Chapter 9 #2
Third row, near the aisle. She's gripping the seat in front of her with both hands, knuckles white, curls wild, and when our eyes meet her whole face breaks open—relief and terror and something fierce enough to make my throat close.
Margo is beside her, arms crossed, jaw set, radiating fury at everyone and no one.
Shandy sits still and watchful. Tess's eyes are wet and she's angry about it.
They came. I don't know how they got in. I don't know who let them, but they came.
I take in a deep breath and imagine what one of Nellie’s hugs would feel like right now.
Corvin sits me down. Zeva unlocks the cuffs.
The thorns pull free from my skin—small, precise stings, a dozen tiny punctures per wrist that well red immediately.
I press my hands flat against my thighs and hold them there, feeling the blood seep slow into the fabric of my pants.
My magic floods back into the space the iron was suppressing, raw and hot and trembling, and I have to clamp down on it so hard my vision whites out for a second.
Breathe. Hold. Center.
Balcour is already at a side table, portfolio open, pen uncapped. Same grey eyes, same expression he wore the first day I met him and the night Emric died.
Leyonna sits near the wall. Present but not presiding. Her dark eyes find mine and she gives me the smallest nod.
The gallery fills. Faculty. Students. Enforcers at the doors.
And in the second row, an empty seat on either side of them: House Vane.
I know them before anyone says a word. The man has Emric's jawline. The woman has Emric's face—his dark eyes, his soft mouth, the same gentle architecture that made him look like someone you could trust on sight. Looking at her is like looking at a ghost wearing different clothes.
Emric's father sits rigid. Dark suit pressed to severity. He doesn't look at me—looks at the empty adjudicator table like he’s itching for the proceedings to get started.
But Emric's mother is looking right at me.
Smaller than I imagined. Dark hair shot through with grey. A face that used to smile easily—the laugh lines repurposed for grief. She's looking at me with something I can't read. Not hatred. Something searching.
I look away. I have to.
A door opens at the side of the gallery. Kage comes through it.
He moves along the back wall without looking at anyone—finds a shadow between two columns and leans into it, arms crossed. My heart kicks up.
He's here. A week of silence and he's here, and when his eyes find mine across the room something passes between us through the bond—a pulse, low and warm, that says I'm here without saying anything at all. Then his gaze slides to the blood on my wrists and his whole body goes still.
I press my hands harder against my thighs. Not now.
Aamon takes a seat in the front row, directly in my sightline. Positioned where I can anchor on him if the room starts spinning.
I shouldn't need him.
But I do. I need him. I need Kage too.
The main doors open one more time.
Leopold walks in like he's arriving at a dinner party—unhurried, shoulders loose, white hair catching the overhead light. He takes a seat in the second row, near the Vanes, and settles back with one ankle crossed over his knee. Relaxed. At ease. A man with nowhere more important to be.
He catches my eye across the room.
And winks.
My fingernails dig into my thighs hard enough to leave crescents in the skin. The ward-lines under my feet flicker—a tiny spike, barely visible—and I drag my magic back with everything I have.
The last time I sat inside a containment circle like this I was thirteen and covered in my family's blood.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
Three adjudicators enter from a side door.
Dark formal robes, no ornamentation. The man on the left is gaunt, hollow-cheeked, with a face like cracked leather and hands that look older than the rest of him.
The man on the right is broader, heavier, his expression set permanently.
The woman takes the center chair—white hair cropped close, eyes like spent coal, the one the other two defer to without being told. She surveys the room once.
She nods at the room as a hushed silence falls over everyone and then she speaks.
"This tribunal convenes under council authority to adjudicate incident report 4471-C. The subject is Calypso Dellaby, provisional enrollment, Devenir Academy. The claimant is House Vane, represented by Advocate Marcellus of the Third Court."
A man rises from the gallery. Tall, dark-skinned, a suit that costs more than everything I've ever owned. He inclines his head. His face gives nothing.
"The incident in question: a cascade event on October thirty-first, resulting in significant structural damage to the academy chapel and the death of one Emric Vane." She opens a folder. "Mr. Balcour, your report."
Balcour stands. Reads.
I hear the first three sentences and then I sink somewhere into my own mind.
Not on purpose. My body does it for me—the old facility trick, the one I learned at fourteen when the doctors would read my incident report during quarterly reviews and I'd stare at the ceiling tiles and count the perforations until the words stopped being words.
Cascade event. Structural damage. Regulatory failure.
The language floats past me like something heard underwater.
I watch Balcour's mouth move. I watch his pen tap the page when he pauses between sections. I feel the ward-lines hum under my feet and the puncture wounds sting on my wrists but I’m far away from all of it, sitting behind my own eyes like a passenger.
Emric surfaces once. Not by name. The casualty.
My hands tighten on the chair. I come back into my body hard enough that I feel the landing.
"Professor Aamon." The center adjudicator doesn't look up. "You are the subject's designated training supervisor."
Aamon stands. "I am."
"Describe the subject's regulatory progress since enrollment."
He gives them what they want to hear. Channeling duration up from twelve seconds to sixty.
Emotional spike recovery improved by forty percent.
Two documented instances of self-correction during high-stress episodes.
He cites session numbers, dates, metrics I didn't even know he was tracking.
He makes me sound like a project that's trending upward—not a person, not a threat, just data moving in the right direction.
"In your professional assessment, Professor"—the adjudicator on the left, the cracked leather face—"is the subject capable of full emotional regulation within the original enrollment timeline?"
The room tightens.
Aamon looks at me.
Just for a second. Long enough for me to see what he's about to do.
"No," he says. "Not within the original timeline."
My stomach drops. My hands find the edges of the chair and grip.
"However," Aamon continues before the word has finished settling, "the subject's progress in the last thirty days exceeds the developmental trajectory the council projected at enrollment. With continued supervision, full regulation is achievable within an extended—"
"Thank you, Professor." The center adjudicator closes that door without letting him through it. "Dean Leyonna. You've submitted a statement."
Aamon’s jaw clenches before he sits back down.
Leyonna speaks from her chair. Doesn't stand, doesn't approach—and somehow that reads as more authoritative than a podium.
"The events of October thirty-first did not occur in a vacuum," she says. "The subject was exposed to a deliberate provocation. Her sealed file—sealed by council order—was obtained and read publicly by a fellow student. The emotional trigger was engineered."
The gallery shifts. A rustle, a collective adjustment.
I bite the inside of my cheek and listen as she continues.
"The subject's magic responds to emotional distress. This is documented. It’s the foundational premise of her training program.
To expose her to a targeted emotional attack in a crowded venue and then cite the resulting cascade as evidence of unfitness is to punish the patient for the symptom while ignoring the infection.
" She pauses. "The incident was not a failure of the subject's regulation.
It was a failure of the institution's duty to protect her.
That failure belongs to us. Not to her."
The room goes quiet and my ears start ringing.
The center adjudicator's expression doesn't change. "Noted. The tribunal will weigh the Dean's statement alongside the incident report." She turns to me. "Miss Dellaby. You may address the tribunal."
I stand up. My legs aren't steady. My hands are shaking and I don't know what to do with them so I clasp them in front of me. The puncture wounds sting and I can feel the whole room watching my hands and I drop them to my sides.
I look at Emric's mother.
"I—" My throat closes. I swallow. Try again. "I knew your son."
The words come out small. Smaller than I mean them to. The courtroom is too quiet and my voice doesn't fit in it.
"He… was in my combat class. And on the second day, when nobody would partner with me, he just—" I stop.
My hands are wringing against each other and I force them still.
"He walked over with two staffs and handed me one.
Didn't hesitate. Didn't care what anyone thought about it.
" I'm looking at her and she's looking at me and her face is her son's face and I'm losing the thread. "I'm sorry. I'm trying to—"
I breathe.
"I didn't know him well enough. That's the thing I keep—he was kind to me for weeks.
He defended me in class. He asked me to coffee.
" I shake my head. My eyes are burning. "And I kept him at arm's length because I was afraid of what happens when people get close to me.
Turns out I was right to be afraid. I just—I wish I'd let him in while I had the chance. "
My voice cracks on the last word and I let it crack because I can't hold it together and talk about him at the same time.