Chapter 133: someone told me about you

Chapter 133 — Someone Told Me About You

"Elena Ward," said the girl, shifting her bag to her other shoulder. "Ashgrove Academy. I’m here for the exchange, same as the others."

"Roxanne Silver. Though you seem to know that already."

"I do. Sorry. It sounds strange when you say it back to me."

"How do you know it?"

Elena fell into step beside her as the rest of the visitors followed Nadia toward the welcome hall. "My cousin came to your Autumn Social as someone’s guest. She talked about it for a week. The lanterns, mostly, and the girl who organised them. She said you had a reputation for speaking your mind, even when half the room wanted you to stop."

"I’m beginning to think my name travels faster than I do."

Elena laughed. "Only because people keep talking about you."

"That’s unfortunate. I was hoping to become mysterious."

"Trust me, you don’t look mysterious."

"Wonderful. We’ve known each other for thirty seconds and you’re already insulting me."

"It was an observation."

"It was an insult with good manners."

Roxanne had not expected to enjoy it. She disliked being a story people had heard before she arrived, and a small stiffness had crept into her shoulders. But Elena looked curious rather than greedy, like someone seeing a famous building up close and finding it smaller than the pictures. It was hard to stay prickly with someone like that.

The welcome area was a long gallery off the main hall, lined with tables of tea and neatly lettered name cards. Roxanne walked the visitors through the basics: where schedules were collected, which corridor led to the dining hall, which staircase to avoid because it went absolutely nowhere. A boy at the back wrote that last one down with great seriousness.

Elena stayed close, though she looked at people more than at buildings. "Is it always this busy? Everyone seems to be going somewhere at a run."

"Mostly they’re late."

"And do the Moonstone brothers attend ordinary classes like everyone else?"

"They sit in the same rooms and complain about the same lecturers." Roxanne pointed at a board by the door. "That’s where the exchange timetables go up."

"Do you spend much time with them?"

Roxanne gave her a look. "Is that on your official list of questions?"

"No. It’s on my personal list."

"Then your personal list needs editing."

"I’ll cross it out," Elena said, with no visible intention of doing so, and Roxanne felt her mouth twitch.

When the last of the visitors had been checked in, a lull settled over the gallery. Nadia waved from across the room, mouthing that she would cover the desk, and Roxanne took two cups of tea to a bench by the window. Elena accepted one and looked out at the courtyard, where a group of Moonstone students were kicking a ball around with no apparent rules.

"They’re so relaxed," she said. "At Ashgrove, nobody would dare. We’re expected to protect our reputations. One wrong impression at the wrong dinner and your name goes into a ledger somewhere. People lose placements over it."

"Over a dinner?"

"Over a laugh that was too loud." Elena smiled thinly. "I thought your academy would be worse, honestly. With the royals. I expected everyone to walk about on tiptoe."

"Some do." Roxanne wrapped both hands around her cup. "It isn’t perfect. I’ve had a rough time here, more than once. Rumours, people who decided what I was before I opened my mouth. But I found friends. And things to do that are mine. Lanterns, for instance." She glanced sideways. "That’s enough to make me want to stay."

She realised, as she said it, that she had talked for a full minute without reaching for the worst things that had happened to her. They were still there, in the background, like furniture in another room, but the conversation had not needed them. She had ordinary things to share now: a staircase to nowhere, a stew that Tessa swore had moved, a friend who dragged her into relay races.

That sounded pleasant, her wolf murmured, from somewhere comfortable.

Don’t ruin it, Roxanne told her.

I am only agreeing with you.

Elena set down her cup. "The exchange gives us a free afternoon on Thursday. I’d like to see the town, but I don’t know where students go."

"There’s a secondhand bookshop that’s worth an hour. Avoid the pie stall by the fountain. And there’s a café with an awning that does decent tea." Roxanne hesitated, then shrugged. "If our schedules match, I could show you."

Elena stared. "You barely know me."

"Would you prefer I wait until we’ve been acquainted for six months?"

"No. I only expected you to be less approachable."

"That’s the second insult you’ve given me today."

"I’m starting to think you count everything."

"Only when people are rude to me."

"Then I’ll be more careful. Thursday, if I’m free."

"Thursday," said Roxanne, and noticed that she meant it, and that nobody had asked her to.

A bell rang for the first evening briefing, and the visitors began to gather near the doors. A tall girl in a neat grey coat detached herself from the group, with the polished air of someone who had never once been late. She drifted to Elena’s side.

"Have you met her already?" she asked, with a small nod toward Roxanne, who stood three paces away stacking cups.

"I have," Elena said.

"Good. Then be careful." The girl pitched her voice low, though not low enough. "Don’t get caught up in her problems. That’s what everyone says happens when you get close to her."

The cups clinked in Roxanne’s hands. She did not turn around.

Elena frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Only what I’ve heard." The girl lifted one shoulder. "I don’t know the details. Everyone says it."

Roxanne set the last cup on the tray. She could have turned. She could have listed everything she had survived, or demanded to know who had started the story, or watched that tidy grey face come apart as it tried to explain itself. She felt each option in turn and put it down again, like stones she had no use for.

You could bite her, her wolf suggested, with interest.

No.

I only said could.

Roxanne crossed the room to Elena instead and spoke to her alone, evenly, without any heat. "You don’t have to take anyone’s word for what kind of person I am. People can tell you whatever they like. You’ll work out the truth yourself."

Elena looked at her for a long moment, then at the girl in the grey coat, who had suddenly become very interested in the ceiling.

"I think I’d rather do that," she said.

"Good." Roxanne picked up the tray. "Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have forty cups to carry and a reputation to ignore."

She returned to her duties and refused, with some effort, to let one stranger’s opinion spoil the afternoon. Nadia caught her eye across the gallery and raised an eyebrow, and Roxanne shook her head slightly. Later. By the time the last visitor had been sent off to the briefing, the knot in her stomach had mostly loosened, and she was wiping down the final table with something close to contentment.

Quick footsteps came up behind her.

Elena stood in the doorway, her coat buttoned wrong, slightly out of breath, as though she had run back the whole length of the corridor. "One more thing. I meant to ask before I came here, and then I lost my nerve." She wet her lips. "Is it true that you used to be afraid of being rejected?"

Roxanne stopped moving.

It was too personal to be idle, yet there was nothing malicious in it. Elena looked like someone who had been handed half a story and had turned it over for days, certain that something important was missing.

"Who told you that?" Roxanne asked quietly.