That was the line.
My life did not belong in her hands as a burden she had never agreed to carry.
If the bond happened, it would happen because Astra chose it, with as much of the truth as I could give her without putting a knife in the school’s hand.
My shoulder ached under my coat.
The apple waited on my knee.
My left hand lifted it.
I still had time.
I had been telling myself that for years.
This morning, for the first time, I did not believe me.
13
By morning, the west door had become a place my mind kept walking to without me.
The fact that I didn’t go back to it to look for Delphine felt like cowardice.
It also felt like the most sensible thing I had done since arriving at Zenith Hall.
At ten-forty, the basin in my room filled.
Post-reading practicum. South attunement room. Eleven o’clock.
The water cleared before I could ask whether post-reading meant for people who had been read or people who hadn’t but had been made to watch friend disappear.
I went anyway because I was sure there would be repercussions if I didn’t.
The south attunement room was smaller than the first room where Juno had read my Mark and colder than it had any right to be. A round basin sat in the center of the floor, sunk into a ring of pale stone. A group of first-years stood around it, all of them passed cleanly, all of them trying not to look relieved about that where I could see.
Professor Caswell stood at the far side of the basin.
He looked dressed for procedure instead of teaching.
Cosima stood at his left with a Council page clipped to a board.
Caspian Ashford stood at the wall behind her, silent, but the Pull noticed him before I could stop it: cold marble, burnt sugar, the faint clean bite of linen.
My Mark shifted under my sleeve.
Caspian’s gaze moved to my wrist.
Cosima saw that.
Her pen touched the page.
“Post-reading practicum measures stability after basin exposure,” Caswell said. “Each student will place the marked hand at the rim. The basin will display the first response. You will hold until instructed to release.”
The students who had passed cleanly went first.
One by one, they put their hands to the rim. One by one, the basin answered with a single clean thread of light. Gold. Blue. Pale green. A line, a brief shimmer, then nothing.
Caswell nodded each of them away.
