I stand where I am. My mouth is still warm. The bond is still running loud. "Was it."
"It was a bond-driven impulse. Not a decision." His voice has gone back to controlled. Mostly. The edges are still rough. "It doesn't mean anything, and it won't happen again."
There it is. The wall going back up, faster than I've ever watched him build it, brick by brick while I'm standing here watching.
"Right," I say.
"You understand what I'm saying."
"Perfectly." I pick up my bag from the desk. My hands are steady. I've had a lot of practice keeping them that way. "Bond-driven impulse. Meaningless. Won't happen again." I sling the bag over my shoulder. "Thank you for clarifying."
"Angelic—"
"I have another class." I walk toward the door. The bond aches with every step, distance feeding it the way it always does, and I don't let myself slow down. "Send me that memo when you've figured out your approach."
I pull the door open.
Thane Valorix is on the other side of it.
Not waiting. Not positioned there deliberately. He's mid-stride down the corridor and the open door puts him three feet from me, close enough that I can see the exact expression on his face before he controls it. Dark eyes, slightly too wide. Jaw locked. A stillness that isn't casual.
He saw through the door's glass panel. The corridor runs the length of the Reaper wing and the classroom door has a narrow window and the angle from the hallway is direct. He saw enough.
I don't explain myself. There's nothing to explain.
"Fairmont," he says. Flat.
"Valorix." I step past him into the corridor. "Watch where you're standing. You'll block traffic."
He doesn't move. I feel his stare on my back as I walk away, the same way I feel the bond-pull from the classroom behind me, two competing directions with no good middle ground.
I don't look back at either of them.
The corridor is empty except for a pair of second-years who flatten themselves against the wall as I pass, which tells me my expression is doing something I haven't authorized. I smooth it out by the time I reach the main hallway junction and merge with the general student traffic moving toward the east wing.
The bond settles into its low persistent frequency as the distance grows. Not quiet. Never quite quiet now. But manageable. The way a bruise is manageable once you stop pressing it.
I take the long route to my next class, through the covered arcade, where the morning light comes through the stone arches in flat gray bars and the foot traffic is thin enough to breathe. My mouth still feels warm. I press two fingers against my lips, briefly, then drop my hand and keep walking.
Meaningless. That's what he said.
I've had things called meaningless before. People who needed to diminish something to make it easier to discard. I know the architecture of that particular cruelty well enough to recognize it in the wild.
What I don't know is whether he believes it.
The bond doesn't offer an answer. It just runs its warmth through my chest, steady and uninvited, connecting me to a man two buildings away who just kissed me and then told me it didn't count.
I come around the last arcade column and nearly walk directly into Caspian Thorne.
He's leaning against the far arch, one shoulder against the stone, arms crossed. Red hair, green eyes, the particular quality of stillness that vampires use when they're paying close attention to something and want you to think they're not. His gaze moves over me once, quick and assessing.
"You look like you've had an eventful morning," he says.
"Walk away, Thorne."
"I'm not in your path." He doesn't move. "You walked into mine."
I adjust my route to go around him. He falls into step beside me, which I didn't invite and he knows it.
