Then at Caspian.
“You were instructed to observe, not interfere.”
“I observed,” Caspian said. “The record cannot assign the full instability to Verita’s lack of control.”
His voice stayed even, but his hands had curled at his sides.
Cosima’s face remained perfectly calm but a muscle in her jaw ticked.
That was how I knew he had hurt her by stepping forward.
I just didn’t know why.
Caswell looked back at me and said, “Remove your hand from the basin.”
I pulled my hand away.
The four lines vanished at once.
The water went dark.
My wrist looked ordinary again.
Caswell dismissed the practicum three minutes later without further discussion of the matter and strode out first as if he had somewhere important to be.
The students who had passed cleanly left first, moving carefully around me, as if whatever had happened in the basin might still be catching.
Cosima signed the Council page and passed me without speaking.
Then she was gone.
Caspian and I were alone in the room.
He stood near the wall, closer than he had been before.
Still too far to touch.
“I’m sorry about Cosima,” he said. “That shouldn’t have happened.”
“It did.”
His jaw tightened.
“I shouldn’t have spoken either.”
“No,” I said. “You should have done it sooner.”
He took it like a blow he had been expecting.
Then he looked at the basin.
“Did it hurt?”
“Which part?”
His eyes cameback to mine.
For one second, he looked less like a prefect and more like a boy who knew exactly how many answers that question had.
