Page 164 of Zenith Tower

We had crossed the bridge, but the administrator, Marrow, and every resident still inside remained within Walkin’s reach.

Delphine shifted in her sleep. Paper whispered beneath her hand. The Tower no longer held every account of what it had done.

Astra

The farmhouse lamps were burning when the cart came out of the trees.

Dawn had begun to thin the dark above the eastern field, though no light had reached the ground. The house stood low beneath a steep roof, its stone walls mottled with moss and its chimney breathing woodsmoke into the cold. A barn leaned behind it. Beyond the fence, bare branches crowded close enough to hide the road we had taken in.

A boy waited in the yard without a coat.

He looked fourteen, though worry had sharpened his face. His shirt was buttoned wrong, and one boot had not been properly laced. When the cart wheels struck the flat stones by the gate, he came forward so quickly that the older man beside him caught his arm.

“Let them stop, Lior.”

Delphine woke against Cosima’s shoulder.

She pushed aside the canvas before the horse had finished slowing. The hearing pages slipped in her lap, and Cosimacaught them while Delphine stared into the yard.

The boy had gone still.

I had seen Delphine face stewards with batons and a room full of people who had helped erase her. Nothing had frightened her as completely as the hope on her brother’s face.

“You’re taller,” she said.

Lior made a sound that broke before it became a laugh. “Two years will do that.”

He stopped an arm’s length from the cart. His hands opened and closed at his sides, every part of him straining toward her except his feet.

“Do you remember me?”

Delphine climbed down. Her knees nearly folded when she landed, but she waved Cosima back.

“Not the way I should.” She looked at Lior’s face as if the missing years might be written there. “I remember that you hated boiled pears.”

His mouth trembled. “I still do.”

“I hoped you might.”

Lior crossed the space between them.

Delphine held him with her repaired hand spread wide between his shoulder blades. He had grown taller than she was, but he bent around her like the boy she remembered, his face buried against her hair. She closed her eyes. Whatever else the Tower had taken remained gone, but her body knew how to hold him.

When she drew back, her gaze dropped immediately to his covered wrist.

“Did it settle?”

Lior pushed up his sleeve. A single unbroken line curved beneath the skin. “Last winter. Late enough to frighten everyone, but it settled.”

Delphine touched two fingers beside the line. Relief moved across her face too quickly for her to hide it.

Cosima pressed the hearing pages against her chest and turned away long enough to wipe her cheek.

The farm’s owners brought us inside through the kitchen rather than the front door. They were the two witnesses Cosima had promised, a broad-shouldered woman with flour on her sleeves and her husband, whose gray hair still held the shape of sleep. Neither asked us to explain ourselves before they barred the door.

Once the kitchen door closed, there was no time left for watching one another in silence.

Caspian was put on a settle near the stove while the farmer examined his ribs. Kieran took the chair beside him, his injured arm supported against his chest. Hale stood over both of them until the woman with flour on her sleeves pointed to his split knuckles and ordered him to sit as well.