The first time I saw Selene Verita’s dress, Astra was not wearing it.
She was carrying it.
The black box stretched between her and Cosima Verraine as they came down the upper east corridor together, one handhold each, neither of them looking at the other. The arrangement should have looked practical.
It did not.
Astra’s face was pale. Not the blank pallor students learned for public embarrassment, but the color a body resorted to when it had been asked to hold too much and had decided blood was needed elsewhere to survive.
The Pull reached me before she saw me.
Softly. A careful thread under the skin, rain-dark and bright at the edge, asking nothing because asking would have been easier to refuse.
I had no reason to be on the east floor.
The reasons would not survive being spoken or written down.
A third-year stopped at the corridor bend when she saw the box. Then a second. A faculty clerk appeared from a side passage with a sheaf of blank forms.
Verraine saw the clerk first. Her chin lifted a fraction, and the corridor remembered she was dangerous.
Astra saw me next.
Her grip shifted and the box almost fell.
I wanted to go to her so badly it was painful.
Then the clerk’s eyes moved from me to her, and I stayed where I was.
Astra understood. I knew because understanding moved across her face before hurt did. She was learning the shape of the trap quickly enough to forgive people for not crossing it.
I hated being forgiven for standing still. It felt like cowardice even if I was protecting her.
Verraine carried her end of the box without so much as glancing at me.
“Instructor Hale,” she said.
“Verraine.”
Astra said nothing to me.
Neither did I to her.
The silence between us was alive between us. Ready to break apart and let spill all the things we didn’t dare say.
The clerk must have noticed that.
Verraine’s eyes flicked toward him. “You are misplaced, Instructor. You belong in the salle.”
A warning, dressed as an insult.
Astra caught the edge of a smile and killed it. The attempt was enough to make the Pull tighten beneath my sleeve.
The Mark answered.
I kept my hand open at my side.
The clerk looked at my sleeve.
