"Same time tomorrow," he says without looking up.
"Yes, sir."
I'm at the door when he says: "Miss Bardot."
I turn.
"The arm. How bad is the cut?"
"It's healing, sir. Slower than it should but it's healing."
He holds my gaze for a moment. Something in his expression does something he doesn't fully control, a tightening around the eyes that comes and goes before I can name it.
"Dismissed."
That night I can't sleep. I lie in bed and the pull from the corridor is still there, quieter now but not gone, like a hum just below hearing that you only notice when everything else is silent. The cut on my arm pulses. My ribs ache. The training hall ceiling I keep replaying in my mind has Knox's eyes in it, pale and direct and pointed at me like something decided.
I lie there until Lily's breathing evens out across the room. Then I stare at the ceiling some more. The pull won't let me settle, that low persistent ache under my ribs that I don't understand and can't make stop and can't ignore. I catalogue it like a symptom, pressing at its edges in my mind, trying to understand what it is.
I still don't understand it when the sky starts going grey at the window.
Chapter Seven
Iwake to Lily shaking my shoulder.
"Nova. You're going to be late for breakfast."
I sit up. My whole body aches, the cut on my arm throbbing dully, ribs stiff, the gritty behind-the-eyes feeling of a night that didn't do what nights are supposed to. I get up anyway because not showing up would be a visible signal and I've stopped making those.
We walk to the dining hall together. Lily is talking about her Shifter Politics essay, something about territorial disputes in the northern packs, and I'm listening with most of my attention while the rest of me does what it's been doing since yesterday, scanning rooms before I enter them. Not for threats exactly. For him.
I find him before I'm through the doors.
Caspian is at his usual table with Nico and several other seniors. The pull hits the moment I register him, that same pressure behind the sternum that I can't explain. It's stronger this morning than it was yesterday. I notice that. I file it theway I've been filing everything since the chapel, methodically, without letting myself react to it.
We get our food and sit at the back table. The empty radius around us has widened again. I notice that too.
"Do you ever feel..." I start.
Lily looks up from her eggs. "Feel what?"
I watch Caspian across the room. He's talking to someone, easy and unhurried, and the pull sits in my chest like a stone.
"Nothing," I say. "Never mind."
She watches me for a moment but doesn't push, and I'm grateful for the space she leaves around things she senses I'm not ready to name.
We eat. The pull doesn't fade. By the time I've finished half my food it's moved up into my shoulders, a tension I can't roll out, an awareness that points across the room regardless of where I'm trying to point my attention.
The students file out after breakfast and I'm in the east corridor heading to my first class when Knox comes around the corner ahead of me.
He's alone, which is unusual. Usually he's either in the training hall or absent from the common areas entirely. He's leaning against the wall near the east stairwell and when I come around the corner our eyes meet.
For a second neither of us moves.
Then I make a choice. I walk toward him.
He watches me approach with those flat pale eyes. No expression. When I'm close enough to speak without raising my voice I stop.
