleman’s room,” Ellavee corrects, taking a bite of her stew. “There’s a difference.”

“How was that, by the way?” Lux asks, raising an eyebrow.

Ellavee smirks, evidently full of stories. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

“Since when?”

“Since now.” She shrugs and starts to play with her lip ring. “New year, new me.”

I laugh through my nose, and Ellavee’s sharp eyes flick to me, but then her lips quirk up on one side.

Movement across the hall catches my attention. I look up without meaning to, and there he is.

Draven.

He’s not sitting with the other bone year students. He’s at a table near the far fireplace, surrounded by older students, blood and breath years by the look of their red and blue emblems on their black clothes.

Malric sits beside him, leaning in to say something. Draven stares ahead with that placid expression.

“They always stick together,” Lux says, following my gaze. “The vampires, I mean. They’re the only bloodline that thinks they’re better than everyone else, so they tend to keep to themselves.”

“It’s a superiority thing,” Ellavee adds, twirling her spoon. “Old blood, old power, old grudges. They don’t mix with the rest of us unless they have to, or unless they want to fuck you, then suddenly they’re very interested in interspecies relations.”

Lux snorts. Jace shifts beside me, and I hope he’s not thinking about how Draven and I walked into class together today.

I force myself to look away from Draven’s table, but not before I catch him looking back.

“This isn’t exactly what I expected my afternoon to look like,” I say to Lux, Ellavee, and Jace, who flank either side of me.

We changed into our training attire, leather pants and long-sleeve black tops, and are now having class outside in the freezing cold.

It’s a giant stone courtyard covered in some kind of enchanted ceiling that keeps the snow out but lets the gray sky show through. There are bleachers on either side, but we all stand in a clustered line, shifting our weight, breath visible in the air.

“I probably should have mentioned my dad is a hundred and fifty years old and used to be a Vanguard before teaching,” Lux says quietly.

Jace and I both lean forward to look at her.

“What the hell, Lux?” I breathe.

“Wait.” Jace’s brow furrows. “Your father lived through the last cycle?”