He looked past me into the room, then back to my face.
“Relieved.”
I swallowed hard.
Apparently there were still things in the world capable of ambushing me.
Caspian stepped back from the threshold.
Then he turned and walked away before either of us could make the moment more dangerous than it already was.
I closed the door.
The Mark under my sleeve had not settled.
Juno’s small lie still held.
25
Ihad meant to meet Astra after the assessment.
That was a mistake.
Planning had always been my most reliable vice. Apples. Exits. The three different ways a sentence could go wrong before I let my mouth have it.
I had planned the route from the training ring because a girl who had just been assessed in front of half the school would either want bread, company, or the pleasure of pretending she wanted neither.
I had brought an apple for all three possibilities.
The apple was in my left hand at noon.
At twelve-twenty, it was still there.
At twelve-thirty, a second-year came out of the lower corridor with sand on his shoes and the bright, useless face of a boy who had seen something interesting happen to someone else.
“Verita pinned Venn,” he said.
I looked at the apple.
“Did she?”
“Ugly, too. Aldric saw the whole thing. He named her Ring One.”
That made my hand close around the apple.
The skin didn’t break.
Good apple.
“Was Ashford there?” I asked.
He blinked, his expression blank, the important part arriving late.
“At the rail,” he said.
So Caspian had been at the rail.
I had counted on it.
