Chapter 38
Iwas sitting on the clock tower stair with an apple in my left hand, because there were only so many places a man could wait without looking like he was waiting.
The roof was too far away if I needed to come running.
The dining hall was full of people I didn’t want to interact with.
The corridor outside the fitting room was for idiots, gossips, and Caspian Ashford.
Then the Pull cut through me.
It was not the soft green-gold thread Astra left behind when she was thinking of the roof, or the sharp little tug that came when she was annoyed and pretending not to be.
This was her fear.
My fingers opened.
The apple hit the stair, bounced once, and rolled three steps before stopping against the wall.
I bent to pick it up.
My shoulder locked.
For one bright second, my vision went white-hot with pain. The stairwell narrowed to stone, iron rail, and the place under my collar where the Mark had learned to bite.
“Damn,” I said.
The apple could wait.
I took the stairs down before my body could make a stronger argument.
The east preparation rooms were two floors down and one corridor over, in the part of the school where my presence had never been wanted. I took the back stair because the main stair would have meant too many curious eyes.
By the time I reached the upper east corridor, Astra’s pain had overwhelmed mine.
I had never been grateful for my own body failing me before, but I would have taken that over this any day.
I stopped before the last turn.
Voices carried from the preparation room.
Caswell’s, flat enough to be used as a ruler.
Cosima’s, quieter.
Astra’s, once.
No.
One word.
Clear enough to reach the stair where I had been pretending not to wait.
The Pull answered it through my chest.
Brave girl, I thought, and shocked myself immediately for how much pride was in it.
Not mine to approve of.
In a matter of days, the Council meant to make her Caspian Ashford’s, and anything I did against that had to be weighed against what it would cost her.
Still, the pride came anyway, bright and inconvenient.
I stayed where the corridor bent. Close enough to hear if the room became something worse. Far enough that no one could honestly call me part of it unless they were already planning to lie, which meant I had improved nothing but my own conscience.
The small basin inside the room lit.
I felt it before I saw the silver leak under the door.
A message.
The silence afterward told me enough.
When the door opened, Rev came out first with a tray of pins.
Reverie LeJoi could walk out of a sealed Council chamber where she didn’t belong with a tray of pins and somehow no one even questioned it. Never ceased to amaze me.
Cosima followed with her notebook, back straight, as official-looking as ever.
Then, finally, Astra.
She carried the black dress box in both arms. Her mother’s brooch shone against her coat. She was pale. Terrified, I thought. Then, because I was apparently determined to be a fool: beautiful.
My Mark answered before I could stop it.
Astra saw me.
Only for a second.
Her eyes flicked to my face, and some small part of her came back to the surface.
The faintest hint of a smile. Like she’d gotten one over on them. I hoped she head.
But damn, I wanted to kiss those lips again.
The desire hit so strong I almost rushed into the corridor.
Dangerous, and too large to joke away.
Then Cosima touched Astra’s elbow to keep her moving.
Astra went with her.
Rev saw me last.
She lifted one eyebrow me.
I lifted my lip in a grin at her.
They turned toward the first-year corridor.
I started after them before I realized I’d done it.
“Marsh.”
Hale stood in the shadow beside the lower stair.
He hadn’t been there a moment ago.
Which probably meant he had been there, and I had missed him.
I resented that. I prided myself on my powers of perception.
“Instructor Hale,” I said. “Lurking suits you.”
“You were doing the same thing.”
“I was waiting.”
“So was I.”
Hale looked down the corridor where Astra had gone. His sleeve was buttoned, but his Mark pressed against the cuff hard enough for mine to answer.
Mine didn’t particularly like his.
It recognized it anyway.
For a moment, I hated him on principle.
Then Astra disappeared around the corner without looking back to ask either of us for help, and Hale stayed perfectly still.
The hatred lost some of its footing.
He wanted to follow her too.
I could see it in the way he held himself rigid.
“Well,” I said. “This is humiliating.”
His eyes stayed on the corridor where she had gone. “Yes.”
“I preferred you when I thought you were only self-righteous, not my competition.”
“I preferred you when I didn’t have to speak to you.”
The almost-joke sat between us awkwardly.
“Quill summoned her,” he said.
So that was what the basin had said.
“When?”
“Rev said noon.”
“Generous. He gives a girl time to dread.”
“He gives himself time to arrange things in his favor.”
I hated that answer because it was better than mine.
I looked toward the corridor again.
Astra was gone now. So were Rev and Cosima. Only the smell of starch and cut lilys remained, along with the silver aftertaste of the basin message.
“I’m going after her,” I said.
“Don’t.”
The word came quietly.
It still stopped me.
I turned.
“No?” I said. “I’m not one of your students, Hale.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t give me orders.”
“Stop making me need to. If you go to her now, Quill gets what he wants before she reaches his office.”
The joke in my mouth died.
“And what is that?”
“Three men moving toward her because she said no,” Hale said. “Three Marks answering one refusal. Quill will call that proof she can’t contain it.”
Three.
The word clicked.
Caspian would know by now. If he had not felt the fitting, which I suspected he had, someone would have told him. Ashford men were never allowed to go uninformed.
Except Caspian was starting to act less like an Ashford and more like a decent human being.
Annoying. It made him harder to hate, too.
But he would be allowed to go to her.
That was the difference.
Caspian could stand outside Quill’s office and be called protection.
Hale couldn’t.
Neither could I.
“You think I should do nothing.”
“No.”
“Then I misunderstood the part where you stopped me.”
“I think you should do something Quill cannot use against us. Against her.”
“Brilliant. Care to tell me what that might be, wise instructor Hale?”
“Be seen elsewhere.”
I stared at him.
Unmoved.
Infuriating.
Right.
“You want me to give her an alibi.”
“I want you to follow the same advice Aldric gave me. Let the hall see you somewhere else before Quill can say you were drawn to her.”
“And you?”
“I’ll do the same.”
Hale stood too still, which was its own kind of confession. He was holding himself back with the same discipline he used on a classroom full of loud, unruly kids with staves.
“If you’re outside Quill’s office, you’re a problem,” he said. “If you’re at lunch irritating the second-years with bad jokes, you’re only yourself.”
“You make my bad jokes sound very strategic.”
“Someone has to apply strategy here. I suspect it isn’t your forte, Marsh.”
For one second, I almost liked him.
Unacceptable.
“And you?” I asked.
“I have a class to teach.”
“And if she needs you?”
His Mark lit, and for one second, it broke through him like the sharp breath that he swallowed back down.
Not completely.
Never completely now.
Not for any of us.
“Then I will know,” he said. “And I will do whatever I have to do to protect her.”
I believed him.
That was irritating too.
The corridor at the far end filled with two students coming up from the east rooms. They saw Hale first and straightened. Then they saw me and became very diligent in behaving as if they had seen neither of us.
There were several excellent jokes I could have made about that.
All of them would have made me feel better.
None of them would have amused Hale.
“Fine,” I said.
Hale did not thank me.
A mercy, really. I wasn’t in the mood to be gracious either.
I turned toward the dining hall.
“Marsh,” Jonah Hale called once more.
I stopped and turned around.
Hale’s voice was lower now.
“At noon, do not be far.”
He had already turned toward the salle corridor, shoulders even, every inch the instructor again except for the Mark under his cuff, which I could see burning like a banked coal.
“I’m never far,” I said.
He didn’t turn around, but he heard.
“I know,” he said.