A prize and a problem.
“Because of the assessment.”
“Because you won in public,” Cosima said. “That makes you harder to write as helpless and easier to write as dangerous.”
The room had been so loud after the fight. Staves striking. Students whispering. Aldric watching me as if I had answered a question he had not meant to ask aloud.
“Quill needs Aldric to say I am a physical risk.”
“One sentence would be enough.”
“And if Aldric will not give it?”
“Then Quill has to work harder.”
“Will Aldric say it?”
She made me wait for it.
“Never.”
The danger did not pass with the word.
“So that’s the plan? Aldric refuses and Quill has to work harder?”
“For now.”
“I was hoping for something with more stabbing.”
“That is why no one sensible gives first-years knives, only staves.”
A smile almost got away from me.
Cosima didn’t return it.
“There is one more thing you should hear before you go to Aldric.”
“From you?”
Cosima looked toward the common room door.
“No.”
The knock came once, so soft I would have missed it if she had not already been looking.
“Come in,” Cosima said.
Caspian Ashford stepped inside.
He wore the prefect coat, buttoned cleanly, his pale hair combed back from his face. Duty looked natural on him. That was the problem. It made the person underneath harder to find.
Then he saw me, and whatever answer he had prepared faltered.
My Mark tightened under my sleeve.
Burnt sugar.
Cold marble.
