Page 27 of Shattered Ice
Adrian
Myfootstepsechoacrossthe marble floor of Briarcliff’s dining hall, where chandeliers cast a jaundiced glow over everything below. A freshman in boat shoes stumbles over himself to clear my path. The portraits of Havemeyer and Westinghouse stare down from gilded frames, their brass nameplates polished this morning by someone who will never eat here. I inhale—truffle fries from the VIP line mingling with something congealing under heat lamps.
We claim the center table without discussion. Calder drops into his chair and stretches his legs until they force a passing girl to detour. Gio’s butter knife flashes as he flips it, catches it, flips it again, his eyes scanning the room. Rylan tilts his chair back on two legs, the metal screaming against marble. Beside him,Declan mechanically cuts his steak into identical cubes, chewing each exactly twelve times.
My knife saws through gristle, scraping porcelain. Steel bites the ceramic under my grip. My chicken tastes like nothing. My schedule loops through my head: study hall, practice, film, this performance. Calder’s laugh bounces off the ceiling. Gio’s voice rises to match. The room amplifies them, and they grow louder still.
“Board dinner Friday,” Calder says, in a perfect, mocking imitation of my father’s cadence. “Wear a tie, be useful.” He laughs when Gio snorts hard enough to choke on his water.
I lift an eyebrow, my voice flat. “Practice. Try not to embarrass yourself beforehand.”
Rylan taps the table like a drumline. “Easy, Cap. We’ll give them a show.”
It’s stupid small talk delivered like threats. I’d let it run until it exhausts itself, but movement at the periphery pulls the air a degree colder. The kind of shift the room doesn’t feel, only predators do.
“Shit, Maddox,” Gio mutters, nodding towards a table near the windows. “Don’t look now, but your sister’s at the two-o’clock, taking notes again. Probably for that hit piece she’s writing on ‘toxic athletic culture.’”
I glance over. A girl with sharp, intelligent eyes and a reporter’s notebook is watching us, her expression unreadable. Maya Maddox. She doesn’t look away when she catches me staring, just lifts her chin a fraction of an inch in challenge.Another fucking problem.
Dante doesn’t look up from his steak, but his voice slices through the chatter. “Find what you’re looking for, Maddox?”
Her reply is just as clear, completely unfazed. “Just observing the local wildlife in its natural habitat, Voss.”
A few guys at our table snort. Dante’s mouth quirks in a smirk he probably thinks no one sees as he turns his attention back to his plate in a clear dismissal.
But Maya’s voice cuts across the room again, sharper this time. “Careful, Voss. You try to ignore me that hard, I’ll think you’re scared of what I’ll write.”
Dante’s hand, the one holding his knife, stills for a single, charged beat before he resumes cutting his steak. He doesn’t look up.
Rylan shakes his head. “She’s got bite. Still can’t believe she’s your sister, Cole.”
Cole groans quietly, dropping his head into his hand. “For the love of God, can the two of you not do this here?” he mutters to Dante. “She’s just doing her job.”
“Your sister’s job is being a pain in my ass,” Dante replies without heat, popping a piece of steak into his mouth.
I file it away and turn my attention back to the room as the main doors swing open.
Clara Harrington has just stepped out of the line with a tray balanced on one palm. And every nerve in my body pulls taut, a wire humming with a new frequency. Jeans, black sweater, a white collar just peeking at her throat like she premeditated order. No makeup I can clock from here, just that clean face she wears like honesty is armor. Zoë is a moving disco ball on her left. Genny is on the right in a blazer that costs more than my car, her eyes doing a cool inventory of the room like the floor plan belongs to her.
They angle past the salad bar. I don’t look right at them; I let the reflection in the sneeze guard do the work. She keeps the tray steady in a crowd that nudges because that’s how people in here saymove.
Gio clocks them first, his grin wolf-calm. “Babysitter sighting, twelve o’clock.”
Calder doesn’t even bother to turn. He watches my face for a reaction. “Escort duty. Brave.”
Rylan rotates his chair so it blocks their path by a deliberate inch. He doesn’t see Clara; he sees a red line to step on. “Hey, scholar,” he says to the air. “You checking our flashcards at lunch now?”
Before Clara can react, Zoë leans back, aiming a smile so sweet it’s poisonous at Gio. “Careful, Gio,” she says, her voice dripping with mock concern. “You might actually have to learn something. I hear they’re making ‘basic human decency’ a required course next semester, and you wouldn’t want to fail out.”
Gio is momentarily stunned before a slow, appreciative smirk spreads across his face. “Didn’t know you came with teeth, sweetheart.”
Zoë gives him a smile that would slash if it had teeth. “I’d love to, sugar. But you’d have to be able toreadthem.”
Half the table explodes in noise—not the right kind of laugh. A little too impressed. Rylan’s grin wobbles, then reasserts itself.
Clara doesn’t slow. With a barely perceptible shift of her shoulder, she creates her own space, and Rylan’s chair slides back an inch without him meaning for it to. He covers it with a bigger, louder laugh. People call that grace. I call it pressure applied at the right leverage point. The faint click of her tray against plastic carries like a dare.
Genny’s voice is silk over a razor. “There’s an open table by the window.”Translation: we’ll sit where we want.She guides them through the narrow gap like she’s used to walking into closed rooms and making the geometry change for her. They take a two-top by the window and pull up a third chair that clearly isn’t invited, the scrape of its legs across the marble satisfyingly loud.
