"That's almost a compliment, Fairmont."
"Don't get used to it." I step back, giving him space. "What did it mean? Your father sends his regards."
His face hardens. "It means the wraiths are being used by someone who knows things about me that aren't general knowledge." He straightens carefully, testing his ribs with the measured caution of someone who has been hurt before and knows how to assess it. "Or it was bait designed to make me react."
"It worked."
"Yes." He doesn't sound bothered by admitting it. "It did."
On the other side of the archive door, muffled by Fenn's wards, there are sounds of controlled conflict. The faculty response team engaging the possessed professor. The alarm tone shifts again, lower, which means containment is being attempted. I hope Aldric is in there somewhere, still intact, still salvageable.
"The tracking seal on the archive wards," I say. "Someone placed it specifically on this door. On the breach maps."
"Yes." Thane's eyes are on mine, and the gold in them has settled from the combat brightness to something steadier."Which means whoever sent the wraith here tonight knew the archive access was a target worth protecting."
"Or knew we'd be in the lower levels." The thought settles into place with the particular cold weight of things that fit too well. "The lockdown this morning. Private training assignment. We were the only people scheduled to be in this section of the building."
Thane runs the same line of logic I am. I can see it in the set of his shoulders.
"Someone knew where we'd be," he says.
"Someone sent a wraith to a specific location in a building under lockdown, and we were in the adjacent room." I fold the tracking seal sketch back into my pocket. "That's not coincidence."
"No," he says. "It's not."
The archive is cold and smells of old paper and warding compound, and Fenn and the other reaper student are sitting against the far shelving looking wrung out and quiet. Outside the reinforced door, the sounds of conflict have stopped. The alarm tone drops another register, almost sub-audible now, the signal for secondary containment achieved.
Thane is watching me with that expression I've been trying to catalog for weeks, and I still can't name it completely. It sits somewhere between the arrogance he leads with and the thing underneath the arrogance that he's been showing me in pieces since the day I told him his mother's history mattered.
"You broke the wards," he says. "The tracking seal. I watched you do it."
"I had the signature. Ryder gave it to me last night."
"You still had to read it in the field, under pressure, with that thing six feet behind you." He's quiet for a beat. "My mother would have done the same thing. She would have found the seam and pulled."
Heat rises in my chest at that, unexpected and sharp.
"Your ribs need to be looked at by an actual healer," I say.
"My ribs have been looked at by actual healers before. They'll manage." He moves toward the door, testing the lock with one hand. "The response team will have cleared the corridor by now. We should get out of this room before someone decides we're unauthorized personnel in a restricted archive."
"We are unauthorized personnel in a restricted archive."
"Yes, but I'd prefer not to have that documented." He glances back at me over his shoulder. "Can you walk?"
"I wasn't the one pinned to the ceiling."
"Floor," he says. "I was pinned to the floor. There's a difference." He opens the door, and the corridor beyond is empty of everything except scorch marks on the stone and the acrid smell of spent warding compound. Faculty response team. Clean and fast.
We file out, Fenn and the other reaper student first, then me, then Thane. The torches that were out are lit again. The alarm has stopped entirely, leaving the lower levels in a silence that feels earned rather than empty.
Thane falls into step beside me as we move toward the stairs, not two steps behind and not six feet ahead, just beside. His ribs are making his breathing slightly uneven and he's not mentioning it, which tracks.
"Fairmont," he says, when we reach the base of the stairwell.
"What."
"You didn't stay in the room."
