“If I can help Kieran, and I don’t, what does that make me?”
“A girl who does not yet know what help would cost.”
Juno’s face softened, but not enough to make the softness easy to bear.
“Do not let them turn your compassion into consent.”
I looked down the corridor.
Empty, for now.
Then I turned back to Juno.
“Is that what they did to you?”
Juno didn’t answer. But she didn’t need to.
The apple knocked once against my hip as I walked.
For the first time since I had arrived at Zenith Hall, I understood that wanting someone was not the same as owing him a rescue.
28
Iobeyed Juno by going back to Room 114.
I stayed away from Kieran, though the apple on my desk made a poor argument for distance. I could see the bruised place his thumb had made in the skin. Every time I looked at it, I saw green-gold light burning through his coat and his face when he saidnot herelike the words hurt more than the Mark did.
I stayed away from Caspian, though my mouth still remembered the cloth at my lip and the way he had stood at my threshold as if permission were something he had decided to learn by force.
Hale was easier to avoid only because he had made a discipline of being difficult to find. That did not stop the room from going quiet around the line of him whenever I tried to sleep.
By dawn, obedience had become very crowded.
Juno’s folded page stayed under my pillow all night. I slept badly around it, the way a person sleeps beside a knife she has not decided whether to use.
At breakfast, I lasted seven minutes.
Rev appeared across from me and took one look at my face.
“Absolutely not,” she said.
“Good morning.”
“Whatever you are about to tell me, I want food first.”
“Juno sent me to Cosima.”
Rev stopped chewing.
“I hate when the interesting thing arrives on an empty stomach.”
“She gave me a page.”
Rev’s eyes dropped to my coat. “For Verraine?”
“Yes.”
“Then go before you lose your nerve and make me find it for you.”
