“Another warm welcome.”
“Astra.”
One word. My name. No patience left around it.
I stepped in.
Juno closed the door and set her palm flat against the wood like she was about to undergo a great trial. The basinin her chamber was dark, but the water trembled as if something below it had not settled.
“You were with Kieran Marsh.”
My cut mouth pulled when I answered.
“Apparently privacy doesn’t exist here.”
“The basin did not show me the roof.”
“Then what did it show you?”
“A flare.”
The word moved through me like cold water.
I put a hand over my coat pocket. The apple was still there, hard against my palm.
“His Mark,” I said.
Juno crossed to the basin and looked down into the dark water.
“His Mark is damaged.”
For a moment, I heard only the pipe in the wall.
Then my own breath, thin and useless.
“Damaged how?”
“That is Kieran’s truth to give you.”
I saw it again: silver-green light leaking through dark cloth, bright at the edges, wrong in a way my body had understood before my mind could name it.
“It hurts him.”
“Yes.”
I sat without being told because I wasn’t sure my legs could hold me up any longer.
“He won’t tell me what’s wrong with it.”
“That’s because Kieran Marsh’s Mark is not yours to manage.”
The sentence struck exactly where it was meant to.
I hated her for aiming well.
“He said there were things he wanted from me.”
Juno’s face changed by the slightest twitch.
