“Yes.”
“Were you read at the basin in Juno’s chamber shortly after arrival?”
“Yes.”
“Has Juno told you your Mark is what the school’s current cosmology calls Untethered?”
“Yes.”
“Have you been given another word for it?”
Cosima had told me not to define myself for them.
I kept my hands still.
“Yes.”
“Say the word.”
Linden’s pen waited.
“Star-Marked.”
Linden’s expression remained aloof but Caswell’s shifted, just enough.
Quill’s tapped against the table.
Linden wrote, then his attention moved to my wrist.
The Mark was hidden under my coat. He couldn’t see the lines themselves, so he looked at the air around my wrist.
I kept my hand where it was and let him look.
Whatever he found was not what he wanted.
His pen moved again, then he folded his hands on the table.
“Has your Mark Pulled in proximity to Caspian Ashford?”
The lines under my sleeve drew inward, as if his name had touched them.
“Yes.”
He wrote without looking up.
“Has your Mark Pulled in proximity to Kieran Marsh?”
The clock tower roof came back too fast: wind, night air his lips touching mine.
“Yes.”
Linden gave the next name the smallest pause.
“Has your Mark warmed in proximity to Jonah Hale?”
Hale in the salle, saying yes like he had been waiting for the word and hating that he had it.
“Yes.”
