I should feel something about that. Used, maybe. Manipulated. I adjust my collar instead, smoothing the fabric where it lies against my throat, and keep my voice level.
"What do you want with her?"
"Right now? Information. Every time she absorbs something, every time her magic manifests, every reaction she has—I want it documented. I want to know what she's capable of."
"And after?"
The smile again. That warm, terrible smile.
"The Bolingbrokes have handled situations like this for generations, Callum. It's what we do. What we've always done." She stands, moves around the desk, stops in front of my chair so I have to look up at her. "She's not a threat. She's an opportunity. One we haven't had in a very long time."
"An opportunity for what?"
Her hand touches my shoulder. Light, brief, the closest thing to affection she ever offers.
"Trust me," she says. "As you always have. Keep watching her. Make sure the other three continue their... testing. Push her limits. See what else she can do." A pause. "But nothing permanent. Not yet."
The "not yet" settles in my stomach like a stone.
"Yes, Mother."
"Good boy."
She returns to her desk. Opens her laptop. I've been dismissed.
I leave without looking back.
The others are waiting in the study room on the second floor of Ossium Hall—the one with the door that only opens for Mors students, the one where the shadows pool so thick you can barely see the walls.
Atlas is pacing. Of course he is. He's never been able to hold still when he's upset, and he's been upset since the moment he heard what happened. Lightning crackles at his fingertips, barely contained, responding to the storm in his blood.
Felix is lounging on the ancient sofa, shuffling his cards in that endless rhythm he never seems to stop. Shuffle-cut-shuffle. His eyes track me as I enter—green, sharp, calculating things happening behind them that I've never been able to read.
Ren stands by the window, arms crossed, watching the graveyard below. He doesn't turn when I come in. Doesn't need to.
"Well?" Atlas stops pacing. "What did the administration say?"
Not "what did your mother say." They don't know about that. They think I went to report the incident to the dean, to get official guidance on how to proceed. I let them think it.
"We continue as planned." I move to the fireplace, stand with my back to the flames so I can see all three of them. "Increase pressure. Push her limits. See what she can do."
"She swallowed a shadow spell." Atlas's voice is sharp enough to cut. "Sheswallowedit, Callum. Like it was nothing. And you want us to push her harder?"
"I want us to understand what we're dealing with."
"We know what we're dealing with. She's a—" He stops. Can't make himself say it. The word sits in the room anyway, heavy as a corpse.
"She's a grimoire," Felix says mildly, flipping a card between his fingers. "Or something close to it. Probably the first one in a century. And you're scared."
"I'm not scared."
"You're terrified." Felix's smile doesn't reach his eyes. "We all are. The question is what we do about it."
Ren finally turns from the window. His face is unreadable—it always is, that careful blankness that I've never been able to get past—but something in his posture has shifted.
"She was bleeding," he says quietly. "In combat training last week. I walked past her."
"I know."
