Chapter 39
The absence of it felt strange in my hands.
Conversation thinned as I passed. By the time I reached the south wing, even the closed doors felt occupied.
Caswell waited outside Quill’s office with nothing in his hands.
Whatever this was, it did apparently did not require paperwork.
He opened the door and I went in.
Quill stood at the window with his back to the room, one hand resting on the sill. The office was too warm again. The fire had been lit though the day did not need it, and the heat made sweat break out on my brow.
I was sure it was intentional.
The chair across from his desk waited for me.
I didn’t sit.
Caswell closed the door behind me.
The sound was soft.
Quill turned.
His gaze went first to the brooch.
“Astra.”
“Headmaster.”
“Take a seat.”
“I have been sitting in my room all morning waiting for this meeting.”
“Then stand, if it pleases you.”
He crossed to the desk and picked up a single sheet of paper.
“The formal preparation this morning was not completed.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“You refused part of the garment.”
“I refused a band meant to make my Mark hide the truth.”
Quill consulted the paper, though I doubted he needed it.
“The left sleeve contains stabilizing reinforcement approved by Council authority.”
“Stabilizing what?”
“Your Mark.”
There. Said plainly, it sounded worse.
“You altered my mother’s dress to manage my Mark.”
“To protect the formal.”
“From me?”
“From an uncontrolled response.”
I rubbed my temples. The fire kept working at my nerves like it had been stoked for that purpose.
“You have a school full of basins, witnesses, protocols, men with titles, and a Council behind you,” I said. “What exactly are you afraid I’ll do at the formal?”
“Choose incorrectly.”
“Incorrectly for whom?”
“For everyone.”
“That sounds dramatic.”
“It has been, historically.”
He set the paper down.
“Verraine made the fitting public. LeJoi witnessed it. You refused in front of staff, basin, and record.”
“All true.”
“You may think this worked your favor,” Quill said. “And perhaps it did, briefly. Dangerous, though, if you mistake it for safety.”
He moved around the desk and sat.
I stayed standing.
“The left sleeve will not be fastened at the formal.”
I had expected another fight.
The fact that he didn’t put up one told me his plans must be more insidious.
“The sleeve has become more trouble than it is worth.”
“You can’t leave one sleeve open and hanging loose.”
“No,” he said. “The dress will be altered.”
My hand closed over the brooch.
“You are not cutting up my mother’s dress.”
“The sleeves will be removed cleanly. So you can show your flawed Mark to the room if you insist on making everyone look at it.”
The trick opened under my feet.
Not kindness. Not accommodation.
A stage.
If the sleeve stayed, they quieted my Mark and opened the path to a lie. If the sleeves came off, whatever my Mark did at the formal would happen in full view of the room.
For better or worse.
Probably worse.
I had dug this hole and there was no escaping it.
“Cosima does the alterations,” I said.
Quill shrugged.
“Very well. Verraine has already made herself responsible for the garment’s condition. Let her be responsible for its correction.”
He folded his hands.
“You will wear the dress. You will wear the brooch. The sleeves will be removed. The record will state that the garment was altered to accommodate student concern.”
I thought of my mother in that green dress. Selene with the brooch at her shoulder. Selene walking into a beautiful room where men had already decided her fate.
“Did you say things like that to my mother?”
Quill’s expression darkened.
The question had landed.
“Your mother was given many opportunities to accept the Council’s help.”
“Is that what you called it?”
“That is what it was.”
“She escaped you.”
“For a time.”
The words were quiet.
Almost gentle.
The room narrowed.
I felt my hand close around the brooch again before I knew I had moved.
The wing bit into my palm.
Quill watched the movement.
“Careful,” he said.
“I have learned to hate that word.”
“People usually do when they need it most.”
Cosima had warned me to be wary of anything they offered in my mother’s name.
Aldric had shown me what happened when my mother refused.
Neither of them had told me what to do when my mother’s brooch was biting into my palm and Quill was watching me lose my composure.
So I did the worst thing I could possibly do.
“Did you kill her?” I asked.
He came around the desk.
Every step was quiet on the carpet.
He stopped two feet from me.
Close enough that I could see the silver at his temples, the fine lines beside his mouth, the Headmaster arranged so perfectly over the man that the man had nearly disappeared.
Nearly.
“Astra,” he said, almost wearily. “You think anger makes you harder to manage, but anger makes young people predictable.”
My Mark moved beneath my sleeve.
Not toward him.
Away.
The motion was small, but Quill saw it.
His eyes sharpened.
“Interesting.”
“Don’t.”
“Your Mark is learning something.”
“My Mark is learning what you are.”
He didn’t like that. I knew because he let the silence last one breath too long.
Quill returned to his chair.
“The formal will proceed as scheduled. The dress will be returned to your room by supper,” he said.
“The fitting record will state that the sleeves were adjusted in response to a student’s concern.
Verraine will be reminded of the boundary between assistance and interference.
LeJoi will be returned to her proper duties as a scholarship student with a job in the east kitchen who is lucky to be here at all. ”
“And me?”
“You will attend your scheduled hours. You will eat where you are expected to eat. You will not create another public scene before the formal.”
“Or?”
“Or the Council will have less difficulty arguing that public preparation is no longer appropriate.”
Wear the dress and play our game publicly, or be handled somewhere no one had to watch.
“So that is the threat.”
He didn’t look up.
“You may go.”
I turned to leave.
“Astra.”
I stopped with my hand on the door.
“At the formal, everyone will be watching.”
“That’s the idea, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said. “Be careful what you give them to remember you by.”
I opened the door before my hand could start shaking.
Caswell was still in the corridor.
So was Caspian Ashford.
He stood beside the south window, and he whipped his face around when the door opened.
A strand of his blond hair had fallen loose at his temple. His collar sat slightly wrong, and one button of his coat had been done through the wrong hole.
The failure of his composure was the first thing I noticed.
The second was my relief at seeing him there.
The fact startled me enough that I nearly looked away.
“I was waiting for you,” he said softly.
I hadn’t asked him to.
Not aloud.
My Mark moved under my sleeve.
I saw Caswell inch closer from the corner of my eye. Watching. Waiting to see what I would do.
Caspian held out his hand, palm up.
“Come with me,” he said.
“Where?”
“Somewhere safer.”
I looked at his hand.
Then at Caswell.
Then at the door I had just come through.
I took his hand.