Chapter 25
Ihad meant to meet Astra after the assessment.
That was a mistake.
Planning had always been my most reliable vice. Apples. Exits. The three different ways a sentence could go wrong before I let my mouth have it.
I had planned the route from the training ring because a girl who had just been assessed in front of half the school would either want bread, company, or the pleasure of pretending she wanted neither.
I had brought an apple for all three possibilities.
The apple was in my left hand at noon.
At twelve-twenty, it was still there.
At twelve-thirty, a second-year came out of the lower corridor with sand on his shoes and the bright, useless face of a boy who had seen something interesting happen to someone else.
“Verita pinned Venn,” he said.
I looked at the apple.
“Did she?”
“Ugly, too. Aldric saw the whole thing. He named her Ring One.”
That made my hand close around the apple.
The skin didn’t break.
Good apple.
“Was Ashford there?” I asked.
He blinked, his expression blank, the important part arriving late.
“At the rail,” he said.
So Caspian had been at the rail.
I had counted on it.
That was the trouble with being right. It rarely improved a mood.
“Did she bleed?” I asked.
He stopped looking bright.
Only a little, then.
“Cut at the mouth. Not bad.”
The Pull tightened behind my ribs, and there was marble in it.
Caspian had seen the blood.
I left before he could finish preparing whatever else he meant to say.
The corridor outside the training ring was crowded with gossipers. I took the side passage instead. It ran behind the lower practice rooms and up toward the first-year housing by a staircase no one used unless they had been avoiding main corridors for years.
Like I had.
At the landing, I saw her.
Astra walked alone, one hand near her mouth, blood smeared across her chin, sand dusting the hem of her training trousers. She didn’t look triumphant. She looked annoyed with the whole charade.
That, at least, was familiar.
I started down.
Then Caspian Ashford stepped into the corridor behind her.
He kept three paces back. Too close to be passing through. Too far for her to notice right away.
I stopped on the landing.
The apple was still in my hand, rehearsed for a moment I was beginning to realize wouldn’t happen this afternoon.
Caspian followed her to Room 114.
She stopped at the door, and he spoke.
I couldn’t hear what he said.
But the Pull could.
Cold marble crossed the green apple at the back of my throat. Burnt sugar followed as Astra turned.
They spoke.
The door opened, but Caspian didn’t go in.
A worse man could have made a whole invitation out of that.
Caspian stayed where she had put him.
That should have made it easier to dislike him.
It didn’t.
I leaned against the stone and watched as he took a cloth from his pocket and she leaned toward him.
My thumb broke the apple skin before I realized I had squeezed.
Juice ran down my palm.
I should be the one wiping away that blood. Not Caspian. Me.
Pain caught under my right shoulder and my Mark burned.
“Yes,” I said under my breath. “I know.”
Below me, Caspian cleaned the blood from Astra’s mouth.
I had wanted to be the one waiting.
Not with a cloth. I hadn’t thought of a cloth.
That was the insult of it.
He had.
I had planned to give her an apple. Useless.
Caspian had brought something she actually needed.
When he stepped back from the threshold, Astra didn’t smile.
But her face eased.
Caspian saw it.
That made my jealousy burn even hotter.
For seeing the small thing.
For earning it.
Then he turned and walked away.
I stepped back before he could see me on the landing.
For a moment, stone hid both of us: Caspian below, walking away from the room he had not entered; me above, holding an apple I had not given.
There were several excellent jokes available.
I swallowed all of them and almost choked.
By the time I came down, the corridor was empty.
Room 114 was closed.
The apple was still bleeding in my hand.
I stood outside her door for long enough to consider making a bad decision.
Then I made a better one.
I didn’t knock.
I set the apple on the floor beside the threshold, close enough that she would see it when she opened the door.
I had learned a little.
Annoying, but there it was.
After that, I went to the clock tower.
The stair tweaked my bad shoulder twice. I used the left hand on the wall and pretended that was a choice. At the roof door, the wedge of wood waited where it always waited, face carved badly into one side, smiling with an optimism I had never trusted.
The roof was empty.
I sat with my back against the low stone and looked at the apple tree beyond the west wall, the one the school pretended was decorative because admitting it fed half the east kitchen would have required generosity in the records.
Astra had won.
Astra had bled.
Caspian had cleaned the blood.
The third thing was worst of all.
Because he had been gentle with her. He’d done the thing she needed. A thing I hadn’t even thought of.
I could hate a man for being careless with her.
It was harder to hate him for being kind when he didn’t have to be.
My shoulder ached again.
I pressed my left hand over it and breathed until the ache became a numbness, which I could stand.
The bond had shifted after the assessment. I had felt it from the lower corridor: Astra pulling something inward, clumsy and brave, and Caspian answering before he knew he had answered.
Hale was in it too.
Hale was always in it now, quiet as a whisper you can’t quite catch and twice as difficult to ignore.
I had known this wouldn’t be simple.
Caspian was expected.
I thought he could be managed. Maybe he still could.
But Hale too…
At the edge of the roof, wind moved over the stone and dried the apple juice on my palm.
I looked at my empty hand.
Then I laughed.
Not because anything was funny. I was still dying. Astra might still be the only way to stop it.
I still hadn’t told her.
I laughed because I had planned the afternoon for three days, and in the end the best thing I could do was leave fruit outside a closed door.
I didn’t know why I bothered rehearsing anymore.
Except habit.
Except fear of getting it wrong.
Which I did anyway.