The boy’s eyes dart frantically past Silas, looking for help from the crowd now gathering, from the hall, from the authority he expected would protect him from the consequences of his own mouth. He doesn’t find any of it yet. Just faces. Curiosity. Fear. Hunger for a scene.
My body finally unfreezes.
“Silas.”
The name leaves me before I know what tone I mean to use. Pleading. Warning. I’m not even sure.
His head turns just enough that I know he heard me, but not enough to loosen his grip.
That is when the whole hallway truly goes silent.
“Easy, killer.”
Kadin’s voice cuts through the silence with that same polished sneer I’m already starting to hate on sight. He pushes his way through the growing crowd with all the confidence of someone who knew exactly what would happen the second the insult left his friend’s mouth. Of course he did. Of course this was him. The little setup, the hallway audience, the cheap shot wrapped in someone else’s voice so his own hands stay clean.
“My boy was just making a joke,” he scoffs.
The phrase lands in me like acid.
Silas lets the other guy go, but not out of fear. Out of calculation. The second his hand releases the boy’s shirt, all of that violence he had pinned into one point shifts cleanly toward Kadin instead. He turns slowly, shoulders still tight, jaw set hard enough to make the muscle jump beneath his skin.
Kadin is smiling when he comes to a stop in front of us.
Actually smiling.
The kind of smile men wear when they think the crowd is protection, when they believe witnesses make them untouchable instead of merely watched. His gaze flicks to me, softening into something falsely warm. God I hate that even more than the sneer.
“Octavia,” he says, glancing back at Silas like he cannot resist making sure the next words land where he wants them. “I see you’re still acting cozy with your family’s stray.”
My heart kicks hard enough to hurt.
For one ugly second all I can hear is that word.
Stray.
Like Silas is something picked up off the road and tolerated until he bites. Like he belongs nowhere, enough for Kadin to turn his whole life into one sneering little category. The anger in me rises so fast it feels painful, my hands curling at my sides. Before I fully think it through, I step toward him.
Silas’s hand catches my hip immediately.
The touch stops me more effectively than if he’d put his whole body in front of me. Not because he grips hard. Because he doesn’t. He just holds me there, fingers warm and firm at my side. When I look at him, he’s already shaking his head once.
No.
Not for me.
Not here.
A slow breath moves through him, visible in the rise of his chest. He is forcing the fury down into something usable. The bruises from yesterday are still faintly visible on Kadin’s face, softened at the edges now but unmistakable, little shadows left behind by Silas’s fist. Silas sees them too. I know he does because his gaze lands there before returning to Kadin’s eyes.
“I figured you’d know better after what happened yesterday,” Silas says.
His voice is low, all the more dangerous for the effort in it. There’s no dramatic threat in the sentence. No volume. Just the promise of remembered violence sitting under every word.
Kadin lets out a short scoff, but it comes a little too quickly, a little too sharp. For all his swagger, he can still feel yesterday in his face.
“I should be saying the same thing to you,” he says.
The hallway crowd shifts around us, hungry and uneasy in equal measure. Nobody leaves. Nobody steps in. They all just watch, the way people always do when cruelty starts to sharpen into something they might get to retell later.
