I held the stance.
Everything looked perfectly innocent from the outside.
24
The next two days were alarmingly uneventful.
I went to class. I ate when Rev put food in front of me. I practiced Hale’s forms in the narrow space between my bed and the wardrobe until my shoulders ached.
No one from Quill’s office sent for me.
No one mentioned Delphine.
Caspian didn’t appear at my door, which was sensible of him and irritating for reasons I refused to examine.
On the first night, I climbed the clock tower and found only wind, stone, and a half-eaten apple on the ledge where Kieran had sat.
That was also sensible of him.
I disliked sense more by the hour.
By the second morning, I had almost convinced myself the school had lost interest in me.
Then Juno came to Room 114 without a summons.
No silver water. No words across the basin.
Just a knock that almost made me jump out of my skin. No one had ever knocked on my door in all my days at Zenith Hall.
I opened the door with my coat half-buttoned and my hair tied in a knot that would have disappointed Hale on principle.
Juno stood in the corridor.
“Show me your wrist,” she said.
“Good morning to you too.”
“Wrist.”
I gave it to her.
She did not step into the room until I moved aside. She did not touch the Mark. She held my hand by the heel of the palm and looked at the air around my wrist instead.
That was when I started to worry.
“You were with Hale recently,” she said.
“Does everybody in this place know my whereabouts just by looking at me?”
She ignored the question. It was rhetorical anyway.
“You were close to him.”
“He was teaching me how not to be beaten senseless by a boy with a staff. The intimacy was mostly educational.”
Juno’s eyes moved to mine.
“Astra, this is serious.”
