"There she is," he says, and the sarcasm is thin enough that something else shows through it.
"What happened?" My voice comes out wrong. Scraped.
"You happened. To a severance ritual." He has one hand behind my shoulders, keeping me off the cold floor, and his other hand is pressed flat to the chalk line nearest my hip, killing the last of the glow. "Where did you find that circle? Specifically."
"Restricted wing."
"Of course." He exhales through his nose. "The restricted wing that students require a signed faculty pass to enter."
"I borrowed one."
"You forged one."
"Borrowed sounds better."
He looks at me for a long moment, and then he does something that I don't expect, which is he picks me up. Not dramatically, not gently either, just the way someone moves a problem from one location to another before it causes additional damage.
"I can walk," I say.
"Your legs aren't working yet."
He's right. I can tell because I try to prove him wrong and my feet don't do anything useful. "Where are you taking me?"
"My rooms. Unless you'd prefer I leave you in the corridor next to your failed attempt to cut a bond that has already embedded in your nervous system."
"I didn't know it had embedded."
"That's the problem with self-taught ritual magic. It doesn't tell you what you don't know."
I don't have a good answer to that, so I close my eyes for the duration of the walk, which I estimate is about three minutes, through two corridors and up a half-flight of stairs and through a door that opens without him putting me down, which means he manages the latch with his elbow and I find that quietly impressive and am furious about it.
His rooms are not what I expected. I don't know exactly what I expected. Something sparse, probably. Clinical. What they actually are is warm, in the sense that there are books stacked on every horizontal surface and a fire burning in the grate and a rug under the desk that looks like it's been there long enough to have opinions about the furniture arrangement. He sets me down on the bed, which is against the far wall, and steps back with his hands up in the universal gesture of having completed a task.
"Lie still," he says.
"I'm fine."
"You collapsed from bond rebound. You're not fine. Lie still."
He goes to the desk, pulls open a drawer, and starts collecting things. I watch the ceiling and try to take stock. My chest doesn't hurt exactly. It's more like the ache you get after holding your breath too long, a pressure that should be releasing and hasn't quite figured out how yet.
The bond is different.
I noticed it while he was carrying me and I notice it more now that I'm lying still and can actually pay attention. It's open in a way it hasn't been before. Not a crack. A door left standing wide.I can feel the current of it moving between us like a river that has found a new channel and intends to stay there.
And through it, underneath the steady surface of his voice and his hands moving through the drawer, there is something else. Fear, cold and familiar and sharp-edged, running beneath everything he's doing.
"Ryder."
"I need you to stay quiet while I check the rebound damage."
"The bond opened."
He goes still for a moment. Comes back to the bed with a small jar and a strip of cloth and doesn't meet my eyes while he sets them down. "Yes."
"It's wide open. I can feel you."
"I'm aware of what happened."
