“Long enough to have you.”
I closed my eyes.
The table edge pressed into my palm. Good. A body needed facts it could trust.
Wood. Pain. Breath.
My mother had stood in a room like the one waiting for me and said no.
Then she had lived. Badly, briefly, but still longer than the record had planned for her.
When I opened my eyes, Aldric was watching me as if he expected me to break, so I straightened my spine.
“Why are you showing me this?”
“Because Quill will ask me whether you are dangerous.”
“And?”
“And I will tell the truth.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“It shouldn’t.”
“Professor.”
His eyes held mine.
“You are dangerous, Astra. Not because you are unstable. Because you make the room show its hands.”
Rev said, very softly, “That is an awful compliment.”
“It is also the sentence I will give Quill if he asks.”
My fingers ached around the table.
“Will that help me?”
“It will make his argument harder.”
The basin clicked again.
This time the cloth over it lifted at one edge.
Aldric closed the folder.
“We are done here.”
“I have more questions.”
“So did your mother.”
He regretted the sentence immediately. I saw it in the way his hand twitched with the folder in it.
“I hope she got answers.”
“Some.”
