Page 97 of The Witch They Fear

It is a question and it is not. He knows the wide chasm between his privilege at this school and mine. Neither of us are blind to it.

"Calypso," he says, and now his voice has gone quieter. The finger has stopped tapping. "May I ask you something?"

I stare back at him.

"Have you considered the possibility that what happened in the library was not a coincidence?"

My stomach drops.

"You walk this campus without an anchor. Without a name on your door. Without a partnership, without a sponsor, without a noble house formally vouching for your protection." He is gentle. He is almost sad. "Do you understand what that looks like, to a culture built on knowing whose property is whose?"

"I am not property."

"No. But in the absence of a known affiliation, people make assumptions." He waits. He lets the assumption land. "Thierry Vasreaux did. The next will too. I would like to spare you the next."

"Get away from me."

"It is a generous offer, Calypso."

"Get away from me."

He smiles. A small, sorry thing. He inclines his head.

"Think about it."

“I won’t.”

He turns. He walks back toward the fire without rushing, and three steps in he passes Nellie, who is already on her way to me, and he says something under his breath to her that makes her stop in her tracks. She rounds on him. Whatever she says back is sharp and fast, and his smile does not change.

By the time she gets to me I am already walking.

I need space. From him, from that, from everything about this event and what it stands for.

I make it to the edge of the firelight, past the trees, to where the lanterns thin out and the shadows of the old elms run long and the smoke doesn’t quite reach. There is a low stone wall there—the kind that used to mark a garden bed before the academy decided to put a quad on top of it. I lean against it. I close my eyes for a second. I open them.

"Cal."

Nellie's voice. I turn my head. She is two paces back and her face has a careful expression I have not earned.

"Hey."

"I am going to murder him in his sleep."

"Nellie, don't joke."

"Who is joking? The audacity. The condescension." She tries to take my elbow and I twitch back without meaning to, and she pulls her hand away, careful, hurt. "Sorry. Sorry. I know."

"It's fine. I just—"

"I know."

We stand there. She doesn't push. I love her for it. I can't say so out loud because the part of me that says things like that out loud hasn't come back online yet, and may never; I just stand against the wall and breathe and let Nellie be Nellie next to me.

I scan the crowd because the only other thing there is to do is drink and I really don’t need another reason for my magic and my insides to stir up.

Aamon has moved closer to the fire, closer to the older vampires, closer to the political middle of the quad. He hasn't turned my way once. Good.

I look at the fire. I look at the crowd. I look—