"My solution is to remind certain people that this floor has multiple occupants." His hand at my back presses fractionally closer. "He doesn't deserve your attention."
"You've decided that."
"I've observed it."
"Right." I keep my voice even. "And this possessive display is purely informational."
"It's protocol." But his gold-flecked eyes move across the room toward wherever Ryder is standing, and come back to me, and there's nothing protocol about what's in them.
"Thane." I wait until he looks directly at me. "Yesterday you told me not to give you hope. You can't have it both ways."
The muscle in his jaw works. "I'm aware."
"Then pick a lane."
"It's not that simple."
"I know it isn't." I hold his gaze steady. "But holding me like this and then stepping back and telling me I'm dangerous for you is a pattern that's going to wear me out eventually."
He doesn't answer right away. His lead stays firm through the turn, and we move through the next sequence in silence, and when he speaks again, his voice has lost the defensive edge.
"He has a bond with you," Thane says. "Ashford. I can feel the signature from here. It pulls differently than normal proximity magic." He isn't accusing me. He sounds like someone reporting a fact they find personally inconvenient. "That's not something you chose."
"No."
"I know." A pause. "That's part of the problem."
The music begins to slow toward its close. His thumb traces once, briefly, across my hand before he releases it.
"You looked good walking in," he says, and it sounds like it costs him something to say it simply, without armor around it.
I don't get a chance to answer because the song ends and he steps back with a short, formal nod, and then he walks away, and I am left standing in the middle of the floor with the ghost of his hand at my back and nowhere useful to put that information.
Ryder is already there when I turn around.
He doesn't approach the way the other two did. He's simply present, which is a quality he has that I find consistently aggravating, this ability to occupy space as if he materialized directly into it rather than walked. Black formal jacket, the silver reaper's sigil at his collar, dark hair sharp against pale skin.He looks like the academy's entire aesthetic distilled into one person.
"Protocol," he says.
"I've heard. Third time." I take a breath. "Let's get it done."
His hand finds mine and his other hand settles at my waist, and the bond lights up like a wire pulled taut.
I keep my face blank. It takes effort.
The music is slower now, something with strings that seems specifically designed to make this more difficult. Ryder's lead is nothing like Thane's territorial firmness or Caspian's practiced ease. It's controlled and it's careful and it's full of something he's visibly working to contain, and every place his hands touch my skin, the bond hums with a frequency that I feel from my collarbone down to my heels.
"You're quiet," he says.
"I've been dancing for twenty minutes and I've received an apology for unspecified future harm and a possessive claim from a man who keeps telling me to stay away from me. I'm processing."
"Valorix." His voice drops. "He was holding you like—"
"Like he wanted to. Yes." I watch his face. "You watched."
"I was in the room."
"You watched specifically."
