Chapter 48
The west antechamber had none of the grandeur I had expected from a room people disappeared through.
I’d expected a room built for ceremony. High ceiling. Polished chairs. A basin waiting in the center like a threat pretending to be furniture.
Instead, there were four wooden benches bolted to the walls, one narrow table, one covered lamp, and a door on the far side with no handle.
The door we entered through had a handle.
The other did not.
That seemed important.
The stewards put us inside and stayed in the corridor. Quill remained outside with them. So did Linden. I heard their voices lower as the door shut, and then the lock turned.
For three breaths, none of us moved.
Caspian stood nearest the door we had entered through.
Kieran stayed by the left wall, his right shoulder still bleeding green magic through his coat.
Once, when he shifted his weight, the color left his mouth before he found a smile and put it back.
Hale stood near the far door without touching it.
I stood in the middle of the room and looked at the benches.
“Delphine was here,” I said.
Every gaze went, in its own way, to the far door.
Caspian’s jaw set. Kieran’s forced smile vanished. Hale had already been looking there, which told me he had been thinking about it before I said her name.
Caspian came to my side. The bond between us had gone quieter since we left the hall, but quieter was not gone. It sat under my skin with the steady pressure of his attention.
Kieran glanced at the far door.
“If this is an antechamber,” he said, “I dislike what it is before.”
“The Tower,” Hale said.
The word made the room colder.
Kieran glanced at him. “You could have lied for morale.”
“Not helpful in this situation.”
“Briefly. As a gift.”
Hale looked at the door without a handle. “No.”
Kieran sighed. “The instructors at this school are terrible at consolation.”
“Wait,” I said.
Both of them looked at me.
I ignored their gazes and went to the nearest bench.
The wood was old. Not polished old. Used old. The front edge had been worn smooth by hands, skirts, cuffs, fingernails. Someone had tried to scrape one corner clean and failed.
Low on the left support, half hidden by shadow, someone had cut a small symbol into the grain.
I crouched.
Caspian said my name.
Softly.
I looked up at him.
“If you are about to tell me to step back, choose another sentence.”
Caspian chuckled, it sounded strangled but real.
“I was going to say the left side has newer scratches.”
Oh.
I looked.
He was right.
The underside of the bench had older marks cut deep and dark, but near the left support the wood was pale where someone had carved recently.
Kieran came closer.
Hale stayed where he was, watching the far door.
I reached under the bench.
Caspian crouched beside me, close enough for the bond to warm at my wrist.
“There,” he said.
Two letters, and a Mark I recognized.
D.M.
My breath caught so hard it hurt.
Below the initials, another cut marked the wood.
A date.
I did not know the school’s dates well enough to trust myself.
“Caspian.”
He leaned closer.
His shoulder brushed mine.
The bond answered, low and immediate.
He read the date.
Then his expression changed in a way I had never seen before.
Not shock.
Anger taking its time because it wanted to arrive correctly.
“After,” he said.
The room tilted around that yes.
Kieran’s voice came from above me, stripped of humor. “How long after?”
Caspian looked at him.
“Three days.”
Three days.
Delphine had been alive and in this room for at least three days after they took her.
Alive enough to carve.
Alone enough to need to.
I put my hand over the cut marks.
The wood was rough against my palm.
My Mark brightened at my wrist.
All three men felt it.
Caspian’s breath changed beside me. Kieran’s shoulder lit through his coat. Hale turned from the far door at last.
“Astra,” Hale said.
That was all.
My name, spoken like a hand held out across a room he would not cross unless I asked.
I didn’t ask.
There was more under the bench.
I shifted my hand and found the next cut.
Three short lines, then one long one.
A mark.
I had seen it before.
At Room 107, cut into the frame.
At the west door, almost hidden beneath older scratches.
Different hands. Same answer.
“What is that?” Kieran asked.
“A girl saying she was here,” I said.
Hale’s expression darkened.
That told me enough.
“Sadie?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Hale.”
“Some of the marks are older than Sadie.”
Some.
Not all.
The room seemed to shrink.
Caspian reached under the bench on his side and touched another scratch with two careful fingers.
“There are more.”
Kieran moved to the opposite bench.
For once, he didn’t make a joke.
That frightened me more than the lock.
We searched the room slowly.
Anything faster would have felt like insult.
This was not a puzzle.
It was a record no one had meant to preserve.
Initials under the benches. Short marks near the table. One line of numbers scratched into the wall where the lamp shadow hid it. A small crescent cut low into the far door.
Names, some of them.
Kieran found S.C. under the right bench and went quiet.
Hale found a mark I didn’t know but apparently he recognized and closed his eyes.
Caspian found Selene on the inside of the table leg.
He didn’t tell me at first.
But the bond did.
Pain moved through him and reached me before his mouth opened.
I stood.
“What?”
Caspian stayed crouched beside the table.
“Astra.”
“What?”
He moved aside.
The initials were small. Nearly hidden where the leg met the underside of the table.
S.V.
Beneath them, one line.
A word.
Survive.
I stared at it until the room went quiet in the wrong way.
My mother had been here.
Here, not in a story or a file or a dress preserved by the people who killed her.
In this room.
Waiting for a door with no handle to open.
My knees wanted to bend.
I didn’t let them.
Caspian rose slowly.
Kieran had gone pale. Hale looked at the far door as if he could see through it and hated what stood on the other side.
“Did she leave this before or after the formal?” I asked.
No one answered.
Because no one knew.
The lock turned.
All four of us went still.
The door opened and Linden stood in the corridor.
Behind him, Quill waited with two stewards and the woman from the interrogation. She had a notebook open in one hand.
Of course she did.
Linden looked at the four of us.
Then at the room.
His gaze dropped, just once, toward the underside of the nearest bench.
He knew.
Not all of it, maybe.
Enough.
“Tower notice has been clarified,” he said.
My hand closed around my mother’s brooch.
Linden’s eyes met mine.
“Transfer at dawn.”
The words should have chilled me.
They didn’t.
There was no room left in me for cold.
“To Zenith Tower?” Caspian asked.
Linden inclined his head once.
Kieran made a sound under his breath.
“Naturally.”
Quill stepped into the doorway.
He didn’t enter the room.
Interesting.
“Until dawn,” he said, “you will remain under divided witness.”
“Divided how?” Caspian asked.
“Astra Verita and Caspian Ashford will remain here.”
The bond between us tightened.
Kieran’s head lifted.
Hale’s hand moved once at his side.
Quill continued, “Jonah Hale and Kieran Marsh will be held in adjacent rooms under Tower notice.”
“No,” I said.
The word came out before I decided whether it was smart.
Quill’s eyes moved to me.
“No severance will be attempted before review.”
“Separation is its own kind of severance,” I said.
“It is not against protocol.”
I hated him and his protocols more than I ever had before.
My Mark pulled at all three lines.
Caspian took one step closer. Hale remained motionless. Kieran looked at me and let me see the fear before he covered it.
“Astra,” he said.
My name, and the fact that he could not stay.
The stewards entered.
This time they knew better than to touch him.
Hale went first because Hale understood when a fight would cause a bigger problem. Kieran followed because he realized the wisdom in Hale’s choice, though grudgingly.
At the threshold, Kieran looked back.
“Try not to miss me too much.”
My throat hurt.
“Only if you try not to bleed too much.”
He glanced at his weeping shoulder. “I make no promises about things I’m not sure I can manage.”
Then he was gone.
Hale paused after him.
His eyes found mine.
The rain-dark line pulled once, steady and unbearable.
“Dawn,” he said.
I nodded.
The door closed after him.
The lock turned again.
Caspian and I were alone in the west antechamber.
Except the walls were full of girls who had waited here before me. My mother’s warning was carved under the table. Delphine’s initials were under the bench, dated three days after she disappeared.
Alive.
At least then.
Caspian stood beside me without speaking.
For once, I was grateful for silence.
I went back to the table.
I crouched.
I put my fingers beside my mother’s word.
The far door had no handle.
The door behind us was locked.
At dawn, they would take us upstairs to Zenith Tower.
I looked at the word my mother had left for me, for anyone else who entered this room and needed it.
Survive.
“I am,” I whispered.
Caspian crouched beside me.
The line between us held.
So did the other two, somewhere beyond the walls.