Kieran’s eyes came to mine.
Caspian’s did too.
They might not have realized it, but they both wore the same desperation on their faces.
Cosima saw me see both of them.
“Astra, come along,” she said.
Her voice had lost its edge.
I followed her out of the dining hall.
Behind me, forks touched plates again.
The show was over.
32
Cosima didn’t take me to the east tower.
Instead, she led me through the east corridor, past the common room where first-years sometimes gathered after supper, and unlocked a narrow classroom I had never seen used. Chalk dust lay in the tray beneath a board no one had cleaned properly. The chairs were stacked against one wall, their legs hooked together like they had been waiting a long time to be needed.
A small basin stood on a side table beneath a covered window.
Dark, for now.
Cosima shut the door but didn’t lock it.
“Are we hiding?” I asked.
“No.”
“Good, because I am trying very hard not to hide today.”
She crossed to the desk and set her notebook down.
“We are being temporarily less available.”
“That sounds a lot like hiding.”
Cosima shot me a look and opened her notebook to a page already marked with a folded green ribbon.
“The dining hall came very close to disaster,” she said.
“That seems dramatic.”
“No. Dramatic would be Marsh and Ashford fighting over you in public. Disaster would be their Marks answering yours while they did.”
My wrist still ached from where my Mark had answered them both.
“I didn’t ask them to stand up.”
“That will not matter.”
For the first time since we left the dining hall, exasperation cracked through her control.
“Astra, looking unstable is dangerous. Looking as if you destabilize everyone near you is worse. It is the worst possible story they can write about you, and that cafeteria came within one breath of handing it to them.”
