Chapter 36
The first time I saw Selene Verita’s dress, Astra was not wearing it.
She was carrying it.
The black box stretched between her and Cosima Verraine as they came down the upper east corridor together, one handhold each, neither of them looking at the other. The arrangement should have looked practical.
It did not.
Astra’s face was pale. Not the blank pallor students learned for public embarrassment, but the color a body resorted to when it had been asked to hold too much and had decided blood was needed elsewhere to survive.
The Pull reached me before she saw me.
Softly. A careful thread under the skin, rain-dark and bright at the edge, asking nothing because asking would have been easier to refuse.
I had no reason to be on the east floor.
The reasons would not survive being spoken or written down.
A third-year stopped at the corridor bend when she saw the box. Then a second. A faculty clerk appeared from a side passage with a sheaf of blank forms.
Verraine saw the clerk first. Her chin lifted a fraction, and the corridor remembered she was dangerous.
Astra saw me next.
Her grip shifted and the box almost fell.
I wanted to go to her so badly it was painful.
Then the clerk’s eyes moved from me to her, and I stayed where I was.
Astra understood. I knew because understanding moved across her face before hurt did. She was learning the shape of the trap quickly enough to forgive people for not crossing it.
I hated being forgiven for standing still. It felt like cowardice even if I was protecting her.
Verraine carried her end of the box without so much as glancing at me.
“Instructor Hale,” she said.
“Verraine.”
Astra said nothing to me.
Neither did I to her.
The silence between us was alive between us. Ready to break apart and let spill all the things we didn’t dare say.
The clerk must have noticed that.
Verraine’s eyes flicked toward him. “You are misplaced, Instructor. You belong in the salle.”
A warning, dressed as an insult.
Astra caught the edge of a smile and killed it. The attempt was enough to make the Pull tighten beneath my sleeve.
The Mark answered.
I kept my hand open at my side.
The clerk looked at my sleeve.
Verraine caught him at it.
“Miss Verita,” she said, “the box is heavy.”
Astra’s attention snapped back to her. “I know.”
“Then continue walking.”
Astra obeyed her, which told me more than any report could have.
Whatever had happened in Verraine’s room, it had changed the shape of their relationship.
They were not friends. They were not allies in any way the Council would recognize.
But Verraine had taken one end of the weight, and Astra had let her.
The corridor watched them pass.
When they reached the stair, Astra looked back once. Not at the clerk. At me.
The Pull brushed the inside of a locked door and found the lock already known.
Then she turned the corner and was gone.
The clerk began writing.
I crossed the corridor before he had finished the first line.
“Your station is in the lower salle,” I said.
He looked up too quickly. “Instructor?”
“You are standing in a corridor outside student quarters with a pen in your hand.”
His mouth opened.
“Choose the next sentence you place on that page carefully.”
He chose to crumple up the paper and hand it to me.
Wise.
I left him there and took the west stair down. Not after Astra. Away from her.
By the time I reached the lower level, my Mark still had not settled.
Suppression had rules. Pressure. Breath. Distance. Pain accepted without argument. I knew them well enough to perform them half-asleep. I had performed them at nine years old with my father’s hand on my shoulder and my mother outside the door pretending not to hear.
Tonight the rules held only because Astra was not in the room.
In the salle, the lamps were unlit. Evening had put the training floor into shadow. The chalk lines looked paler without students crossing them.
I stood at the center line and let my sleeve fall open.
Not brighter now. Darker. As if the lines had learned that being seen was not the only form of answer.
Astra was carrying her mother’s dress back to a room that could report on her.
By supper, Quill would know the dress had not frightened her into obedience.
Tomorrow they would put her on a platform and try to turn her grief into submission.
I should have been glad she had Verraine.
I was.
It still hurt to be useless.
A sound came from the doorway.
Aldric stood there with his coat unbuttoned and a file under one arm. He looked at my open sleeve, then at the chalk line beneath my boots.
“You saw her,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Did you move toward her?”
“No.”
Aldric studied me for a moment.
“Then you did the difficult thing.”
The praise scraped.
He noticed that too. He had an irritating talent for noticing what men did not say.
“That sounds like something people say when they want obedience to feel noble.”
“Maybe,” Aldric said. “But if Quill wanted you to follow her down that corridor, you just disappointed him.”
I looked toward the racks of staves.
“Quill profits if I go to her.”
“Obviously.”
“And if I disappear from her entirely?”
“Less.”
I almost laughed. There was no humor in it, so I spared us both.
Aldric set the file on the bench.
“The fitting is tomorrow morning.”
“I know.”
“You will not be there.”
The Mark tightened under my skin.
“I am not a fool, Aldric.”
“I have seen wiser men than you fall victim to their baser instincts, Hale.”
I recognized the mark he aimed for. Alistair. And everyone in my family before him who had made the mistake I was desperately trying not to make.
Astra’s line moved faintly through me then, distant but awake. Fear, yes. Anger. Beneath both, the stubborn heat of a girl who had been handed a trap and was already looking for a way to escape.
“She has help,” Aldric said.
“Help can be used against her.”
“Everything can be used against her. But trust must start somewhere.”
I sighed.
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
“Tomorrow? Nothing visible.”
“Convenient.”
“Difficult,” he corrected. “For you, apparently.”
The old version of me would have disliked him for that.
It brought the current version of me less satisfaction than I preferred to realize he was right.
Aldric turned to leave.
“Professor.”
He stopped.
“If they hurt her in that room?”
Aldric’s step faltered. A small failure. Human enough that I trusted it more than composure.
“There will be people in the room to make sure they don’t get a chance.”
He left before I could ask who, but I had ideas.
I stayed in the salle until the lamps along the wall lit themselves one by one.
Upstairs, Astra Verita was alone with a dress the Council wanted to call an honor.
I could not stand beside her.
So I did the only thing I could do without giving Quill another line to write.
I stayed where I could hear the building if it screamed.