And for a split second in time, they are looking right at me.
Then I blink, and his gaze has turned away.
From halfway up the staircase, paused on the step with my brother, Dray scans the faces in the atrium.
Beside him, Oliver’s mouth moves around animated, cross words—totally about me.
But Dray’s sunkissed face furrows faintly.
He senses me.
He’s looking for me.
Among the faces, in the horde, he’s searching.
A fright jolts through me like a slingshot.
I shove by a cluster of students, then duck behind a wooden pillar.
I peer around the other side.
Serena is far ahead of me, looking around now that she’s realised I’m not behind her anymore.
She double takes and finds me.
I mouth the word, “Go.”
It’s all I need to do before she turns her back on me and pushes through the crowd to the open doors blasting in the cold, winter air.
I slip out from behind the pillar.
I soothe my breaths, soothe the panic, and start to move calmly through the crowd.
I don’t dare look back up at the staircase.
If Dray is still up there, searching for me in the crowd, searching for my face, then I can’t risk him giving me a second look.
Makut is weaker than the print it mimics.
His sense is nothing like his mother’s. But it never fails to find me.
So I keep my head down and slip around the shoulders, the backsteps, the turning bodies, the rush of those trying to get out of the cold and deeper into the atrium, until I’m spilling out into the winds.
My heart settles as I come down the steps—and find Serena standing on the path, waiting for me.
The breath eases in me, and I rush to her.
The worried pinch of her mouth gives her away under the illusion, the fear writhing in her, too.
But the moment I’m at her side, she whirls around and marches through the parting students coming off the gondolas and chairlifts.
They cut it close to curfew, the stragglers. And though they move aside for us, Serena flicks her wrist—
And the time on the watch is chilling.
More chilling than the winds whistling around the academy.
My breath mists at my face.
