* * *
Later, in the library, the group had gathered at their usual table.
Lucian set his bag down. “Six weeks is unprecedented. The gala is never announced this early. It’s always been held at the Winter Solstice, announced two weeks before the event. We should have had at least three more months to prepare.”
Gideon nodded, back to his steady, supportive presence. “I’m sorry for how I reacted when the mark first appeared. It caught me off guard. I should have been better about it.”
Seraphine’s expression was cooler but no longer openly hostile. “The display is still distasteful, but my earlier comment was unhelpful. I’ve moved past it.”
Adrian arrived a few minutes later.
He moved with unhurried grace, but the charm was carefullyrecalibrated—warmer, more deliberate, the smile soft while his eyes probed with quiet hunger. He had clearly decided the initial discomfort had passed and it was time to close the distance again.
He stopped beside the table, gaze finding hers.
“Lyra,” he said, voice low and intimate. “I owe you a proper apology. For the way I reacted when I first saw the mark. My discomfort… it was unfair. I should have stayed. I should have been better than that.”
He leaned in slightly, the warmth deepening, his hand resting lightly on the back of the chair beside her. The gesture carried subtle possessiveness. “I’ve been thinking about it since that day. You don’t deserve to be isolated because of something done to you. If you’ll let me, I’d like to be here for you. Properly this time. No distance. No hesitation.”
His eyes held a sinuous hunger beneath the charm—a calculated decision to become indispensable, the one who could offer comfort and perhaps pull her away from North Tower if she allowed him closer.
Lucian watched with careful neutrality. Gideon remained steady but tense. Seraphine’s lips pressed into a thin line.
Adrian continued, voice still low. “The early announcement means the guest list was established before the announcement. Whoever organized the timeline had a specific configuration in mind. The guests shape what happens at the gala. If the guest list was decided early, then the decision about who to invite—and what to show them—was made some time ago.”
Lucian added, “The two cases in the records. In both of them, Corven made remarks similar to the one yesterday before the students disappeared. And in both cases the gala had been announced with unusual timing. One of them was also early. The students don’t disappear at the gala. They disappear in the weeks after it. Which means the gala is when the decision is made, and the weeks after arewhen it’s executed.”
Six weeks.
Lyra sat with the full weight of it—the Headmaster’s words about presentation and visibility, the structures that required demonstration, the unprecedented timing, the connection to missing students, the guest list that had apparently been decided long before the announcement.
She thought about the letter.The subject you anticipated.
She thought:He has known since before I arrived.
She thought:The right order is the order in which he intends to tell me.
She thought:I am going to understand the right order before he decides it’s the right time.
The mark on her throat pulsed once, warm and insistent, the echo ofslutstill brushing against her thoughts like an unwelcome caress.
* * *
Later that evening, as the light in the corridors began to shift toward the deeper gray of dusk, a new message arrived.
The lamp at the junction dimmed once. The air took on the specific directed quality she had learned to recognize as his.
Caelum was summoning her to North Tower.
She closed her book, stood, and walked toward the north-facing corridor without hesitation, the mark on her throat still warm beneath the open collar, the weight of six weeks pressing against her chest like a second, heavier pulse.
The North Tower waited.
* * *
The corridor to his private quarters felt narrower this time.
Not because it had changed.
