Never mind. The word that came to mind was too improper to mention.
Isha bit her lip, studying Jaya carefully. Finally, she nodded. Jaya breathed out a silent sigh of relief, thankful for Isha’s younger-sister-level trust in her.
“Okay,” Jaya said, putting an arm around Isha and squeezing her. “Besides, I won’t let it be a problem. I promise.”
Dr. Waverly’s heels echoed across the lavish Moroccan tiles as she made her way to them. “Princess Jaya and Princess Isha,” she said deferentially in a mid-Atlantic accent, bowing slightly. “I’m Dr. Christina Waverly, the headmistress here at St. Rosetta’s International Academy. We are honored to have you join us. I am so sorry we had no one waiting for you. I was informed that you wouldn’t be arriving until much later tonight.” She paused, her gaze lingering on the rose pendant, as most people’s did. “Oh my. What a beautiful piece of jewelry.”
Jaya smiled in her most gracious manner, channeling Amma. “Thank you so much. My father acquired it at a gold souk in Dubai.”
“He has exquisite taste.” Jaya could tell Dr. Waverly was trying her hardest not to stare at the rubies. The necklace’s strangely mesmerizing effect was what had enchanted Appa in the first place.
“Thank you,” Jaya said again. “Oh, and please call me Jaya and my sister Isha. We decided to take an earlier flight from Munich. You couldn’t have known.”
Dr. Waverly nodded, the double strand of pearls around her neck clattering together. She was clearly a jewelry aficionado herself. Folding her hands neatly against her navy skirt, she asked, “I trust your travels were uneventful?”
“They really were,” Jaya answered quickly, nearly forgetting her manners and asking if Dr. Waverly could show them to their rooms already. She had so much to plan. If this were a fairy tale, she might be cackling while bent over a bubbling cauldron. Except, obviously, she was the heroine in this one.
“Excellent,” Dr. Waverly said, gesturing toward an open, wood-paneled archway. “Then I can take you both up to your dorms. Of course, with Isha being a sophomore and you being a senior, you will be in different wings.” She smiled apologetically. “I did speak to the Maharaja about it.”
“Yes, he told us,” Jaya said as they wound around the large hall. Across from them, a fireplace soared to the ceiling. She could’ve easily walked in with her arms spread wide and had room to spare on either side.
“That is so cool,” Isha said, following her gaze. “How much snow do you get here?”
“It’s not uncommon for us to get close to thirty inches in December and then again in the spring,” Dr. Waverly said, smiling a little. “We encourage students to take advantage of the shopping trip in late October to go into Aspen and buy winter gear. It gives you a chance to get to know your cohorts better off campus as well.”
Jaya had no interest in shopping or getting to know her cohorts, though of course Dr. Waverly couldn’t have known that. No one did. Jaya’s only interest was Grey Emerson.
One thing she’d come to realize—sabotage wasn’t always cloak-and-dagger. It wasn’t always dead-of-night escapades, or masked people swathed in midnight and stars. Sometimes it looked like this: ageless mountains that kept watch and saw all. An elite boarding school 8,800 miles away from home. And somewhere deep inside, an unsuspecting aristocrat.
Grey
Grey sat back against the rough granite on Mount Sama and looked down at the tiny town of St. Rosetta, shops and small buildings dotting it like thorny burrs. In the distance, he could make out the bigger neighboring town of Aspen. In a couple of months, everything would be covered in a heavy coat of snow. Grey liked the snow; he felt perfectly hidden in its thick, cold folds.
The wind whipped around him, nine thousand feet in the air, and Grey closed his eyes, reveling in the chill. Thursday was the beginning of a new school year—his last. Summer was already melting into fall, and soon he’d turn eighteen. He swallowed, trying to distract himself from the thought. Eighteen meant… complications. Complications he didn’t want to think about right then.
This summer had passed him by somehow. The other students and teachers had all flown home. Leo, whose parents were surgeons who traveled the world fixing up people who couldn’t otherwise be fixed, flew out and met them wherever they happened to be. Daphne Elizabeth, whose parents ignored her the entire summer and then lavished her with gifts right before she left, which she’d grudgingly admitted made being ignored almost worth it, still went home whenever she could. And if her parents didn’t want her, she’d go visit some other family member. Even Rahul, whose parents rented a tiny chalet in France every summer because he was too “odd” to live with them at their home in Delhi, took the summer to be with family.
When Leo had left, he’d frowned at Grey. “When are you going home?”
“Tomorrow,” Grey had said, looking away.
“Ouais, mais… If you don’t have any place to be, you can come to Thailand with me. We could go snorkeling.”
Grey had shaken his head. “No. But thanks.”
Leo, like Daphne Elizabeth—or DE as almost everyone called her—and Rahul, was clueless about the curse, the reason Grey was never invited home. They knew Grey didn’t like talking about his family or his home, so they never brought them up.
But never bringing them up didn’t change the truth: that something dark stalked him, had stalked him since birth. That the Rao curse might have already claimed someone he cared about, and he was terrified it would claim him next. Maybe other people would find it odd that Grey, a well-educated, not-quite-eighteen-year-old, would believe in such a thing. But what choice did he have? When other kids were learning their ABCs and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” Grey was learning the words to a familial curse. Ever since he could remember, he’d been told nothing, nothing, was as important as the curse was. So the least he could do to atone for his mother’s death—for which he took full responsibility—was to keep away from the manor, to keep his father cushioned from the reminder. He didn’t blame his father at all.
The only real place Grey felt safe, like he couldn’t hurt anyone, was in the mountains. The great towering stone, jutting out from the earth like vengeful gods, felt indestructible. They’d been there millennia before Grey, and they’d be here long after he was gone.
His cell phone beeped in his pocket. Grey frowned; he’d forgotten to silence it.
Where are you?
It was Leo. The other students, even those who, for some unknown reason, considered themselves his “friends,” were all back for the semester, but he’d purposefully made himself scarce. Being alone over the summer always did something to him—the longer he spent alone, the more alone he wanted to be. Sometimes he imagined the world without him. Would anyone really miss him when he was gone? By all accounts, his existence was a cosmic mistake anyway.
Out, he typed back.
Oh, oui, out, the response came back immediately. That makes everything clearer.
Grey waited.
We met someone interesting, Leo, used to Grey’s cryptic silences, added. Princess Jaya Rao and her sister, Isha. You know them? They seemed to know of you.