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It bought enough cover that nobody watching saw a healer abandon formation on instinct. What they saw was a squad member responding to a call, exactly as trained.

We lost points for it anyway. Five for breaking formation and reacting to a threat the judges couldn't verify, though we'd performed well enough that morning to absorb the loss. When the final scores went up, Nephrite still held first place, one point ahead of Garnet. It barely counted as a lead, but after finishing the course with three cracked ribs, I was counting it.

Silvaria grabbed my forearm during the final scramble of the drill, catching me hard enough to spin me halfway around. The moment her bare skin touched mine, I felt her from the inside, whether I wanted to or not. That was how my ability worked. Contact came first, and it followed without waiting for permission.

Her pulse raced through the hand locked around my arm, driven hard by adrenaline, while the rest of her body unfolded beneath it. I felt an old break along her collarbone that had knitted badly and never been repaired. There was a tightness in her chest that had nothing to do with exertion, the same tension I'd felt sharpen whenever she looked at Nykos. Whatever had happened between them had been festering for years, long enough for hurt to harden into anger.

I could have shut down the nerves along her spine with barely a thought. She would have dropped before either of us hit the ground, and no healer in the hall would have found anything they could trace back to me. For one ugly second, I wanted to.

Tayvin had taught me what happened when easy became reason enough. For years, he'd put his hands on me without asking and called it training, long after it had become something else. I'd spent the six months since his death promising myself I would never become someone who used power simply because I could, no matter how justified it felt in the moment.

Silvaria was cruel, but not the way Tayvin had been. Hers could fit inside a dinner conversation and still pass for politeness. His needed a locked door. She wasn't him, and I refused to pretend she was just to make hurting her easier to excuse.

I pulled my arm free and left her nerves untouched.

The decision took less than a full second, a door I built and shut in the same breath, and I stepped back out of range before the thought had even finished forming all the way. Whatever else Silvaria was, whatever she'd done to Nykos or tried to do to the rest of us, she hadn't earned the right to become a lesson in what I was capable of when nobody was looking. I wasn't going to become someone else's Tayvin because it would have been quiet and clean and nobody would ever know.

Silvaria straightened, breathing hard, entirely unaware of how close the last three seconds had come to going a different way.

"Careful," she said, misreading my stillness for something else entirely. "You almost hit the ground that time."

"Almost," I agreed, and meant something else by it completely.

She found us again once the scores had finished posting, waiting near the staging gate with her squadmates close enough to make an audience of it.

"A one point lead," she said, loud enough to carry. "After a formation breach nobody's explained. I'd love to hear the reasoning, unless there isn't one to give."

"There's a reason," Corian said. "We just don't have to justify ourselves to you."

"Instinct," I said. "Which is generally considered part of the job."

"Is it, for a healer?"

"Ask Garnet how their downed operative felt about my instincts an hour ago."

A short laugh broke somewhere behind me, quickly swallowed, and Silvaria's eyes flicked past my shoulder to find it before returning to me, cooler now.

"Instinct." She turned the word over like it tasted wrong. "Convenient, again."

Nykos's voice cut across the small gathering crowd before Corian could answer, flat and done being quiet about any of it.

"You don't actually care about her record, Silvaria." He said it plainly, the way a man states weather rather than delivers an accusation, which somehow made it land harder than shouting would have.

"You never cared about Alex's ranking or Halver's family. You just find whatever's easiest to pick at in a person and press on it until they doubt themselves enough to need you to stop. You did it to me for three years before I noticed. I'm not letting you do it to her while I watch. Just remember your father might sit on the council but I am the king's son. I know every skeleton in your closet and I don't mind using it if I need to."

I didn't need his defense; I had always defended myself but having them now warmed me in a way I still wasn't ready to name yet.

The murmur around us faded, leaving the kind of silence that meant everyone was listening. Silvaria stayed composed until her eyes flicked towards the crowd and she realized how many people had heard. Her mouth tightened, and color rose across her cheeks before she forced it back under control. Most people would have missed it, but I didn't.

"That's not what this is," she said, the words coming too quickly.

"That's exactly what this is."

Corian shifted half a step closer, subtle enough that only I noticed. He was offering to end this for me. One word from him as squad commander would quiet the crowd, and no one watching would think less of me for letting him speak.

I didn't take the offer.

"I can answer for myself," I told him quietly. He held my gaze for a moment, then nodded and stepped back, giving me room.