His head didn’t lift and his Mark didn’t visibly answer.
Then Caswell spoke again. Another strange non-syllable.
The stone under my feet answered.
The pull became a command.
Cold marble crossed my tongue. Burnt sugar followed. The taste of him was so sudden, so intimate, that my breath caught before I could make myself hate it.
Caspian’s eyebrows rose.
Small.
Almost nothing.
But enough to tell me he had felt it too.
One second, I was standing at the rim of the circle.
The next, every line of my Mark went sharp with recognition.
Caspian’s Mark recognized mine back.
I was on my knees on the stone before I had decided to fall.
Caswell’s voice came from very far away.
“That is enough for today.”
More voices around me.
Hands pulling me upright.
The girl to my left hadn’t pulled me up. Neither had the boy to my right. Whoever had done it had hands warmer than the stone floor and let go as soon as I had my balance.
I didn’t know whose hands they had been.
When I was upright, the circle had broken. Students were leaving. Caswell had walked out of the inlaid stone and was at the door, speaking in a low voice to someone.
Linden, I realized. The man who’d brought me here.
Across the circle, Caspian Ashford was already gone.
The girl who’d stood beside him remained, three paces from me.
She lifted one hand between us, palm up: a courtesy without contact, careful enough to be insulting.
She was tiny, with a narrow face and eyes so pale blue, they looked almost clear.
She said, very quietly—quietly enough that the room wouldn’t have heard if the room had been listening to anyone but us:
“You should not have done that.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You did it.”
“I was told I would be asked to do nothing.”
