Chapter 9
The apple stayed in the drawer.
The note stayed under my pillow.
My mouth kept remembering Kieran anyway.
I remembered his breath breaking against mine, his hand stopping before my waist, the way he had looked at me afterward, like wanting more had become a thing he could hold back but not hide.
By dawn, I had learned two things.
One: a kiss could be brief and still ruin a good night’s sleep.
Two: the wool blanket was useless against the cold that crept in through the stone.
A knock came just after first bell.
When I opened the door, Rev stood in the corridor with a folded gray blanket under one arm and a roll in her mouth.
She took a bite out of the roll and spoke with her mouth full.
“Cold night.”
“Good morning to you too.”
“Wasn’t a greeting.”
She pushed the blanket at me.
“The school gives one because the school believes cold builds character.”
“Does it?”
“No. It builds cold girls.”
I took the blanket.
“Did you steal this?”
“Liberated.”
“From who?”
“Someone warmer than us.”
“That narrows it down.”
“If anyone asks, you didn’t get it from me.”
“And if no one asks?”
“Then congratulations. You own a stolen blanket, no questions asked.”
“Thank you,” I said, and meant it.
“Don’t make it sentimental.”
She put the roll back in her mouth, took another bite, then stopped before she turned away.
“You found Kieran?”
My face turned scarlet before I found words.
Rev stared at me for one second.
Then her eyes widened and she laughed so loudly I reached for the doorframe.
“Oh, good for him.”
“Rev.”
“And you,” she added, still laughing. “Mostly you.”
I hated that I could feel my face getting even hotter.
“He’s not the worst decision you could make,” she said.
“That’s a low recommendation.”
“This school has a pretty low bar.”
The first class bell rang somewhere down the corridor.
Rev shoved the last of the roll into her mouth and backed away.
“Try not to look so… guilty. You’re allowed to have a little fun, you know.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” I could feel the blush creeping higher up my neck.
“Terrible start.”
Then she left.
I had barely folded the blanket over the foot of the bed before the basin in the corner filled.
One breath, empty.
The next, black water to the rim.
Pale words wrote themselves across the surface.
Astor. Verse-study. East corridor. Room 214.
I stared at it. That would never not creep me out.
“Couldn’t someone have just written up a schedule?” I grumbled at the basin.
The water didn’t answer beyond holding the words for three more seconds.
Then they broke.
The basin emptied without draining.
I shook my head, then put on my uniform, and prepared for whatever fresh madness the day had in store for me.
The east wing had two staircases, neither helpfully marked. I found Room E-214 after passing it once, doubling back, and pretending that had been my plan.
The door was open.
The room was nearly empty.
Twelve chairs circled a long oval table. Each place had a small wooden tag carved with a Mark.
Cosima Verraine was already seated at the far side.
She had a book open in front of her. Beside it lay a folded page and a pen. She didn’t look up when I came in.
I quickly looked at the tags before she caught me staring at her.
Each had a name beneath a carved Mark.
Mine was easy to find.
Astra Verita.
The space above my name was blank.
I walked the circle.
The other tags had Marks above the names. Some were familiar—the gold Mark of the small dark-skinned girl from attunement, the Mark I had seen on the boy to my right. Some were new. Most of them.
Cosima’s tag was directly across from mine.
Her pen continued in a small, precise hand as I sat at my place.
The pen was Council-issue. I knew because Linden had been holding the same kind when he’d recruited me, and because the cap had a small Mark I had seen on no other pen.
Cosima was halfway down the page when I reached the table.
She finished the sentence, crossed out two words, replaced them with three better ones, and only then looked up.
She didn’t look surprised.
“Verita.”
“Verraine.” Two could play that game.
“You’re early.”
“It’s ten-fifty.”
“Astor is always late. The others know to come in at five past. That gives you fifteen minutes alone with me.”
“Lucky me.”
Her pen rested against the page.
“Possibly.”
I looked at the folded paper beside her book.
“Is that about me?”
“It’s a Council report.”
“About me?”
“About every first-year. Daily. Each senior is assigned a first-year to observe in verse-study.”
“And you happen to be assigned to me.”
“I am.”
“I just keep getting luckier,” I said again.
This time, when she smiled I saw mischief in it.
“Possibly,” she repeated.
“Show me what you wrote.”
“Absolutely not.”
At least that was clear.
Cosima laid one hand over the page.
“You shouldn’t be asking to see it. You should be asking where it goes.”
“Okay. Where does it go?”
“To the Council first. To Linden if I write something that requires his desk.”
“And have you?”
“Not yet.”
“Have you been asked to?”
“I have.”
The answer was so soft that the quiet after felt louder.
“And?”
“And I have been writing for two hours and haven’t written it.”
She turned the page facedown.
“You have nine minutes. Use them.”
“For what?”
“Astor’s class is the same every year. He will begin with parallax. If he asks for a definition, he is not asking for a definition.”
“What does he want?”
“A question back.”
“What question?”
“Ask him whether the observed star has moved, or whether the observer has.”
I stared at her.
“Why are you helping me?”
“I’m not.”
“You just did.”
“The report will say I didn’t.”
“That’s convenient.”
She picked up the pen again.
“Don’t give Astor a definition.”
I sat.
The other students began arriving at five past, just like Cosima had said.
By the time Astor arrived, all twelve places were full.
Professor Astor wore a coat the color of dark wine and had a Mark uncovered on the back of his right hand. He didn’t waste time with introductions. He sat at the head of the oval table and looked once around the room.
His gaze stopped on me.
“Miss Verita,” he said.
Every pen in the room paused.
Except Cosima’s.
“Parallax. What is it?”
The word landed without context, like something breakable set too close to the edge.
A boy two seats down from me looked at his tag instead of at Astor. The girl beside him put her hand over the Mark on her wrist. Across the table, someone stopped breathing through their nose.
So the word meant something.
Or the fact that he had given it to me did.
I looked across the table at Cosima.
She studiously avoided looking at me.
So I gave Astor the answer she had given me.
“What are we measuring against?”
Astor stared at me for five beats with raised brows.
Then he nodded and said, “Good.”
He turned to the room.
“Most failures in Mark-reading begin with the observer mistaking position for truth. A Mark observed from one angle may appear unstable. From another, responsive. From a third, dangerous. The Mark has not changed. The observer has.”
My pen stopped as I considered that.
Across the table, Cosima’s did too.
Astor continued.
“The Council does not ask whether an observer has moved. The Council asks what the observer saw. This is efficient. It is also incomplete.”
Astor’s Mark darkened once on the back of his hand.
“Miss Verita.”
Of course he called on me again.
I met his gaze.
“If three observers report three different readings of the same Mark, which report is correct?”
The room went so quiet my breathing sounded offensive in the silence.
Cosima avoided looking at me with great care.
I thought of my wrist in the basin. The attunement circle. Cosima putting one version of what happened into the room and another, maybe, onto the page.
“Maybe none of them,” I said.
Astor tilted his head, studying me.
Waiting for more.
I made myself keep going.
“Not until you know where they were standing.”
Cosima’s eyes flicked up to meet mine for a half second, then dropped back to her page.
Astor nodded slowly.
“Acceptable.”
Around the table, several students began writing very quickly.
Cosima didn’t write whatever her observations were on the Council page.
She opened the small notebook beside it instead.
Astor’s lecture continued. Parallax, he said, was not error. It was the distance between object and witness made visible. A trained reader did not remove the distance. A trained reader recorded it.
I wrote that down.
Then I underlined it.
A trained reader recorded the distance.
When Astor dismissed us, no one stood right away.
Chairs shifted one at a time. Tags were touched, then left where they were. The boy two seats down from me avoided looking at my blank tag as he passed.
Cosima closed the notebook before she folded the Council page.
That told me which one mattered to her.
Then she stood and left without looking at me.
The others followed slowly, still glancing at my blank tag as if it might decide to become interesting while they watched.
I stayed long enough to touch the empty space above my name.
Nothing happened.
That felt less reassuring than it should have.
By the time I found my way back to the dining hall the room was full.
Delphine was alone at a table.
She had bread on her plate but she wasn’t eating it.
When she saw me coming, she lifted one hand.
Barely a wave, really, and self-conscious enough that she almost took it back before I reached her.
I sat across from her.
“That was almost friendly,” I said.
“It was supposed to be friendly.”
“It looked painful.”
She shrugged and pushed a piece of bread toward me like she had been saving it.
“You had verse-study today?” she asked.
“Is everyone reading my schedule now?”
“No. You came from the east wing, and you look almost as annoyed as after your meeting with Juno, but not quite.”
“That would be Cosima’s doing.”
“I thought so.”
I took the bread and noticed she didn’t take any for herself.
“You don’t exactly look ecstatic yourself,” I noted. “What happened?”
“Linden came to my room before breakfast.”
“What did he want?”
Delphine didn’t look at me.
“To inspect my Mark.”
The bread went dry in my mouth.
“He made me hold out my arm. Then he looked at it for so long I started hoping he would say something cruel, just to finish it.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing at first.”
Her hand moved to her sleeve and tugged it down to cover her fading Mark.
“Then he asked whether it had brightened during the night.”
“Had it?”
“No.”
She said it like an apology.
My wrist warmed under my sleeve.
“And that disappointed him.”
Delphine nodded.
“He wrote something down.”
“And?”
“And then he left.”
“That’s all?”
She shook her head.
Her fingers pressed into the bread until it split.
“I heard him talking to Caswell outside my door.”
“What did they say?”
“Not much. I think they knew I was listening.”
“But you heard something?”
She bit her lip and exhaled.
“Zenith Tower.”
The dark shape beyond the north wall came back to me unbidden: narrow windows, sharp roofline, moonlight catching on stone.
The thing Kieran had refused to talk about.
“What is the tower?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “They stopped talking after that.”
I tried to find something reassuring to say.
“They may only be moving your file there,” I offered.
It was a stupid thing to suggest.
Delphine knew it.
So did I.
She looked at me and shook her head.
Neither of us believed that.
The dining hall held its volume.
Then the main doors opened.
Caspian Ashford entered with Cosima Verraine on his arm.
She was speaking quietly, her hand resting on his sleeve. He bent his head to listen, attentive enough that the gesture looked intimate from across the hall.
It probably was intimate.
Or it had been practiced until everyone in the room knew what it was supposed to mean.
My Mark burned even hotter.
Caspian stopped mid-step.
Cosima’s fingers tightened on his arm.
Then her face fell and she let go.
Caspian didn’t look at me.
But I knew he felt it.
He kept walking to the north table, one hand at his cuff.
The fabric at his wrist pulled tight, as if his hand had closed around something under it. His Mark.
The heat kept climbing.
Caspian’s jaw tightened.
Then his hand uncurled, and he reached for his cup.
Still without looking at me.
That was when I understood.
Caspian knew.
Whatever my Mark had done in attunement, whatever had reached across the circle and made the room go quiet, it hadn’t only happened to me.
It had happened to him too.
Cosima leaned in and whispered something in his ear.
Caspian answered without turning his head.
I couldn’t hear the words, and in that moment, I really wished I could read lips.
But I couldn’t.
Delphine looked from Caspian to me.
“Astra?”
I stood too quickly.
The seat scraped against the floor.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what?”
I didn’t know which answer would be worse.
For staring at Caspian Ashford while she sat across from me with Zenith Tower hanging over her head.
For knowing Kieran had seen the tower and refused to name it.
For having no useful thing to give her except bread and a lie about paperwork.
“I’ll find you later,” I said.
That was probably another lie.
Delphine didn’t call after me.
I left the dining hall with my Mark burning under my sleeve and the name following me out.
Zenith Tower.