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I wasn't foolish enough to believe that yet.

I glanced at Corian as we walked, taking in the rigid posture, the calm expression, the blond hair tied at the back of his head.

The man-bun was still unforgivable.

I'd give my new jailers until dinner before deciding whether I hated them.

Chapter Two: Freedom Should Come With a Manual

Jade

The eastern doors of the Citadel opened onto noise. It came from every direction at once, voices carrying over the broad stone approach, boots striking uneven rhythms against stone, wheels rattling somewhere down the road, laughter breaking through conversations I couldn't sort fast enough to follow. A bell rang beyond the grounds. A shout answered it, then another burst of voices, and I stood just past the doors trying to decide which sound mattered.

Corian made it several steps down the path before he noticed I'd stopped. He looked back, my file still tucked under one arm, and Alex and Halver slowed with him while Nykos turned to see what happened. Four men waited while strangers moved around them without a glance in my direction, and I started forward before Corian could ask if I was coming.

The Citadel doors closed behind me with a deep thud. My stomach tightened hard enough to shorten my stride. I didn't look back. A closing door had no business mattering this much.

My life had occupied a small slice of the Citadel, once I actually thought about it. The restricted halls where the Council met and Masters taught me. The private training rooms they used to test whatever they wanted tested. The medical rooms. Janus's offices. A handful of enclosed courtyards, and the corridors stringing them together. Then the Menagerie, where the guards knew me well enough not to ask questions once the right Master had signed whatever paper the day required.

Everything else sat outside that structure.

I knew the Citadel held an academy. Knowing that was hard to avoid. I knew there were barracks, training yards, an arena, buildings for lessons I'd never sat through. I knew the Residential Battalion lived past the academy grounds and the Masters kept their own housing farther out still.

Knowing it wasn't the same as knowing what any of it looked like or sounded like.

I'd never sat in a classroom with academy trainees. Never eaten with them, trained beside them, walked the paths between their buildings. I hadn't grown up around other children who turned into teenagers and then trainees. Most days I could count the people I spoke to on one hand. Some days I didn't need the whole hand.

I followed Corian down the broad steps and had to sidestep when two people crossed our path without warning. Close to my age, both in academy colors, one with an armful of books against her chest, the other talking with his hands hard enough that I couldn't work out how he hadn't hit anyone yet. Neither looked at me. They passed, kept talking, and vanished into the current of people moving between buildings.

I watched them longer than I should have. There were more behind them. A lot more.

Some were trainees. Others wore battalion uniforms. Custodians, Masters, people whose jobs I couldn't name. People changed direction because somebody called their name, stopped mid-path to finish a conversation, wandered into buildings with no guard checking whether they belonged.

I wasn't convinced this counted as a functional system.

Inside the restricted Citadel, movement made sense. Guards kept fixed routes. Masters arrived when expected. Council members had a gift for making a corridor unpleasant before they'd even entered it. If someone walked into one of my training rooms, there was a reason, and I usually knew it before the door finished opening.

Here, a woman carrying a basket of folded laundry cut straight across our path, stopped because someone called her name, and spun around without any warning at all.

I stepped sideways to avoid her and nearly walked into Alex. For a second neither of us moved, close enough that I caught the warmth off him before either of us decided what came next. His hand rose toward my arm and stopped inches short. He lowered it again without touching me.

"Sorry."

I frowned at him as we kept walking. "I almost walked into you."

"Yes."

"Then why are you apologizing?"

Alex glanced at Halver like he expected backup. Halver kept walking with the same expression he'd worn since Janus's office.

"Habit."

"That sounds inconvenient."

"It’s becoming inconvenient right now."

I wasn't sure if he was making fun of me or himself, but something in my shoulders loosened either way. Alex seemed to have a gift for talking without expecting much back, which made him easier to deal with than most people I'd met.