It didn’t go away.
It found more people to be angry for.
“My Verse said my Mark would answer a Star-Marked girl.”
“So you dimmed it to stop that.”
“My family dimmed it first.”
I went still.
“I was nine.”
That silenced me.
I had expected the hand of a man’s discipline.
I hadn’t expected a child.
Hale glanced at the stave in his hand.
“Suppression is easier to teach before a boy knows he is allowed to hate it.”
“And now?”
His hand closed once around the stave.
“Now it doesn’t hold the way it used to.”
My wrist warmed.
“Because of me.”
“Because of us.”
“Hale.”
“Jonah,” he said.
My mouth closed.
The salle seemed to notice the name at the same time I did.
“If we’re talking about what my yes means,” he said, “use that name.”
The Pull moved under my skin.
“Jonah,” I said.
His Mark brightened.
Only a little.
He looked pained by how much he wanted it not to show.
“Your yes means death?” I asked.
“It means I know what the Council does to bonds it didn’t arrange.”
