Page 136 of Zenith Tower

Delphine reached for me again. I took her hand carefully, though there was no longer any wound to avoid.

“Was this what they were afraid of?” she asked.

I felt the answer in my locked hand and the pain passing through all three bonds. I had nearly spent myself keeping the repair precise. Delphine’s Mark would have yielded just as readily if I had pushed it toward harm.

“Part of it,” I said.

Marrow’s attention sharpened. “What does that mean?”

I looked at him.

He had left the door unlatched and stepped away. Whatever excuse he made later, he had known what the administrator and I might do. It did not absolve him of anything that came before. It had given Delphine the chance to choose.

I would not reward that choice by giving him a weapon he had not yet imagined.

“It means the records were right,” I said. “I can alter a Mark without a bond.”

Outside, voices gathered in the passage, low and urgent. One of them said Walkin’s name. Another repeated it farther up the corridor.

Delphine tightened her healed fingers around mine and left her Mark uncovered.

Jonah

The rain-dark line seized before the infirmary bell began.

I had been standing at the false window, watching the reflection of the western junction in its black glass. The pain folded me over my wrist. My shoulder struck the stone beside the frame, and the water-light fractured across my vision.

Astra’s presence rushed through the bond without shape or language: strain, fear, and something foreign resisting beneath her hands. The line burned toward her. The pressure inside her shifted under forces I could not separate.

Then came a sharper force. For an instant, my fingers would not bend.

I opened everything I usually kept controlled and let her feel my balance, my location, and the fact that I remained on my feet.

The response was faint. Astra caught at the steadiness and lost it again.

A bell struck below. Boots answered from both ends of the corridor.

I straightened before the key entered my lock.

A reader and a steward opened the door. The reader carried a case of instruments. The steward had already drawn his baton.

“Comparative review,” the reader said.

“Where is Astra?”

“Move.”

I stepped into the corridor. Caspian’s door stood closed across the junction, but his voice reached us through it.

“What happened?”

No one answered him. His voice already held enough fear that I knew he understood the important part.

They took me down one level. Kieran waited in a narrow reading room with his shirt open at the shoulder. He was pale and upright, which meant standing had become a point of principle.

The green-gold Mark remained whole across his chest. Its light pulsed too quickly beneath the skin.

He looked at my wrist. “You felt it.”