“Excellent,” she said. “I prefer to stay off the record.”
Caswell opened the door.
The corridor outside held three students and one facultywoman who had very obviously found a reason to linger outside this specific door.
I hoped they had overheard.
Not because witnesses made me safe.
Because silence had started to feel like another kind of trap.
Rev left the tray sitting by the door and stepped out of the room.
Cosima followed with the notebook.
I came last, carrying my mother’s dress returned to its black box, the left sleeve unfastened and the brooch re-pinned to my coat.
Behind me, the small basin lit again.
No one spoke.
I turned.
The words formed slowly.
Report to Headmaster Quill at noon.
Rev read the water aloud.
Cosima turned to me.
The box suddenly felt heavier in my arms.
“Well,” Rev said softly. “He noticed that.”
38
Iwas sitting on the clock tower stair with an apple in my left hand, because there were only so many places a man could wait without looking like he was waiting. The roof was too far away if I needed to come running. The dining hall was full of people I didn’t want to interact with. The corridor outside the fitting room was for idiots, gossips, and Caspian Ashford.
Then the Pull cut through me.
It was not the soft green-gold thread Astra left behind when she was thinking of the roof, or the sharp little tug that came when she was annoyed and pretending not to be.
This was her fear.
My fingers opened.
The apple hit the stair, bounced once, and rolled three steps before stopping against the wall.
I bent to pick it up.
My shoulder locked.
For one bright second, my vision went white-hot with pain. The stairwell narrowed to stone, iron rail, and the place under my collar where the Mark had learned to bite.
“Damn,” I said.
The apple could wait.
