Chapter 30
The Mark answered while I was laying out staves for first hour.
Pain cut clean across my forearm. For one breath, I was not in the salle at all. I was in a room of old paper and covered water, with Astra’s hand at her chest and grief moving through her so sharply my Mark reached for her before I could stop it.
I didn’t know what Aldric had shown her.
I knew only that whatever Aldric had shown her had hurt.
The stave slipped from my hand and hit the floor hard enough for three students in the corridor to look in.
“Instructor?” one of them asked.
“Get to your classes,” I growled.
The Mark stayed bright beneath my sleeve.
My family had called that brightness failure before I was old enough to understand what had failed.
Alistair Hale had died for answering a Star-Marked woman. By ten, I had learned the lesson his death was meant to teach.
Astra Verita had undone years of training without touching me.
I crossed the salle and opened the door.
The corridor outside was already filling. First-years with staves. Second-years with practice wraps. A faculty clerk pretending not to watch the lower stair.
He saw me leave.
Fine. Let him report it to Quill.
I took the west stair down.
The lower corridors were colder than the salle. Somewhere inside the walls, water moved with the heavy patience of a basin being told to wait.
My Mark pulled harder with something older and less forgiving than desire.
I turned the corner as Reverie LeJoi dragged Astra through a narrow service door by the sleeve.
Astra’s face was too pale.
Her eyes found mine.
The Pull struck so hard I stopped walking.
Behind them, the lower archive door stood open. Silver-white light flickered from somewhere inside, cut by the shadow of a cloth tied over a basin.
Aldric came out last with a file box under one arm.
He looked at my sleeve.
Then at Astra.
“Instructor Hale,” he said.
“Professor.”
LeJoi’s hand stayed around Astra’s sleeve.
“If this is an ambush,” she said, “pick someone else.”
Aldric did not answer her.
Astra didn’t smile.
I wanted to ask what had happened.
I wanted to cross the corridor and put myself between her and the open door.
Neither want would help her.
Worse, both were visible.
The faculty clerk had followed me to the stair. He stood at the turn above us with his slate held too still against his chest.
Aldric noticed him.
Then LeJoi did.
Astra noticed last, because she was still looking at me.
“You felt it,” she said.
Her voice was rough.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
Enough to know whatever she’d learned, it was something terrible.
Enough to make breathing difficult.
Enough to leave a classroom full of first-years waiting for an absent instructor.
“Enough that I had to come to you.”
“You can’t be seen leaving with him,” Aldric said.
Astra’s chin lifted a fraction.
“Of course I can’t.”
“He’s right,” LeJoi said, and sounded annoyed about it. “They’ll make a drama out of it before you reach the stairs.”
Astra looked toward the stair, then back at the archive door.
The silver-white light inside had gone dark, but the air around the threshold still felt charged.
“We’re going to the dining hall,” she announced.
LeJoi turned her head and squinted at Astra.
“That’s an alarming choice. You know people eat there, right? Like everybody. In the entire school.”
“I’ve heard rumors.”
The answer sounded more like her than anything else had since she came out of the archive.
Aldric closed the archive door.
“LeJoi, take her up the east stair.”
“I thought she was choosing.”
“She chose the destination. I am suggesting the route.”
Aldric turned to me.
“Your class is waiting.”
I shrugged.
“Go teach, Hale. That is your job.”
The command was for the clerk as much as for me.
I understood the gift inside it.
Return to the salle. Be seen doing the ordinary work. Leave Astra enough space that Quill couldn’t call my presence a rescue.
I hated the gift.
I took it anyway.
Astra stepped toward the east stair with LeJoi beside her.
I stepped toward the west.
For one breath, we passed close enough that the Pull crossed the space between our sleeves, heat under linen mixing with cold rain-dark and bright at the edge.
Her hand twitched.
Mine stayed curled in a fist.
The restraint did what it was supposed to do.
“Jonah,” she said softly.
I stopped.
The clerk’s pen waited.
So did Aldric.
“Yes?”
Astra looked at my sleeve.
The Mark showed through the linen. Dark. Visible. Mine.
“You’re done hiding it.”
She sounded almost sad.
The words reached the clerk.
They reached Aldric.
They reached the part of me that still heard my family’s lesson in every corridor.
Never brighten.
Never answer.
Never let the Mark rise where a room could see it.
I didn’t pull down my sleeve to hide it.
Astra saw.
Then LeJoi pulled her up the east stair before either of us could make the moment easier to use against her.
I returned to the salle.
Twenty-two students were waiting, which meant twenty-two students saw my Mark before I reached the center line.
The faculty clerk entered behind me and took his place near the wall.
I picked up the stave I had dropped.
It had a new nick in the wood.
I closed my hand around it.
“Pairs,” I said.
The class moved.
I still didn’t roll my sleeve down.