Chapter 22
By breakfast, half the school had found a reason to look at me.
First-years’s whispers went quiet too late. Upperclassmen watched over their cups like shamelessness was suddenly a new trend. Faculty spoke to one another without ever quite turning their backs.
I took my usual route to the south side and stopped.
Cosima was at the third table.
In Delphine’s chair.
For one hot second, I hated her for knowing exactly where to sit.
For the next second I hated that it worked.
She had my undivided attention, which I assumed was what she wanted.
I sat across from her.
Her gaze moved past my shoulder, taking in the room behind me.
Then she said, very quietly, “Reverie told you about the interrogation?”
“Reverie’s my friend. Of course she told me.”
“I wondered if she would choose caution.”
“You summoned me through a basin before dawn the other day and gave me a notebook that could screw us both if anyone finds it. I don’t think you’re one to talk about choosing caution.”
Cosima lowered her eyes to her cup.
If she was amused, she kept it there.
“The official summons will come late,” she said.
“How late?”
“Late enough that waiting for it would make you arrive breathless.”
I looked at the nearest basin, dark in its wall niche.
“So this is you giving me time.”
“This is me making sure they don’t get the first move for free.”
“That almost sounds almost gracious of you.”
“Don’t insult us both. You know who I’m doing this for.”
She took in the room without turning her head and lowered her voice.
“Listen. You will not speak first. You will not define yourself for them. You will not volunteer names. They will already know more than they should. They are measuring what you protect when they press.”
“What do they press?”
Cosima looked at me then.
“Everything. Everyone.”
My stomach tightened.
“Caswell will be there,” she said. “So will Linden. A procedural witness will write everything down and say almost nothing. If you answer too much, she will write that. If you answer too little, she will write that too.”
“Efficient.”
“Very.”
“And Caspian?”
Cosima was quiet long enough that her silence became an answer.
“Caspian’s father approves of the interrogation,” she said. “Caspian himself will likely be difficult.”
“Difficult how?”
“He’ll try to stand with you, where everyone can see it.”
“You know that because he always does?”
“I know that because he should have learned not to. But he’s a better man than that.”
Then she stood.
No goodbye. No good luck. Cosima Verraine did not waste courage on unnecessary words.
I watched her go, then looked down at my untouched plate. Rev would have told me to eat if she were here, but I didn’t have the stomach for it.
After that, there was nothing to do but return to Room 114 and wait.
The basin lit late just as Cosima had warned me it would.
Silver-white light moved under the water, bright enough to throw the rim’s shadow against the wall.
Words formed across the surface.
Astra Verita. Interrogation. Third floor, south wing. Immediate attendance.
For a moment, I didn’t move.
Delphine had walked when they summoned her too. Across the hall. Through the west door. Small and pale and already disappearing before she was gone.
I put on my coat with my mother’s wren pinned to it.
My fingers shook badly enough that the clasp took three tries.
The stairs to the third floor felt longer than they should have. Every landing gave me a chance to turn back, and every landing reminded me there was nowhere to go. By the time I reached the south wing, my mouth tasted like metal from biting my cheek.
The corridor narrowed before it reached the door, as if the building wanted those who approached delivered in single file. No portraits. No sconces. No convenient window to pretend to look out of. Only a dark wood door, a black iron latch, and the clean scratch marks of a lock used often.
Caspian Ashford stood beside the door.
He had arrived before me, but the door hadn’t opened to him.
His eyes met mine, but he didn’t say a word.
I stood beside him without speaking either because I had no idea what to say.
Maybe he felt the same way.
A moment later, the door opened.
Linden acknowledged me and ignored Caspian. “Verita.”
My palms slipped against the lining of my coat pockets, damp with sweat.
I tried to peer past him, but Linden filled the doorway too completely for that. All I could see was the edge of a table, the back of a chair, and a strip of dark floor where the light did not reach.
Behind me, I heard Caspian take one breath too sharply.
He stepped forward.
Linden raised a hand, and Caspian stopped so hard the motion looked painful.
My Mark warmed under my sleeve.
It was smaller than the reach from the basin, but warm enough that I was terrified Linden might see.
“Ashford,” Linden said. “You were not invited to attend.”
“I’m not here as prefect.”
“You are prefect whenever the Council requires you to be.”
“Then require me to stand witness.”
Cosima’s words came back to me: He’ll try to stand with you, where everyone can see it.
He couldn’t stop this. But the boy I had thought hated me had come anyway, and he was standing as close to my side as they would let him.
“You may stand outside,” Linden said. “You may not enter. You may not interrupt. You may not communicate with her.”
Caspian’s jaw worked.
“Understood.”
“See that it stays understood.”
The door closed between us.
The last thing I saw before it shut was his face: furious, pale, and barely controlled.
Beyond the door, the room came clear.
A long oak table. Linden at the center with a notebook open in front of him. Caswell near the door. Quill at the far end, hands folded, looking less like a man attending an interrogation than one waiting to see which answer would become useful.
One chair waited opposite Quill.
I went to it without being told and sat.
Linden began at once.
“You will answer the questions asked. Nothing else. You are not being asked to consent to anything beyond the answers you give today. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Is your name Astra Verita?”
“Yes.”
“Were you read at the basin in Juno’s chamber shortly after arrival?”
“Yes.”
“Has Juno told you your Mark is what the school’s current cosmology calls Untethered?”
“Yes.”
“Have you been given another word for it?”
Cosima had told me not to define myself for them.
I kept my hands still.
“Yes.”
“Say the word.”
Linden’s pen waited.
“Star-Marked.”
Linden’s expression remained aloof but Caswell’s shifted, just enough.
Quill’s tapped against the table.
Linden wrote, then his attention moved to my wrist.
The Mark was hidden under my coat. He couldn’t see the lines themselves, so he looked at the air around my wrist.
I kept my hand where it was and let him look.
Whatever he found was not what he wanted.
His pen moved again, then he folded his hands on the table.
“Has your Mark Pulled in proximity to Caspian Ashford?”
The lines under my sleeve drew inward, as if his name had touched them.
“Yes.”
He wrote without looking up.
“Has your Mark Pulled in proximity to Kieran Marsh?”
The clock tower roof came back too fast: wind, night air his lips touching mine.
“Yes.”
Linden gave the next name the smallest pause.
“Has your Mark warmed in proximity to Jonah Hale?”
Hale in the salle, saying yes like he had been waiting for the word and hating that he had it.
“Yes.”
“And Reverie LeJoi?”
“No.”
“Cosima Verraine?”
“No.”
“Delphine Moreau?”
My Mark flinched under my sleeve.
A tiny betrayal.
Linden’s pen moved.
“Where is she?”
Linden studied my face.
“That was not the question.”
“It’s what I want to know.”
Linden wrote three more words.
I heard Cosima’s voice from breakfast: You will not speak first.
Too late.
“Delphine Moreau is no longer in residence at Zenith Hall.”
“Is she alive?”
Caswell shifted near the door.
Linden remained perfectly still.
“Your concern for Moreau is noted.”
“Then note the answer too.”
“No.”
My Mark heated.
Linden wrote fast enough that the pen scratched.
“Concern is information,” Linden said when he was finished writing.
I shut my mouth.
Cosima had bought me time.
I had just spent some of it badly.
The rest of the interrogation went on and on.
They asked where I had been, who had spoken to me, who had touched my Mark, whether my Mark had warmed without a basin, whether I had concealed any movement from Juno, whether I understood that concealment was itself suspicious.
They asked questions about Kieran twice.
About Hale once more. Caspian’s without saying Caspian.
After my Delphine slip, I answered only what they asked.
Linden wrote it all down.
At the end, Linden stood.
“You will not discuss this interrogation with any student or instructor other than Juno,” Linden said. “If Juno’s access to you changes, you will be told.”
“Changes how?”
Quill answered for the first time.
“You will be informed if it becomes necessary.”
I couldn’t find anymore words so I nodded.
“One more matter.”
“Of course.”
“Your combat assessment has been scheduled. Aldric will conduct it. You will receive the time and location by basin summons. The combat assessment is a school matter, not a pairing matter. It will proceed regardless of Council review. Do you understand?”
I blinked and shook my head.
“No, I don’t.”
Linden waited.
“I’m not enrolled in a combat class,” I said. “I haven’t been taught how to hold a blade, a staff, or my own feet in a room where someone is trying to put me on the floor. What exactly am I being assessed on?”
“Your adaptability.”
“To what?”
“To instruction under pressure.”
“So the fact that I haven’t been taught the rules is part of the assessment.”
“Correct.”
I understood this game.
I just wasn’t sure I knew how to play it.
“You may go.” Quill, from the table.
Linden wrote one final word.
I rose and walked to the door.
Caswell opened it from behind me.
Caspian Ashford was still on the other side.
Relief went through me so fast I almost hated him for it.
My Mark pulled under my sleeve, sharp and certain, and something in my chest loosened before I gave it permission.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
Then his eyes went to my face.
“What did they make you answer?”
Delphine’s name sat behind my teeth.
So did his.
I settle for, “Too much.”
His hand twitched at his side and stopped before it became anything Linden could object to.The door behind me remained open.
Linden was listening.
So were Caswell and Quill.
Caspian looked past my shoulder into the room. “Are you finished with her?”
“For today,” Linden said.
“Then we’re leaving.”
He held my gaze as I walked past him.
After three steps, he fell into step beside me.
We crossed the corridor and took the staircase down.
“They scheduled me for a combat assessment,” I said.
Caspian missed half a step.
Then he was beside me again.
“You’re not enrolled in a combat class,” he said.
“I mentioned that.”
“What did Linden say?”
“That not knowing the rules is part of the assessment.”
Caspian’s hand came to his forehead like the whole situation was giving him a migraine. A strange look on a boy whose composure I never expected to see break.
“Cosima would admire that,” he said.
“You don’t?”
“No.”
We reached my corridor. Empty now. Everyone else in class, every door shut, every wall pretending not to listen.
Caspian stopped outside Room 114.
“They’ll write whatever I do,” he said.
“Then do something worth writing.”
His eyes came to mine.
For a moment, he looked less like a prefect and more like a boy realizing obedience had left him nowhere to stand that wasn’t poisoned.
“I don’t know how,” he said.
The honesty moved through me before I could guard against it.
“Then learn,” I said.
I heard what I had made it sound like a second too late.
The door to my room was under my hand. He was close enough now that I could see the blue in the gray of his eyes, and close enough that the Mark on my wrist began to ache with the effort of not reaching.
Caspian’s gaze dropped to the inch of space between us.
He looked at it like it was the most dangerous thing in the corridor.
“Astra,” he said.
My name came out low, almost rough.
I should have opened the door.
I didn’t.
His hand lifted, then stopped before it touched me.
The stop was worse.
The space between his fingers and my cheek felt hotter than contact would have.
Behind us, somewhere up the corridor, a door closed.
Caspian stepped back first.
“Go inside,” he said.
He was right.
My body had no respect for that.
Thankfully, he turned and walked away first.
When he turned the corner, I finally opened the door of Room 114, stepped inside, and pressed my back against it.
The interrogation hadn’t told them what I was. They’d already known that.
But it had shown them where to press.