I look up at him. "Get off me, Valorix."
"I will. When you stop pretending that attitude is the same as preparation."
"Let go of my wrists."
He doesn't. He's studying my face with the kind of attention I've only seen from him in unguarded moments, when he doesn't know I've caught him looking. Up close, his eyes aren't quite as dark as I always assume. There's gold in them. It flickers when the light hits right, the way fire moves behind glass.
"You're not afraid," he says, quiet enough that it's not a performance.
"Of you? No."
"You should be. I'm stronger, faster, and I have considerably more training. The only rational response to this position is fear."
"Then I'm irrational." I test the grip on my wrists. Solid. He's not exerting full strength, but he doesn't need to. "Are we done with the lesson?"
He doesn't answer immediately. His gaze moves over my face, the way someone reads a document they're not sure they're interpreting correctly.
"You're going to destroy everything," he says.
The words land flat and strange, and I go still.
"Is that a threat?" I ask.
"I don't know." His voice has changed. Gone from direct to something else, something rougher around the frame, like words being said for the first time and not quite fitting the mouth they're coming out of. "It might be a fact. It might be something else."
"Those are very different things."
"Yes." His grip on my wrists doesn't ease. His eyes are still on my face. "You walked into this academy and every structure I know how to navigate started to bend. I've watched you do it for weeks without understanding how, and I still don't understand how, and that—" He stops. His jaw locks. "That is not a comfortable position to be in."
"So let go of my wrists."
He releases them. Sits back, shifting his weight off me, giving me the space back. I push myself up and we're level again, both seated on the mat, and the training room is very quiet.
"Was that a prophecy?" I ask. "What you just said. The phrasing was strange."
Something moves through his expression that I don't get to read before he closes it off. "I don't know what it was."
"That's a fascinating non-answer."
"It's the honest one."
I study the side of his face. He's not looking at me anymore. He's looking at the far wall, the stone surface, something that isn't here.
"Your father wants you back because of me," I say. "Because of the null situation."
"My father wants a lot of things."
"You told his courier no."
"I did."
"Why?"
He turns back to face me, and whatever he was going to say gets swallowed before it arrives. His expression closes like a door. "Because I'm not finished here."
"That's the non-answer version of an answer."
"Then we're even." He stands, moving off the mat, retrieving his discarded jacket from the bench by the wall. "The council session outcomes will be posted this afternoon. You should read them before anyone explains them to you, because the explanations you'll get will all have angles."
