42. Astra
Astra
The steward pulled our hands apart, closed Caspian’s door between us, and turned the key. Before his hand left the lock, a bell began ringing below.
It was faster than the chimes that divided the Tower’s day, each strike following the last before the sound could fade. The steward stopped with his hand still on the key.
Someone shouted from the lower corridor.
“Infirmary.”
The steward turned me toward my room.
“Who is it?”
“Keep walking.”
A second steward came around the curve at a run. The only blood on the front of his gray coat was a dark print where someone had caught at him with one hand.
My stomach dropped.
“Delphine?” I asked.
Neither man answered. They did not need to.
I pulled against the grip on my arm. “Take me to her.”
“Return to your room.”
“You know what I can do.”
“That is precisely why you are returning to your room.”
The words struck harder than his hand. I planted my feet, but the smooth floor gave me nothing to brace against. He dragged me two steps before another voice stopped us.
“Bring her.”
The administrator stood at the head of the lower stair, one hand resting against the wall as though she had climbed too quickly and refused to show it.
Her dark dress was unfastened at one cuff.
In the other hand, she held a certified copy of the annex, its blue exhibit seal visible beneath her fingers.
The steward loosened his grip without releasing me. “The restriction—”
“Has not changed. Bring her anyway.”
We descended into air that smelled of mineral water, hot metal, and the bitter green tincture the healers used for pain. The infirmary doors stood open. Inside, two readers were forcing Delphine’s left arm flat against the bed while the healer bent over her hand.
She was not screaming. That frightened me more.
Her body had gone rigid beneath the blankets, her jaw clenched so tightly that the muscles fluttered in her cheek.
The Mark on the back of her hand had spread beyond the shape I remembered.
Its pale, damaged lines had turned nearly black at the center, with thin branches running toward her wrist. Blood welled from cracks in the skin above them.
The air held the charged metallic smell that came before a storm.
Delphine saw me. Her eyes found mine through the bodies around the bed and held.
“No,” Marrow said.
He stood so still beside the foot of the bed that I had looked past him. His coat was buttoned despite the heat.
The administrator handed him the annex.
“Read the third page.”
“This is not the time.”
“A young woman is bleeding through a Mark your records declared resolved. I cannot imagine a better one.”
The healer looked up. Sweat shone along her hairline. “The afternoon reader required her to surface the entire Mark for comparison. The first fracture opened before the reading ended. It has reached the wrist now. If it crosses the joint—”
“Then treat it,” Marrow said.
“I am.”
“More successfully.”
The healer’s expression did not change, but one of her hands curled into the blanket. “I can close the skin. I cannot stop what is opening it.”
Marrow glanced at me once. “The Council’s instruction is explicit.”
“So is this.” The administrator held the annex in front of him.
“Delphine Moreau remained in active Tower intake while Zenith Hall recorded her case as resolved. Sadie Corwin was transferred under a sealed directive, and the name of the person who received her was removed. Your requests for that record were denied twice.”
The muscles beside Marrow’s mouth tightened.
“You knew the records were incomplete,” she said.
“I knew access had been restricted.”
“You asked three times.”
“The third request was yours.”
“And now we know why neither of us received an answer.”
Delphine made a small sound behind her teeth. The black lines reached the edge of her wrist.
The healer pressed both hands over them. Light flared beneath her palms, soft gold against the harsher silver of the water channels. For one breath, the branching stopped.
Then the gold went out.
The healer staggered. A reader caught her before she struck the floor.
I moved toward the bed.
The steward seized my shoulder.
“Marrow,” the administrator said.
He looked past the blood and the healer being lowered into a chair. His attention stayed on Delphine’s face.
“Clear the room,” he said.
My heart kicked hard enough to hurt.
“Marrow—” one of the readers began.
“Take the healer to the preparation room and find the restorative tincture. Both of you.”
“And the prisoner?”
“Resident,” the administrator said.
Marrow did not correct her. “Remain outside the door.”
The readers exchanged a glance. The steward’s grip stayed on me until Marrow looked directly at his hand. Then he let go.
They carried the healer out between them. The steward followed. Marrow stepped into the corridor last, still holding the annex.
“The restriction remains in force,” he said.
“Of course,” the administrator replied.
He pulled the door nearly closed behind him but left a narrow gap.
The administrator crossed the room and pushed it shut with two fingers. The latch settled quietly into place.
For a moment, we heard only Delphine breathing.
I went to her bed but stopped before touching her. Up close, the damage was worse. The Mark’s lines had split the skin in a pattern too exact to be mistaken for an ordinary wound. They pulsed with each beat of her heart.
“Delphine.”
Her gaze shifted to me.
“I can touch your Mark and try to understand what is happening. I won’t change anything unless you ask me afterward.”
Her lips parted. No sound came out.
I poured water from the pitcher into the bowl and held it to her mouth. The rim clicked against her teeth before I steadied it. She swallowed once and turned her face away.
“Touch it,” she whispered.
“The statement you signed says I may examine it. I still need to hear what you want now.”
Her eyes narrowed with a flash of the girl I had known at the Hall, the one who had smiled at my filthy uniform and told me there were easier ways to insult the laundry mistress.
“Examine it,” Delphine said. “Nothing else yet.”
The administrator moved to the other side of the bed and took Delphine’s uninjured hand. “I will witness it.”
I slid one palm beneath Delphine’s wrist. Her skin was cold and wet with blood. I placed two fingers against the unbroken edge of her Mark.
Nothing happened.
For one startled second, I thought the records were wrong.
Then all three completed lines flared. Heat ran past Hale’s line and into my fingertips.
The room disappeared.
I knew each bond by where it touched me: Caspian’s heat beneath my ribs, Kieran’s pull at the base of my throat, Hale’s weight between my shoulders. Delphine’s Mark offered none of them.
Her power met me as featureless resistance. There was no bond to admit me and no shared current to follow.
I almost pulled away.
Then Delphine’s fingers closed around my wrist.
Her grip was frightened but firm.
I pressed deeper.
The Mark opened beneath my touch by fractions.
The pain tearing up my arm carried more than her present injury.
The history of it had been driven into every line: suppression applied until the channels narrowed, forced activation after they could no longer bear it, readings taken again and again while the pattern failed.
Someone had treated her Mark like wire, bending it back and forth to learn how long it took to break.
I tasted copper. Warm blood slipped over my lip.
“Astra,” the administrator said.
“I’m still examining.”
Delphine’s Mark shuddered around me. A flash of white corridor. A hand signing a paper. The west door standing open with cold air spilling through it. Then absence, broad and smooth where memory should have caught.
Understanding came with a wave of nausea.
I opened my eyes. The infirmary returned in pieces: silver light on the ceiling, the administrator’s white knuckles, Delphine’s blood drying in the creases of my hand.
“Tell me,” Delphine said.
I kept my fingers at the edge of her Mark but let the reach beyond my bonds recede. “They damaged the channels that carry power through it. Some have scarred closed. The others are taking more than they can hold, and they are splitting under the strain.”
“Can you repair them?”
“I think so, but yours doesn’t recognize me. There is no bond to guide me through it.” I made myself give her the rest without softening it. “I could make the damage worse or stop the Mark entirely. I might change something I don’t mean to change.”
Her thumb moved once against my wrist. “My memory?”
“I found places where it was cut away from the Mark. Repairing the channels may loosen memories trapped around the damage. It cannot restore what is gone.”
She looked away. I wished I could have told her the missing memories were merely hidden, but I had already felt the places where they ended.
“And if you do nothing?” the administrator asked.
“The splitting will continue. Maybe slowly after this. Maybe not.” I looked at the black branch already crossing Delphine’s wrist. “If it reaches the central line, I don’t know what it will take with it.”
Delphine closed her eyes.
I waited. The bell had stopped, but the Tower had not gone silent. Beyond the door, boots crossed the corridor. Someone murmured to the healer. Water ran through the walls with its ceaseless silver hush.
“You stop if I ask,” Delphine said. “And you stop if it’s killing you. I am not trading your life for my hand.”
“All right.”
She studied my face before she continued. “Repair what they damaged. Don’t make me into something else.”
“I won’t.”
“Then try.”
The administrator tightened her hand around Delphine’s. “I heard her.”
I took Delphine’s hand between both of mine.
The instant I reached beyond the bonds again, all three lines rose with it.
All three tightened at once, their familiar pressure bracing me from ribs to shoulders. They steadied my pulse while I entered somewhere I had no right to belong except the right Delphine had just given me.
I went in.
The broken Mark closed around me.