I stand at the center of the room.
"Unclassified anomaly," I repeat. "That's my official title now? I want it on a plaque."
The Councilor on the far left doesn't blink. "You will address this Council with appropriate deference."
"I'll address this Council when it tells me what I'm actually being charged with."
The temperature in the room drops three degrees. I feel it on the back of my neck, and I know exactly whose magic is responsible without turning around. Ryder is standingsomewhere behind and to my left, close enough that his presence registers like a cold front moving in off the mountains.
"Miss Fairmont." His voice carries the flat professional register he uses when he wants to sound like he hasn't met me before. "The Council would appreciate your cooperation."
"I'm cooperating. I'm standing here, aren't I?"
A pause. Then, quieter, directed at my ear from a distance that shouldn't carry that well: "Stop talking."
The senior Councilor shuffles a stack of papers that look like they were written before I was born. "Two documented incidents of unauthorized magical discharge. One in the combat training arena, witnessed by forty-seven students and two faculty members. One in the east corridor, witnessed by eleven students." He peers over his papers. "Plus the intake assessment irregularity, which was flagged and held pending review."
"Pending review," I say. "For two weeks."
"Miss Fairmont." Ryder again, still even, still cold.
I shut up.
The deliberation takes longer than it should. The seven Councilors murmur among themselves in voices too low to catch, and I stand in the center of their attention and count the stones in the floor and try to look like someone who is not actively cataloguing every exit. There are three. The main door behind me, a smaller service entrance to the left that is currently warded shut, and a window that would require jumping two stories onto cobblestone.
I keep the window in reserve.
From the corner of my eye, I can see the gallery seating along the chamber's right wall. Thane is there, arms crossed, jaw set, watching the Council with the particular expression he wears when he's trying to look like he doesn't care about the outcome. Caspian sits three seats down from him, one ankle crossed over his knee, turning a ring on his right hand in slow circles. Theyare not looking at each other. They are also very deliberately not looking at me, and I am apparently an observable event today.
Ryder steps forward.
"The documented incidents are consistent with a newly manifesting ability set in an undertrained student," he says. "Miss Fairmont has been enrolled in a private containment curriculum as of this week. The trajectory suggests the anomalies will not recur once baseline control is established." He pauses. "Expulsion would discard a significant research opportunity and create an uncontrolled variable outside institutional oversight. Retention with enhanced supervision is the more defensible position."
The senior Councilor looks at him over his papers. "Professor Ashford, the Council is aware of your interest in this particular student."
"The Council is aware of my assessment," Ryder says. "They are not the same thing."
The Councilor holds his gaze for three seconds, then looks down at his papers. "The student will be retained under enhanced observation. Any further incidents will result in immediate review."
That's it. I don't breathe out until I'm in the corridor.
The hallway outside the Council Chamber is cold and stone-floored, and Sage is waiting exactly where I told her to wait, pacing in front of the bench based on the scuff marks in the stone.
"Well?" she demands.
"Still enrolled. Apparently I'm a significant research opportunity."
She grabs my arm. "I told you. I told you it would be fine."
"You told me it might be fine, and you also stress-paced a groove into the floor."
"I did not." She looks at the floor. "That was already there."
It was not already there. I don't push it.
We take the long route back, through the east corridor and then the lower passage that runs under the main academic building. Sage is talking about the Council's general incompetence and the specific incompetence of the intake assessment process, and I'm listening with half my attention while the other half stays on the exits and the shadows and the quiet that has settled over this particular hallway like held breath.
The door at the end of the passage swings shut behind us.
