He's quiet. The current dims further, settling into something lower, no longer acute. I feel the moment it drops below the threshold of immediate danger, and I think Thane feels it too, because some of the tension leaves his shoulders.
He still hasn't let go of my wrist.
"What are you doing to me?" he asks. The question isn't rhetorical and it isn't gentle. He takes one step forward, and the corridor is narrow enough that the step brings him close, and the free hand he isn't using to hold my wrist comes up and presses flat against the wall beside my head. The position is what it is and we both know it. "Explain it to me. Clearly."
"My null nature absorbs magic." I don't move away. "Yours runs hot. I spent two hours training with you, went through a wraith fight in close proximity to your fire, and now my body has decided your specific frequency is compatible."
"Compatible," he repeats.
"I don't have a better word for it."
"You almost formed a second bond with me in an academy hallway."
"I stopped it."
"You stopped it," he says, and there's rawness underneath the repetition, an edge he hasn't fully controlled. "You pulled my fire through your skin without flinching, broke a bond formation with pure stubbornness, and you're standing here explaining it to me like it's a minor inconvenience."
"Would you prefer I faint?"
The gold in his eyes flickers. "No. I'd prefer..." He stops. His jaw works. "I'd prefer to understand what you are."
"You deserve the confusion," I say. "I've been confused about you since the first week of term."
That lands. I watch it land.
"That's not the same thing," he says.
"Isn't it? You burned my things. You made sure everyone in this building knew exactly how much you despised having a null in your House. And now you're..." I gesture with my free hand at the general situation, at the wall beside my head and his grip on my wrist and the residual warmth still running between us. "This. So yes. I think confusion is the appropriate response for both of us."
He releases my wrist.
Doesn't step back. Just releases it and drops his arm, and we're standing close enough that I have to tilt my head slightly to meet his gaze, and his expression is the most unguarded I've ever seen it. Thane Valorix doesn't do soft. But the armor is down in a way it wasn't even in the archive, even when he was bleeding and admitting his father sends threats through wraiths.
"I know what I did," he says. "I'm not asking you to forget it."
"Good. Because I won't."
"But what's happening between us..." He exhales. "It isn't nothing."
"I'm aware."
"And you stopped it anyway."
"I stopped a bond from forming without my consent," I say. "Yes. I did. I'd do it again."
His face shifts. It isn't anger or offense. It looks like respect, and it's more unsettling than anger would have been.
"Good," he says, quietly.
I open my mouth.
The bond with Ryder detonates.
That's the only word for it. It doesn't flare or spike or run hot. It detonates, a full-body impact of fury and ice and an almost violent possessiveness that hits me so hard I take a step backward and my shoulders connect with the wall. My hand goes to my chest automatically. The bond is blazing, feeding me jealousy so intense it's indistinguishable from rage, and then...
"Fairmont."
Ryder is at the corridor junction. He's thirty feet away and he's standing very still, like he's working hard at not doing other things, and his eyes are on me first and then on Thane and then on the wall beside my head where Thane's handprint has left a scorch mark in the stone that neither of us noticed happening.
