We finish lunch.
At the door, she stops and turns back. “Amy.”
I look up.
“Be careful with the parts of yourself you give to someone,” she says. “Make sure you can find them again afterward.” And with that, she leaves.
I stand in the doorway of the dining hall in the cold autumn light, and I think about what she said, and I think about the parts of myself I have already given, and I think I’m not afraid of the dark the way I was.
I think that might be exactly what she is warning me about.
I go to my afternoon class.
But I can’t not think about it for the rest of the day.
Azriel finds me at four thirty near the south fountain.
He materializes the way he always does, without a visible approach, which I have started to understand is a skill rather than an accident. He falls into step beside me, and for a moment, we just walk.
“I heard about what happened with the second year from the south dorm,” I say.
He’s quiet. “How?”
“Around campus,” I say, “the campus hears everything within forty-eight hours.”
He exhales. “She was not physically harmed.”
Azriel stops walking.
I stop.
He looks at me with the careful expression that means he is deciding how much of what he knows I am ready for. I have learned to interrupt when I see it happening.
“Tell me what I actually need to know,” I say.
It wasn’t a secret. She’s Prey, and like everything around here, they cover it up. And I’m still trying to figure out why he’s telling me all this. At first, I thought it was because Rose was looking out for me, but it’s not. Because he showed up before. It’s something else.
Something moves in his face. It’s reluctance, and underneath it, something that looks like relief. Like a person who has been managing information alone for a long time and has just been given permission to put some of it down.
“There is a new angle. That’s all I can say,” he says. “And be careful with Saint. He is not who you think he is. Don’t provoke him.”
My stomach drops.
The cold settles around us. The fountain is drained, sitting in its empty basin.
“How do I not provoke him?” I ask.
Azriel shakes his head slowly. “Saint doesn’t get provoked. Saint decides what he will do, then does it, and afterward calls it something else. The risk is not that it will make him lose control. The risk is that someone will get hurt, and the response will be the catalyst for who he really is.”
I look at Azriel.
He is looking back at me with the expression I have seen before, the one that is more than protective duty. The one that has its own history and its own weight and that I have been carefully, respectfully, honestly not engaging with because it would be dishonest to engage with it now.
“Azriel—”
“Saint is hunting you,” he interrupts before I can finish. He says it with the dignity of someone who has already had the conversation in his own head and arrived at the answer before I have said a word. He’s warning me, but why?”
“I don’t think…” I trail off.
