I'm twenty minutes into it when the door opens.
I don't stop. I finish the rotation and come back to center stance before I turn around.
Thane Valorix is standing at the edge of the mat.
He's in training gear, which means this wasn't an ambush, exactly, or at least not one he had to plan the wardrobe for. Dark shirt, practice pants, no jacket. He looks bigger without the academic uniform adding structure around him, which I hadn't thought was possible.
"The schedule shows this room as open," I say.
"It is open." He steps onto the mat. "I'm allowed to use it."
"So am I." I turn back to my stance. "Then there's no problem."
He crosses to the opposite side of the mat and starts his own warm-up, which I'm not going to watch, so I redirect my attention to my footwork and hold it there. We work in parallel silence for a while. It's not comfortable silence. It's the kind you build a wall out of and then stand on both sides of it.
"My father wants me home," he says.
"I heard."
"Did you hear what I told his courier?"
"Apparently half the second-years did, so yes."
Something that might be a short, reluctant sound comes from his direction. Not quite a laugh. Close enough to be interesting.
"The council session this morning," he says. "They're going to try to use the bond as leverage. Against you."
I pause, then keep moving. "I know."
"Ashford's engagement announcement will make it worse, not better. It signals that the bond is being politically managed, which signals to everyone else that the bond is real enough to need managing." He stops moving. "People will come at you harder because of it."
"People have been coming at me since orientation." I complete the rotation. "I'm still here."
"This is different."
I face him. He's stopped his warm-up entirely, standing in the center of the mat with his arms at his sides and his jaw set, and his dark eyes are doing that thing where they're more focused than they're pretending to be.
"Are you trying to help me?" I ask. "Because it sounds like you're trying to help me, and I want to be clear that I find that confusing given your general behavior pattern."
"I'm providing information."
"That you could have sent in a note."
"Notes can be intercepted."
"So this is a security measure. Very practical." I reach for my water. "Thank you for the intel. You can go back to your warm-up."
He crosses the mat toward me. Not slow, not aggressive, just deliberate, and I resist the instinct to step back because I don't owe him the retreat.
"You're going to get yourself killed," he says. "Not because you're weak. Because you don't understand how these systems work and you walk through them like the rules don't apply to you."
"The rules were written by people who assumed I'd never exist. I'm not sure they do apply to me."
"That's exactly what I mean."
He's close now, and before I register the full sequence of it, his hand comes up and catches my shoulder, turning me, and the next moment my back hits the mat. He's over me, knees bracketing my hips, both my wrists pinned above my head in one of his hands. Not rough. Precise. A demonstration, not an assault, which doesn't make it less of an unwelcome surprise.
"This," he says, "is what happens when you assume the rules don't apply to you. Someone with more experience takes you down before you've finished your sentence."
