"You danced with all three of them," she says. Her voice carries the particular warmth of someone who is about to do something vicious and is enjoying the approach. "That must have been quite an experience for someone in your position."
"It was protocol. Ask your House heir about the format."
"Oh, I know the format." She steps closer, and I'm aware of Lilith and Morgana flanking her, positioned just right to make leaving awkward. "What I found interesting was how attentive all three of them were. Ryder especially. You'd almost think he'd forgotten he has a fiancée."
"You'd almost think," I say, "that you have something better to do tonight than narrate my dance card."
Seraphina smiles. It's a beautiful smile. It has absolutely nothing kind in it. "Lady Eveline has been asking questions. About you. About what exactly a null with no House affiliation and no proper bloodline is doing with a bond to one of the most politically significant reapers in the council's register." She tilts her head. "I gave her some very helpful context."
"I'm sure you did."
"The thing about nulls," she says, loud enough now that the cluster of guests nearest to us can hear it, "is that they don't just drain magic passively. They disrupt everything around them. Bonds, bloodlines, House standing. It's like inviting rot into a foundation and being surprised when the walls crack." She lets her gaze travel over me with the slow precision of someone choosing exactly where to aim. "Some things don't belong in certain spaces. Everyone knows it. Most people are just too polite to say it directly."
The nearby guests have stopped pretending not to listen.
"How refreshing that you're not," I say.
Eveline appears at my right. I don't know when she crossed the room. She's faster than she looks, or she planned the approach, and given what Ryder told me, it's the latter.
"Miss Fairmont." Her voice is cool and carries perfectly. "I don't believe we've been formally introduced. I'm Lady Eveline. Ryder's fiancée." The word fiancée lands with the deliberate weight of something placed rather than said. "I've heard so much about you. The null who disrupted a bonding ceremony and ended up here by administrative error. Quite a story."
"It's been an eventful semester," I say.
"I imagine." She surveys me with the assessing calm of someone who has already decided the outcome of this interaction and is simply performing the steps. "You've been spending a great deal of time with my fiancé. I understand there's some kind of bond strain involved, which must be terribly inconvenient for everyone." A pause. "For you especially, I'd think. Accidentally attached to someone so far above your station. That must be humiliating."
The room is quiet in the particular way rooms go quiet when something is happening that everyone wants to watch and no one wants to be seen watching.
My hands are steady. I make sure of it.
"What's humiliating," I say, "is having to weaponize your engagement in a ballroom full of witnesses because you're threatened by something you can't control. That seems like a much more uncomfortable position than mine." I hold Eveline's gaze and don't blink. "The bond isn't a choice I made. What you're doing right now is."
Eveline's expression doesn't shift. She's too practiced for that. But something behind her eyes goes sharp.
"A null speaking about choices," Seraphina says from my left, her voice pitched for the room now, "in a House she has no natural right to stand in, defending a connection she never earned." She laughs, and it's light and musical and designed to land like a blade. "The academy really has let standards slip."
The guests nearby have arranged themselves into a loose half-circle without appearing to do so. This is what they came for, I realize. Or what Seraphina and Eveline arranged for them to see.
I don't move. I don't look for Ryder or Thane or Caspian because looking for rescue is exactly what they're waiting for me to do.
"Are you done?" I ask Eveline directly.
"I haven't started," she says pleasantly.
"Then I'll spare you the rest of the list." I step back from the half-circle, not fast, not retreating, just creating space. "I'm going to find my wine. You're welcome to keep talking about me after I leave. It seems like you've prepared material."
I walk away. My spine is straight and my hands don't shake and the sound of Seraphina's voice carrying something else at my back follows me across the marble floor, something about nulls and contamination and Ryder's reputation, and I don't stop to hear all of it because stopping is the wrong move and I know it.
I reach the edge of the ballroom, near one of the tall windows looking out over the academy grounds, and I stand there with my back to the room and breathe through my nose the way I learned to a long time ago, slow and deliberate, because some things don't change about surviving a room that wants you to break.
Behind me, the murmur of guests resumes, the music picks up again, and Eveline's voice fades back into the general noise.
Caspian is standing three feet away, watching the window.
"You stayed on your feet," he says quietly.
"I told you I wasn't going to thank you for the apology."
"I'm not asking for thanks." He doesn't look at me directly. His gaze stays on the dark glass of the window, and his jaw is set in a way that suggests he's been standing here watching theroom while all of that happened and doing nothing, which was apparently the plan. "You handled it well."
