Page 72 of Zenith Tower

No line joined Delphine to me.

“You think someone did this to you,” I said.

“I know they did.”

“Do you remember it?”

“Pieces. The review chamber. Straps at my wrists. A reader telling me to stop fighting.” Her fingers curled into the blanket. “Then I woke here, and this was all they left me.”

Anger heated my skin, and the lines at my wrist darkened with it.

Delphine saw them change.

“I want you to touch it,” she said.

“I can’t.”

“But you reached Kieran before his bond closed.”

“Because a line already joined us. There isn’t one between you and me.”

“And if you bond with Hale?”

“The Council thinks that once all three bonds are complete, I may be able to reach anyone’s Mark.”

Delphine lowered her voice when the steward shifted beyond the door. “Then, if it happens, I want you to consider trying.”

She drew her wrist back and covered it with her other palm. “I don’t expect you to choose a bond for my sake.”

The restraint made the request harder to dismiss.

“They took me through the west door because my Mark was fading,” she said. “At the Hall, I thought the worst thing they could do was let it disappear. I was wrong. They kept it alive long enough to break it and never told me why.”

I remembered Delphine standing beside that door, trying not to show how frightened she was. I had watched them take her and believed, for too long, that whatever happened afterward had ended quickly.

“I don’t know what I’d be reaching into,” I said.

“I wake up with it every day.” Her voice remained quiet. “My hand doesn’t close properly, and part of my life is missing. I know what doing nothing costs.”

She uncovered the fracture again. “I know it won’t be safe. I still want the choice.”

I had spent my first weeks at Zenith Hall being told that choice and safety were the same thing, provided someone else chose for me. Delphine had been living with the result longer than I had known the Hall existed.

“I’m not going to ask Hale for a bond because of this,” I said.

“I know.”

“If Hale and I choose to bond, I’ll come back. If the recordsare right, I’ll examine the fracture. I won’t promise I can heal it, and either of us can stop.”

She held my gaze for a moment, then nodded.

“Until then, Kieran can tell me what he felt from the other side,” I said. “I also need your records. I want to know whether the fracture has changed since you arrived.”

“Marrow already knows you’ve been in the archive.”

“He knows I was looking for you. He doesn’t know everything I found.”

Delphine considered that. “Just don’t forget me in here while you’re being careful.”