Page 79 of The Witch They Fear

"Managed oversight," Malloy repeats. Neutral. "Can you define that term for the class, Mr. Vassard?"

"Structured containment with periodic evaluation. The practitioner is removed from environments where their power poses a risk, housed in a controlled setting, and assessed at regular intervals to determine whether reintegration is viable." He leans back in his chair. "It's not punishment. It's protection. For the practitioner and for everyone around them."

Structured containment with periodic evaluation. The facility. He's describing the damn facility. He's describing the white room and the medication tray and the twelve years of my life that dissolved into chemical stillness, and he's doing it in the language of compassion because that's what makes it land.

As if he has any idea how non-compassionate my time there was.

I'm gripping my pen so hard the plastic creaks.

A hand goes up. Three rows below Leopold.

Emric.

He's sitting forward in his seat—elbows on the desk, dark curls falling across his forehead, the easy posture gone rigid. His jaw is tight. The olive skin along his neck is flushed and his knuckles are pale where they're gripping the edge of the desk. I've never seen him like this—the warmth is still there but it's been forged into something with an edge.

"With respect to the historical examples cited—" His voice is steady. Warm but edged, each word chosen with care because the wrong ones will start a fight he can't finish in a classroom. "The containment model has a significantly higher failure rate than the rehabilitation model when measured over longitudinal data. Practitioners who are isolated show accelerated deterioration of control, not improvement. The Delacroix incident occurred after six years of containment—she destabilized because of isolation, not despite it."

Leopold's smile holds. "Correlation isn't causation, Vane."

"No, but a seventy-two percent recidivism rate among contained practitioners versus a thirty-one percent rate among rehabilitated ones is more than correlation. It's a pattern." Emric doesn't raise his voice. Doesn't need to. "Judging a witch by her worst moment rather than her potential is exactly the framework that created the indenture system. We spent three hundred years calling ownership protection. I'd hope we've moved past that."

The room is very quiet. Leopold's index finger taps against his desk. Three times. The tell. He uncrosses his legs and leans forward—slow, deliberate, a predator adjusting its weight.

"Nobody is advocating for ownership," Leopold says. Still smiling. Still warm. His white hair catches the light and for a second he looks like a painting of a saint—beautiful, benevolent, absolutely lethal. "But there's a difference between optimism and negligence. Some practitioners—" His eyes flick to me. Just for a second. A half-second. But I catch it and he knows I caught it. "—represent a level of risk that idealism can't address. Pretending otherwise isn't kindness. It's arrogance."

"And deciding someone is too dangerous to deserve a chance isn't caution." Emric's dark eyes are locked on Leopold. His hands have come off the desk—they're at his sides now, fingers curled, and the flush has climbed from his neck to his ears but his voice is granite. Gone is the boy who couldn't ask me to beignets without turning red. This Emric has teeth. "It's convenience."

"Enough." Malloy's chalk hits the board. "Both of you. Save it for the essay. Cite your sources. And Mr. Vassard—" She holds his gaze over her glasses. "If you're going to argue for containment, I suggest you do it without subtext. This is an academic institution, not a courtroom."

Leopold dips his chin. The picture of compliance. But his finger taps three more times against the desk and his eyes find mine one last time and the smile he gives me is warm all the way to the surface and absolutely arctic underneath.

The class moves on. I sit in my chair and stare at my notebook and feel every eye in the room on my skin like a sunburn.

Nellie leans in. "Did they just... were they fighting about you? In the middle of class?"

"Yep."

"Like, using academic discourse as a weapon?"

"Yep."

"That's the most Devenir thing I've ever witnessed. Are you okay?"

I am not okay. My magic is pressing against my ribs and my pen is about to snap and the whole class just watched two vampires debate whether Calypso Dellaby is a person or a problem and the answer is apparently still up for discussion.

Our fucking midterm assignment to be exact.

He doesn't know what he's talking about.

The voice.

It slides in between my thoughts like a hand finding mine in the dark. Warm. Familiar. I haven't heard it in so long and suddenly it's back, settling into my skull like it never left.

You don't belong in a cage, Calypso.

My fingers tighten on the pen. I don't respond. I don't have the bandwidth for a psychic conversation right now on top of everything else. My magic is pressing, my chest is tight, and if I stay in this chair for one more minute listening to Leopold Vassard breathe the same air as me, I'm going to spark and then I'm going to prove his entire argument correct.

I stand up.