He doesn't answer. But his shoulders change.
I leave him there in the warm stone space, and I'm halfway through the rookery arch when I hear him say, quietly, to the empty room:
"Yeah. She probably would have."
I don't stop walking. I don't let him see that it lands.
Outside, the academy corridors are filling with students moving between afternoon sessions, and the air is cold after the rookery's warmth. I pull my jacket tighter and turn toward the main corridor.
I don't see Caspian until I'm nearly past the alcove to the left of the rookery entrance. He's standing against the wall with his arms crossed, dark and still and watching the archway I just walked through.
He looks at me when I stop.
He doesn't say anything.
Neither do I, for a moment. Because his face has none of the cool amusement it usually carries, none of the deliberateprovocation. He just looks like someone who has seen something that settled uncomfortably and hasn't decided what to do with it yet.
"How long have you been standing there?" I ask.
"Long enough." His voice is quiet.
"Then you heard the channel collapse."
"I heard it. And what came after." His gaze moves past me toward the rookery arch, then back. "He shielded you."
"Yes."
"With his body." A pause. "Valorix doesn't do that."
"He did today."
Caspian is quiet for another moment. His face does something I can't read.
"You should have someone check the other heating channels in that section," he says finally. "If one ward was pulled, there are likely others. I'll have it looked at quietly so it doesn't draw attention to the fact that someone tried to hurt you in a House space."
It's the most straightforwardly helpful thing he's ever said to me.
"Thank you," I say carefully.
"Don't." He pushes off the wall. "It's practical. We don't need a second incident making the council more interested in your presence here than they already are." He moves past me, pausing just briefly at my shoulder. "Go find your witch. You look like you need something warm and someone who won't make it complicated."
He walks away down the corridor, and I watch him go, and the look on his face when he was watching that archway stays with me longer than it should.
I find Sage in the commons, and I sit down across from her, and she takes one look at my face and pushes her tea toward me without asking any questions at all.
I wrap both hands around the cup.
"Good afternoon?" she says.
"Complicated," I say.
"Those seem to be the only kind you have."
"Apparently." I drink the tea. It's still warm. "Tell me something boring. Tell me about your Elemental Theory reading."
Sage opens her book and gives me the look of someone who knows there's a longer conversation coming and is willing to wait for it.
"Chapter nine," she says. "Flux variables in contained ritual space. Riveting."
