"Good." I start walking toward the east dormitory. My legs are steadier now, the exhaustion more manageable with something to move toward. The bond-ache follows me as I go, distance feeding it, the pull running between my chest and the man standing behind me on the empty grounds.
I don't look back. I know he's still standing there. I know it the same way I know my own heartbeat, without checking, without needing confirmation.
That's new. That's the part I won't be putting in any report.
Inside the east dormitory, Sage is sitting up in bed with a mug of tea and a borrowed blanket and Malik Stone in the chair beside her, and she takes one look at my face when I walk through the door and says, "What happened to you?"
"Wraith attack. Grounds are clear now." I drop onto the end of her bed and press the heels of my hands against my eyes. "How are you feeling?"
"Better than you, apparently." She sets down her mug. "Wraith attack. Plural?"
"Plural and coordinated." Malik's head comes up at that. "They came in waves. Took out all the perimeter wards before the first one showed up."
"Ashford?" Malik asks.
"Was already on the grounds." I drop my hands. "We handled it."
Sage is looking at me with an attention she usually reserves for texts she's halfway through decoding. "You handled it."
"We handled it."
"Together."
"Yes, Sage. Together. That's what the word means."
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. "And?"
"And the wraiths are gone and the grounds are clear and you need to finish your tea." I pull the blanket up higher across her feet. "Sleep. Both of you. I'll take first watch."
Malik is still watching me. He's quiet, the way he's always quiet, but his eyes are doing the same careful cataloguing that Sage's are doing, and I don't have the energy to perform normalcy for both of them right now.
"I'm fine," I say, before either of them can ask again. "I'm tired and I need ten minutes and then I'm fine."
Sage puts her hand over mine on the blanket. Her fingers are warm now, fully warm, nothing like the cold skin from earlier this morning. "Okay," she says. She doesn't push.
That's why she's my safe space. She knows when to stop.
I sit with them until Sage's eyes close and Malik's breathing evens out in the chair, and then I sit with the silence for a while longer, my hand still under Sage's, the bond-presence in my chest running its low persistent warmth like a fire that has no intention of going out.
Somewhere across the academy, Ryder Ashford is probably filing a report, or building his mental shields higher, or eating whatever I told him to eat because he's too practical to ignore good advice even when it irritates him to take it. I feel none of that specifically. Just the warmth. Just the pull. Just the awareness of a door that's been opened between two people who built very careful walls and now have to figure out what that means.
I close my eyes and stay very still and don't answer the question.
Not tonight.
Chapter 12
"You look terrible," Sage says when I come back to check on her in the morning.
"Good morning to you too."
She's sitting up properly now, both hands wrapped around a fresh mug, watching me cross the room with that careful attention she uses when she's deciding whether to push. "Did you sleep at all?"
"Some." A lie. Maybe two hours. The bond kept me awake, running its persistent warmth through my chest no matter which position I tried, no matter how many walls I built around my absorption and told it to be quiet. Distance didn't help. Proximity would probably be worse. There is no good answer to a partial bond, which is something the appendix failed to mention in any useful detail.
"Angelic."
"I'm fine, Sage." I grab my coat from the hook by the door. "I have Reaper Theory at nine."
