Silas’s hand stays at my hip.
Not possessive now. Anchoring. The only thing keeping me from stepping forward and saying something I won’t be able to take back. My whole body is vibrating with the effort of staying still, of letting him handle this when every instinct in me wants to tear into Kadin myself.
Kadin notices that too.
Fucking perfect.
Dropping his eyes briefly to Silas’s hand on me, satisfaction flickers across his face before he looks back up. That expression alone is enough to make my stomach turn. He wanted this. Not just the hallway insult. Not just the scene. This. The public tension. The audience. The proof that he can get close enough to us to poke and prod and watch something ugly rise.
“What?” he says, spreading his hands slightly like he’s the reasonable one here. “You think I’m the bad guy because my friend made one joke?”
“One joke?” I repeat.
The words tear out of me before I can stop them.
Kadin’s eyes snap to mine at once. I can feel Silas’s hand tighten fractionally at my hip, not to silence me, just because heknows exactly how close I am to losing whatever caution I have left.
“That’s what you’re calling this?” I ask. “A joke?”
Kadin’s expression changes immediately, softening around the edges as if he thinks if he addresses me gently enough, the whole thing might tip back in his favor.
“You know how guys talk,” he says. “You really want to make a whole scene over some stupid hallway comment?”
The condescension in it almost takes my breath away.
The crowd around us must feel the shift, because the silence thickens. People are no longer just watching a fight. They’re watching a shape emerge, something uglier than boys posturing at each other. They’re watching Kadin try to make me feel unreasonable in front of an audience, and they’re watching me realize it in real time.
Silas hears it too.
“You keep talking to her like that,” he says quietly, “and yesterday is going to feel like a warm-up.”
That lands.
Not because he says it loudly. Because he says it with complete sincerity.
Kadin’s face hardens at last, the fake ease thinning enough to show what’s underneath. Pride. Spite. The stubborn disbelief of a man who still cannot accept that the person he’s decided is beneath him might actually be willing to make good on every threat.
“What are you going to do?” he asks. “Hit me again because I hurt your feelings?”
Silas doesn’t answer.
He just looks at him.
And somehow that silence says much more than any threat could.
Kadin’s face hardens in a way that makes him look uglier than the bruise on his jaw ever could.
For a second I think maybe he’s finally smart enough to stop. The hallway is dead quiet now, every eye in reach fixed on the three of us. Silas is all coiled restraint beside me, his hand still locked at my hip, his body radiating that terrifying stillness that means violence is only one bad sentence away. Kadin has to feel it. Has to know he is standing on the edge of something he does not actually control.
And still, he smiles.
Not because he’s brave.
Because he’s cruel enough to think the crowd will save him from consequence.
His gaze flicks from Silas to me, then back again, and when he speaks, he pitches his voice just loud enough for the people nearest us to hear.
“No wonder she spread for you so fast,” he smiles. “Girls raised like that always confuse rot for love.”
