“Do you think it’s normal?”
“I think Caswell tells students what they need to hear at the time he thinks they need to hear it.”
I didn’t tell her that sounded familiar. I wasn’t ready to explain why.
She ate a piece of bread and offered me another. I took it.
“I’m glad you sat down,” she said after she swallowed a bite. “People don’t usually sit with me unless they have no choice.”
Then she pointed at my wrist.
“Yours moved during attunement.”
“What did it do?”
“Reached.”
I thought of the circle. The heat in my wrist. The line moving under my skin.
Caspian Ashford across from me.
The pull toward him I hadn’t chosen and couldn’t stop.
“What does that mean?”
Delphine glanced down at my wrist, then looked away.
“It means your Mark moved toward someone else’s.”
“The professor didn’t use that word.”
“He wouldn’t. He’s not allowed to. Yet.”
The yet made me nervous but I didn’t want her to clam up again, so I left it.
“But you’re allowed to use it?”
“No. I’m just already in trouble.”
Delphine looked past me, toward the far tables.
Toward Caspian Ashford.
“Cosima saw it,” she said. “That matters more than the rest.”
“Cosima?”
“The girl with Caspian.”
It clicked then. The same girl who’d come up to me after class.
“And Cosima matters because?”
“She writes for the Council.”
That made the bread go dry in my mouth.
“She’s a student, isn’t she?”
