I should have said yes. It would have been easier.
But my mother’s word was under my hand, and the morning would bring Zenith Tower whether I lied or not.
“No,” I said.
Caspian drew one careful breath. It failed to steady him.
I withdrew my hand from the table and sat on the floor withmy back against the nearest bench. The silk of my mother’s dress pulled at my legs. Beautiful fabric, terrible for being locked in a room where girls had carved evidence into furniture.
Caspian sat across the room from me.
I was grateful for the consideration, but I didn’t like it.
“Is this the part where you nobly preserve my options by staying as far away from me as possible?”
“I was giving you space.”
“I don’t want space.”
Caspian scooted closer again. The room settled around us in a series of small sounds: wood cooling, water moving somewhere inside a wall, the faint drag of a steward’s boot beyond the door and then the absence of it. The covered lamp threw a weak yellow circle over the table. Beyond that, the benches and the far door kept their secrets.
I looked at the door with no handle.
“What do you know about Zenith Tower?”
Caspian’s face paled a shade.
“Less than I should, given our situation. More than I wish I did for my own comfort.”
“That sounds like an Ashford answer.”
“It is. Unfortunately, it is also true.”
“Try again.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. His bare wrists caught the lamplight. He had not put the formal cuffs on. He had not put the school cuffs back on either.
“It is older than Zenith Hall Academy,” he said. “Older than most of the rules they pretend govern it. My father called it a review seat. Quill called it escalation. Neither of them used the word prison.”
“Which means it is one.”
“Most likely.”
“Where is it?”
“North of the hall. Past the old quarry road.”
“There’s a road?”
“There used to be.”
“And now?”
“No road I know reaches the Tower.”
He looked at the door with no handle.
“My father went once,” he said.
