“You felt it,” she said.
Her voice was rough.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
Enough to know whatever she’d learned, it was something terrible.
Enough to make breathing difficult.
Enough to leave a classroom full of first-years waiting for an absent instructor.
“Enough that I had to come to you.”
“You can’t be seen leaving with him,” Aldric said.
Astra’s chin lifted a fraction.
“Of course I can’t.”
“He’s right,” LeJoi said, and sounded annoyed about it. “They’ll make a drama out of it before you reach the stairs.”
Astra looked toward the stair, then back at the archive door.
The silver-white light inside had gone dark, but the air around the threshold still felt charged.
“We’re going to the dining hall,” she announced.
LeJoi turned her head and squinted at Astra.
“That’s an alarming choice. You know people eat there, right? Like everybody. In the entire school.”
“I’ve heard rumors.”
The answer sounded more like her than anything else had since she came out of the archive.
Aldric closed the archive door.
“LeJoi, take her up the east stair.”
“I thought she was choosing.”
“She chose the destination. I am suggesting the route.”
Aldric turned to me.
“Your class is waiting.”
I shrugged.
“Go teach, Hale. That is your job.”
The command was for the clerk as much as for me.
I understood the gift inside it.
Return to the salle. Be seen doing the ordinary work. Leave Astra enough space that Quill couldn’t call my presence a rescue.
