Cosima looked down at the folded page.
“Yes.”
“Then tell me.”
Cosima slid her Council page aside and opened her own notebook.
The page beneath was filled with short lines, arrows, and words written so tightly they looked like they had been trying not to be seen.
Formal.
Refusal.
Article Seven.
Aldric.
My stomach tightened.
She turned the notebook so I could see it clearly.
“The part everyone will watch has six steps,” she said. “Pairing. Witnesses. Approach. Question. Answer. Record.”
“And the part they won’t admit exists?”
“That begins before you enter the room.”
Cosima tapped the wordQuestion.
“Here,” she said. “They make it sound as if they are asking for your consent. They are not going to ask whether you choose Caspian. They are going to ask whether you consent to stabilization through Caspian Ashford.”
Cosima’s voice changed just enough when she said his name that I knew this conversation was hurting her.
Her hand moved once toward the notebook, then stopped.
My Mark tightened under my sleeve.
Caspian was written nowhere on the page, but I felt him in the shape they had made for him: polished, obedient, waiting to be mistaken for safety because that was his duty.
“Stabilization,” I said.
“A word that makes obedience sound like medicine.”
“And if I refuse?”
Cosima’s fingers smoothed a crease in her skirt that was not there.
“Then they ask what you are refusing for.”
Kieran’s apple pressed against my hip through my coat.
Somewhere under my skin, Hale’s line held silent and hard.
“The other bonds.”
“The other possibilities,” Cosima said. “They will not dignify them as bonds unless the room forces them to.”
“Juno said the Council will never sanction Kieran.”
