Chapter 21
By the time I finished Cosima’s notebook, Hale had become irritating for yet another reason.
He was right.
Knowing didn’t make me safer.
It only made me more aware of how much danger I was in.
Every page led back to the same room: basin, witnesses, a girl with her hand on stone while men decided what happened to her.
In the middle of the notebook, in a hand less steady than the pages before it, Cosima had written that a Star-Marked bond didn’t close the other lines.
It woke them.
One answer made the others louder.
A forced answer made them dangerous.
I closed the notebook at two in the afternoon and sat on my bed until my legs went numb.
By three, fear had worn itself dull.
It hadn’t gone anywhere. It had only worn a groove through me, deep enough that I could sit there with it calmly and still feel it moving underneath.
Hale’s voice stayed under it.
Leverage.
Fine.
I had leverage now.
I was tired of sitting with it and doing nothing.
So I put the notebook under the stolen blanket, put the brooch in my inside pocket, and went to the east kitchen.
The kitchen was between meals and pretending to be empty. A pot cooled on the stove. Flour dusted the long table in pale handprints. The strings of garlic over the door had gone dry at the tips.
Rev was at the table with her sleeves pushed up, scraping burnt sugar from the bottom of a pan.
She didn’t look up until I cleared my throat.
“Absolutely not,” she said.
“I haven’t asked anything yet.”
“Your face has.”
I sighed and sat on the counter beside her.
Rev pushed a cup toward me with the back of her wrist.
“Drink that before you start.”
“Is it safe?”
“It’s tea, Astra. I don’t have to poison you. You’re already one bad decision from an early grave.”
I drank. The tea was bitter enough to make my eyes water.
Rev looked satisfied, which told me it was supposed to be that bad.
She watched me over the pan.
“What happened?”
“Cosima gave me her notebook.”
Rev winced.
“Bad?”
“The bonds affect each other.”
Rev set the pan down.
The scrape of burnt sugar stopped.
“She wrote that?”
“She wrote a lot of things.”
“Guess that’s why the Council made her their documentarian. Wouldn’t they be furious to know she’s playing both sides.”
I turned the cup in my hands.
“Did you know?”
“I knew Marks could tangle.”
“From Sadie?”
Rev’s mouth tightened.
“From listening to what certain people said about Sadie after she was gone.”
That wasn’t comforting.
Most true things here weren’t.
Someone had told me that once, and I was finally realizing just how true it was.
Rev picked up the knife, then put it down without cutting anything.
“They were talking about Delphine this morning.”
I looked up.
“Who?”
“Caswell. Linden. They came through while I was in the pantry. People with titles think rooms are empty when no one important is standing in the middle of them.”
“What did they say?”
Rev rubbed one thumb against the knife handle.
“Caswell said the family letter had been held.”
For a moment I didn’t understand.
Then I did.
Delphine’s letter to Lior. The one she had carried in her pocket. The one meant to warn him away from the same trap that had closed around her.
“Held where?”
“Gate office.”
“She mailed it?”
“She tried. Linden said no outgoing notice until completion.”
Completion.
I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Is she alive?”
Rev averted her eyes.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think she is?”
“I think they wouldn’t have cared about the letter if they just sent her home.”
I set the cup down because my hand had started to shake.
Rev didn’t tell me to breathe or relax. I was grateful for that.
“There’s an interrogation tomorrow,” she said. “Upperclassmen were talking about it at the side tables. Faculty were pretending not to hear. That means Council.”
“For me?”
“Unless you know someone else whose Mark split a basin into three directions and started an academy-wide drama…”
“You make it sound so festive.”
“It’s a gift.”
Rev slid off the counter and went to a cabinet above the stove. She reached behind a stack of bowls and pulled out a folded cloth packet tied with string.
“Here.”
“What is it?”
“Food. A little cheese. Two apples.” She glanced at me. “Though I expect you have enough apples. Kieran and all.”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat.
“Thanks, Rev.”
“Eat. They want you run-down. Don’t make yourself an easy target.”
“You sound like Hale.”
Reverie made a sour face. “Take that back.”
“No.”
“Cruel.”
I took the packet.
It was heavier than I expected.
That was what did it.
Not the notebook. Not the interrogation. Not the word completion.
Food, wrapped in cloth by someone who had thought I might need it.
My eyes burned.
“Don’t you dare cry over a wedge of cheese,” Rev said.
“I wasn’t—”
“You were absolutely about to cry.”
I sighed. “My face is the biggest traitor of them all.”
“Your face is a public notice board.”
I held the packet against my coat.
“Delphine wanted Lior to know,” I said.
Rev was silent.
“Now he won’t.”
Her lip tilted up. “Maybe not from her.”
I blinked at Rev.
She was looking at the counter, at the crumbs, at anything but me.
“You can’t write him.”
“I can write my grandmother.”
“And your grandmother can write around things?”
“My grandmother could hide a murder accusation in a discussion of the weather.”
“Rev, be careful.”
She held up one hand.
“I’m not promising anything. Stupid promises are how people get hurt. I’m just saying Delphine’s brother may not be as unreachable as the Council thinks he is.”
I hadn’t realized how badly I had needed someone else to be angry about it with me.
“You should go,” Rev said. “The rest of the kitchen staff will be back soon.”
“Everyone has been handing out warnings today.”
“Mine come with food. That makes mine better.”
I smiled despite myself and went to the door.
At the garlic strings, I stopped when she said, “And Astra?”
I turned back around. “What?”
“If Verraine gives you instructions tomorrow morning, for heaven’s sakes, think before you follow them.”
“You don’t trust her.”
“I trust her to be doing three things that serve three different people at once and caring most about the one that hurts her least.”
I left the east kitchen with the cloth packet under my arm and the knowledge that Delphine’s unsent letter was sitting somewhere in the gate office, folded and useless and addressed to a boy who still didn’t know what had happened to his sister.
In Room 114, I put the food on the small table, took out Cosima’s notebook once more, and opened to the page about interrogations.
At the bottom were five words I had missed the first time:
They always schedule an interrogation.
I thought: Well, she was lying about that at least.