Page 143 of Zenith Tower

“I owed them nothing before you touched me. That hasn’t changed.”

“Lior wants you home.”

The words left me too quickly. Delphine went still.

Shame rose hot beneath my collar. I tried to pull my hand from Caspian’s, but he held it without tightening his grip.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was not mine to use.”

“No.” Delphine studied the new crossings on her skin. “It wasn’t.”

The others waited while I sat with what I had done.

“I want to go home,” she said at last. “I want to see whether I know him when he laughs. I want to find out which room he kept my letters in and whether he still hates boiled pears. I want things I can’t remember wanting.” Her thumb passed gently over one repaired line. “But if I leave before this goes into the record, they will say you injured me and fled. They will turn my body into their proof because I was not there to speak for it. I have been absent from my own story long enough.”

The water-light moved across her face, catching the wetness she refused to wipe from one eye.

“So yes,” she said. “I am frightened I will lose my way home again. I am more frightened they will decide what happened to me after I am gone.”

I wanted to argue. Every answer I found required choosing which of her fears ought to matter more, and I had forfeited the right to do that when I spoke Lior’s name for her.

Caspian unfolded a sheet the administrator had given him. It bore a list of exhibits in her precise hand.

“Delphine’s statement is already entered,” he said. “So is the infirmary report. The annex names Sadie’s sealed transfer, the removed receiving signature, and the ordered comparison with Selene’s case. My father sent copies of the full filing to two other Council seats before he left the mountain.”

“Then the evidence survives if we run,” Kieran said.

“The copies survive,” Caspian said. “No one outside this room can testify to what Walkin does after taking command.”

“Why does the hearing matter if Walkin controls it?”

“Because control has to appear in the record.” Caspian tapped the exhibit sheet. “If Walkin excludes Delphine,refuses an independent reading, or invokes emergency severance after seeing a consensual repair, my father’s copies prove they did it with notice. They cannot call the evidence undiscovered later.”

None of that would stop them calling us dangerous. They already had.

I looked down at my hands. “Hurting her would have been easier.”

The table fell quiet.

“I found the damaged places, and every one of them wanted to give way. I had to hold the rest of her Mark apart from me while I worked. If I had stopped caring where she ended...”

I could still feel that ease. A small turn of intention. A clean pull through the lines. The power had offered destruction without resistance and made precision hurt.

Hale considered that without looking away.

“Walkin will put one of us in front of you and ask for a result you want,” he said. “By the time they ask you to hurt someone, they’ll try to make it feel necessary.”

Kieran’s hand covered his line. I did not look away.

“They know I’ll do almost anything to keep you alive,” I said.

“That could almost make a man feel important.”

His attempt at a smile failed. “Either I end up in their hands or make it harder for us to get out. I don’t care for either role.”

“Then don’t take the role they’ve given you,” Delphine said. “Testify. You know what your Mark was before Astra repaired it. You kept the measurements they tried to take from you. Make them explain why saving you requires severing her from you now.”

Kieran’s fingers rested on the ribbon around his folio. The record inside held three years of his body failing by increments, each change written down after the healers stoppedoffering answers. The Tower had wanted it badly enough to confiscate it. Now it had been returned sealed, as though ownership could be granted by the same hand that denied access.