"Then why are you—"
"Because knowing why someone hurts you doesn't make it stop hurting, Caspian." I push off from the wall. "You should know that better than anyone."
He's quiet for a moment. The stain pulses on his wrist, a slow dark tide. "Fair," he says finally.
"How long do you have?" I ask.
"The transformation accelerates in proximity to wraith activity. The remaining wraiths are dispersing since my uncle died, so the progression should slow." He holds up his right hand and examines it with that same detached focus. "Forty minutes, I'd estimate, before the Veil starts pulling harder."
"The Veil pulling harder," I repeat.
"The partial transformation creates a resonance with the Veil. It wants to reclaim the curse." His green eyes find mine. "By pulling me through it."
I stare at him. "Caspian."
"I knew the risk when I touched the anchor," he says. "My uncle designed it knowing I'd be the one to reach it first. He built it to my specific magical signature." He lowers his hand. "That's a very particular kind of hatred. I've had years to prepare for it."
It's the most honest thing he's said to me that didn't involve manipulation or threat or the careful constructed cruelty he wore like armor for months. I don't know what to do with Caspian stripped of all of it, so I do what I'd do for anyone standing in a stairwell telling me they're about to be pulled into the Veil.
"Tell me how to stop it," I say.
"The reversal requires a Conduit's anchor. You'd have to reach into the Veil's edge and pull the curse back through me instead of letting it pull me through. Reverse the direction of the resonance." He pauses. "It's not without risk to you."
"What kind of risk?"
"The Architect is using the Veil as a staging point. If you open yourself to the Veil's edge while they're present—"
"Then we do it fast." I straighten my jacket. "We do it before they can use the window. Where do we need to be?"
He looks at me for three full seconds with an expression I've never seen on his face before, not cruelty and not manipulation and not the haunted watching he does when he thinks no one notices. Just something unguarded and slightly wrecked. "Forgive me," he says. "For the things I did before I knew how to stop."
"That's a conversation for when you're not being claimed by the Veil," I tell him. "Move."
We go back into the Great Hall. Ryder is on his feet and Thane is standing twelve feet away from him with the specific distance of two people who have just had a conversation they both needed to end before it became something that couldn't be walked back from. When Ryder sees me, something in his face eases despite itself.
"Sage," I say to Malik, who has appeared at the hall's entrance with Sage leaning against him. The suppression barrier's collapse has brought her magic back in a rush and she's upright, barely, her face still gray but her eyes open and tracking. "You need to sit down."
"I need to not miss whatever is about to happen," she says. Her voice is hoarse. "Tell me what's about to happen."
"Caspian is being pulled into the Veil," I say. "I'm going to pull the curse back through him instead. There's a sixty-secondwindow when the channel opens and the Architect will try to use it, so we need to be fast."
"The Architect," Malik says.
"Whoever has been running this from the beginning. The Headmaster and Caspian's uncle were both working for them." I look around the hall. "If anyone here has the ability to ward against Veil intrusion, now is a very good time."
Three students step forward. Two witches and a reaper second-year whose hands are already crackling with restrained casting. Ryder moves to organize them with the efficiency of someone who spent years hunting things that came through the Veil, positioning them at cardinal points around the space we're using.
Caspian stands in the center. The stain has reached his elbow. His face is composed, which costs him more now than it used to.
Thane is at the wall. He hasn't moved toward us. He's watching with his arms crossed and his jaw set and the gold finally flickering in his pupils, small uncontrolled pulses that he can't stop, and I don't look at him long enough to read what's behind them.
"Ready?" Caspian asks.
"How do I open the channel?" I ask.
"You absorb. Same way you absorbed the anchor stone, same way you pushed through the containment barrier. You reach toward the resonance and you take it in instead of letting it take him." He looks at my bandaged arm. "The absorbed charge from last night will give you something to push back with."
"And the sixty-second window."
