My Mark answered.
Naturally, it chose that moment to be enthusiastic.
“Hale,” I said.
His eyes moved over me once, fast: wrist, shoulders, hands. The places a person checked when they were trying to decide whether someone had been hurt.
“Hello, Verita.”
“Did you run here?”
“I left the salle before the second hour began.”
I blinked in surprise.
Hale didn’t abandon a classroom full of students..
Until, apparently, me.
“Caswell saw too much,” he went on.
The words erased the joke I had been reaching for.
“Everyone saw too much.”
“Caswell matters more than everyone.”
He came up one step.
Just one.
The Pull sharpened anyway, sliding under my sleeve and through my wrist until the Mark seemed to wake beneath my skin.
“You felt it,” I said.
Hale’s hand tightened once on the stair rail.
“All the way from wherever you were.”
“Through two floors and half the south wing.”
I looked at the fabric over his forearm.
The darkness there had not faded.
“And you came?”
For a moment, he said nothing.
The corridor held too still around us.
“I came because I am out of better choices.”
That shouldn’t have disappointed me.
It did anyway.
“How romantic.”
