31. Astra
Astra
The unfinished line told me Hale was alive. It could tell me nothing else.
Its warmth came and went beneath my sleeve, faint enough that I sometimes had to press two fingers to my wrist to find it.
When it quieted, I did not know whether Hale was sleeping or whether Marrow had taken him somewhere the line could not easily reach.
The burns on his arm might have been treated.
He might have been questioned again. The thin warmth at my wrist told me none of it.
For the next several days, Hale’s room stood empty. His meal hatch stayed closed. Stewards appeared whenever Caspian, Kieran, or I entered the corridor and followed us as far as the washroom, the infirmary, or the review chamber.
The readers examined Kieran every morning.
They asked whether the pain had returned to his shoulder, whether his hand had failed, whether speech or balance had altered.
He answered no. They traced the green-gold line with a glass probe and recorded its color.
No one touched the Mark itself. After what happened to Hale, even Marrow’s readers had become careful about where they put their hands.
Every examination took place with me in the room.
I did not understand why that mattered until the evening we saw Hale.
The infirmary round had begun below us. Boots crossed the lower passage, doors opened and shut, and the familiar medicinal smell rose through the junction: bitterleaf, spirits, damp linen boiled too many times.
Hale’s line heated beneath my sleeve.
I was out of my room before the nearest steward could straighten from the wall.
Caspian followed. Kieran reached the corridor behind him, still carrying the cup he had been drinking from.
“Astra,” Caspian said.
“He’s down there.”
The lower door opened.
Hale came through between two stewards.
His left sleeve had been rolled above the elbow. Clean linen covered the burns from the silver contacts, and a darker bruise circled his wrist where the restraint had held him. He looked tired, but he was walking without help.
He saw me at the junction.
The unfinished line went bright.
Copper light showed beneath his skin and mine, two open ends reaching across the lower passage. Hale stopped. One of the stewards caught his arm.
“Keep moving.”
Hale pulled free without striking him. “Are you hurt?”
“No. Are you?”
“Nothing new.”
The steward outside my room stepped across the junction and blocked the stair.
“Return to your quarters.”
I reached for Hale through the line.
I had no plan beyond closing the distance the Tower had put between us. The rain-dark line drew tight under my skin, warm enough to hurt. Across the passage, Hale’s breath caught. His unfinished line brightened to the color it had been before Marrow brought down the silver leads.
Kieran set his cup on the floor and caught my arm.
Green-gold light broke through his sleeve.
Power shifted beneath my completed bonds. Kieran’s pulse struck inside my own, quickened by the sudden movement of his healed Mark. Caspian’s line pressed cold and steady at my wrist. The reach toward Hale deepened until all three lines burned together.
The water-light along the walls sharpened every color in the passage.
Marrow stepped through the lower door behind Hale.
He looked first at the copper light crossing the distance between Hale and me. Then his attention moved to Kieran’s wrist.
“Release her,” he said.
Kieran let go of my arm.
The green-gold light remained.
Marrow came up the stair. “Your Mark has not responded like that during review.”
“Maybe it doesn’t like you,” Kieran said.
“It responded when she reached for Hale.”
“I noticed.”
“Marrow,” Hale said from below.
Marrow ignored him. He spoke to the steward at the junction. “Take Marsh to the lower processing wing.”
The steward hesitated. “Now?”
“Now.”
Two more stewards came through the lower door.
I let the reach toward Hale go. The copper light receded, but the line stayed painfully warm.
“You have read Kieran’s Mark every morning,” I said. “You know it is stable.”
“Every reading was taken with you beside him. Tonight it changed when your attention was on someone else.”
“So ask him what he felt.”
“I will.” Marrow looked at Kieran. “Downstairs.”
Kieran glanced at the stewards moving toward him. Fear flashed through our bond before he pressed it down.
“The Council ordered a full examination of the altered Mark,” Marrow said. “This response makes the order immediate.”
Caspian stepped between Kieran and the nearest steward. “How long?”
“There is no fixed term.”
Caspian’s anger reached me through our bond before his face changed. It arrived cold enough to steady mine.
“He hasn’t refused,” I said.
“Neither did Hale.” Marrow’s eyes remained on Kieran’s wrist. “You saw what followed.”
The stewards took Kieran by the arms.
He did not fight them, though the effort it cost him moved through our bond like a held breath.
I stepped toward him.
The green-gold line surged again.
Marrow watched it happen. “Separate them.”
The stewards pulled Kieran back. Hale moved at the same moment, but the men beside him closed around his shoulders before he reached the stair.
“Don’t touch her,” he said.
“Then tell her to stay where she is,” Marrow replied.
Hale’s gaze found mine across the passage. The line strained between us.
“Astra.”
I stopped.
Kieran turned his head toward me as far as the steward’s grip allowed. Fear moved through our completed bond without disguise now. Resolve steadied beneath it. He held my gaze until I understood what he wanted from me: Stay here.
“You don’t know what they’re going to do,” I said.
“No.” His mouth tightened. “But you can still feel me.”
“Feeling you afraid in another locked room is not the same as having you here.”
“I know.” His voice lowered. “Use what we have.”
Marrow nodded toward the eastern passage.
The stewards turned Kieran away from me.
I followed.
Marrow stepped into my path. “If you leave this corridor, Hale will be moved out of the residential wing before you reach the stair.”
I stopped so sharply that Caspian’s hand closed around my arm.
“You’d move him because I followed Kieran?”
“Continue, and he moves.”
“He isn’t leverage.”
Kieran’s anger struck through our bond. He twisted against the stewards, not enough to break their hold, enough to make them tighten it.
“Don’t use him to keep her still,” he said.
Marrow did not look back. “Walk.”
Kieran’s gaze found mine over his shoulder.
I stayed where I was.
They took him toward the eastern stair. Before they reached the turn, Kieran asked where they were going, following the rule we had made after Hale’s removal.
No one answered him.
I watched until the gray of the stewards’ coats disappeared below the stair. The bond stretched with the distance but did not break. Kieran’s fear remained, but his pulse steadied by force.
Marrow stayed beside me.
“His file and yours are now cross-referenced,” he said. “Any attempt to reach him will be added to his review.”
“The Council wrote that rule,” I said. “You chose to use it.”
His thumb moved along the edge of Kieran’s file. In the water-light, the skin beneath his eyes looked bruised.
“After Sadie,” I said. “You know what indefinite review means.”
“I know exactly what it means.”
“And you’re sending him anyway.”
“I am sending him because his Mark reacted when you reached for a bond that is not his.” Marrow looked toward Hale. “The Council believes the lines are not behaving independently. If they are right, separating you from Hale will not contain whatever passed through Kieran’s Mark tonight.”
My stomach turned.
Hale and I had chosen the bond before Marrow interrupted us. It remained unfinished, but distance had not made it weaker. Now Kieran’s healed Mark had answered when I reached for Hale.
“You don’t know what that means,” I said.
“No. I intend to find out before the Council chooses its own method.”
“By doing what?”
He did not answer.
Below us, the stewards turned Hale back toward the western corridor.
“Wait,” I said.
Hale looked over his shoulder.
For a moment, the line shone between us again, fainter now but unbroken.
Then the western door closed behind him.
Marrow followed Kieran down the eastern stair.
Caspian waited until both lower doors had shut before releasing my arm.
“They took Kieran east,” he said. “Hale went west.”
“They’re separating the routes as well as the rooms.”
We went back to Kieran’s doorway. The bedcover lay half folded where he had left it, and his cup remained on the corridor floor near my feet. Across from us, Hale’s room had already been stripped bare.
Green-gold fear pulsed beneath my skin.
I pressed my palm over the bond. “I’m here.”
Kieran could not hear the words. I said them anyway.
Hale’s line warmed beside it, faint and distant. Whether he felt me through it, I could not tell.
Caspian stood close enough that the bond carried the control he was forcing over his own fear.
“We know which stair,” he said. “We know what frightened Marrow enough to act.”
“We still don’t know what he’s going to do.”
“No.”
After curfew, someone knocked softly at my door.