Page 45 of Zenith Tower

I took the bread from my pocket and unwrapped it.

Delphine looked at it, then at me. “You brought me contraband bread.”

“It survived a rigorous inspection.”

“Meaning no one checked your pockets.”

“Their mistake.”

I broke the bread and handed her the softer half.

For a moment, neither of us spoke. I remembered Delphine worrying bread apart because she could not eat it, the empty space other students had left around her, and the small wave she nearly took back when she saw me coming.

She took a bite.

“Still terrible,” she said.

“The Tower hasn’t improved it.”

I sat beside her. “Does it hurt?”

Her gaze moved to the linen around her wrist. “Less now. The healer says the breaks aren’t spreading.”

“Will they heal?”

The pestle stopped against the bowl.

The healer answered from his table. “The skin will. I can’t tell you what the Mark will do.”

Delphine looked unsurprised. She had heard the answer before.

“What did the readers do?” I asked.

She set the bread on the blanket. “They fixed silver leads along my arm and tried to draw light through them. Each time the Mark faded, they reset the instruments and tried again. On the last attempt, the line split.”

My stomach tightened. “They called that recovery.”

“They changed the name whenever I asked them to stop.”

I wanted to ask the healer why anyone had allowed it. He had not been the one in that room. Delphine was tired enough without watching me spend my anger on the nearest person in Tower gray.

She reached across the blanket and took my hand.

“Something happened when you found me,” she said.

“What?”

“The Mark moved.”

I looked at the bandaged wrist between us.

“During the readings?”

“When you held me. The pain had been in the same place for months. Then it pulled toward your hand.”

The healer had stopped grinding again. He watched us openly now.

“Did you tell him?” I asked.