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“It’s exactly the same thing. We both stand still while it happens. I just don’t have a desk to do it from.”

He didn’t move, his hand gripped me ever so slightly, his fingers flexing into my skin and I had to stop myself from gasping at the sensation. It wasn’t pain, far from it. No, my mind had taken that pressure and thought of it in a very different way, one I had never allowed myself to indulge in before, and yet now I couldn’t stop myself. Neither of us yielded, and neither of us looked away.

“If I stopped writing my reports,” he said, very quietly, “someone would take my place. And they would not leave anything out. They would not be kind or careful with you.”

I gulped then, because this was the most I’d ever got out of him. “So that’s the mercy? You write it kindly.”

“I write about you as honestly as I can. Kind isn’t an option on the form.” His stormy eyes met mine for a brief moment and nothing about the cold man I thought I knew was there, instead I saw a hunger that mirrored my own, the one I never talked about, barely even let myself think about.

We sat in the cold little room bleeding from the same wound in two directions, the handler and the girl in his file, and the silence had teeth. I would have given a year of my life to know what he’d have said if either of us had been the kind of person who said it. We weren’t, and the whole tragedy of the room was that we were both built out of the same not-saying.

“That’s enough,” he said, finally. “No session today if you’re injured.”

When he stood, the cold came back in like a window opening. He lifted the gloves off the table and drew them on slowly and carefully, with purpose, the way he did everything. He sealed his hands away like he’d seal an envelope, and he didn’t look at me while he did it.

His hands weren’t steady, and I watched him fight the second glove over a thumb that wouldn’t quite cooperate. I got my shirt back over the burn and stood before slipping my robe back on as well, and on the way to the door I caught the one thing I’d have given anything not to notice.

My hands weren’t steady either.

TWENTY-NINE

Billie

By the end of the week even more triads had formed, Vivienne’s was just the first. Apparently, it was common for powers to attract one another during mock battles which was probably at least partly why the academy did it.

I didn’t expect the triads to be posted on the announcements board in the hallway like the cast of a school play, but that’s exactly what happened.

We had just finished breakfast when Pippa dragged me by the elbow to the notice board to take a look. “I’m just curious who’s spoken for!” she hissed at me as we followed the stream of curious students.

The crowd had gathered around the board and when they saw me the whispers started which made my stomach drop.

I couldn’t be on the list, surely. Who would I have been put with?

Then I realized I was being obtuse and knew exactly who I would have been grouped with. I’d heard the instructors talking about it as they passed the washhouse that first night.

Kit and Linden.

The crowd parted and let me and Pippa through and I edged forward, both needing to see and not wanting to. When I finally made it to the front I read the posting twice.

My name was there next to the exact two I suspected.

With a fancy asterisk after our grouping, which, according to the tiny script at the bottom of the notice, meant that we’d been flagged for a founding trial.

“What’s a founding trial?” I asked Pippa quietly.

Her face went pale and she lied to me. “I don’t know.”

I should have called her on it, but her reaction made me wonder if I really wanted to find out in front of everyone there. It was obvious they were paying attention to us even though they tried to hide it. I could feel the other students watching me like bugs crawling over my skin.

We stood for a moment longer as I pretended to look at the other names on the list but really just felt a gnawing pit of panic opening up inside me. Trials were never good things from what I knew. And seeing as how there was magic involved I was just betting someone was going to get burned and it would probably be me.

After excusing myself and telling Pippa I’d see her later, I did the thing I always do when I have questions and no answers. Go to the library. I intended to research the hell out of this founding trial.

As I made my way there I heard the whispers start up when people saw me and stop when I got too close, as though it wasn’t obvious that they were already talking about me. It just made the panic that was growing inside me even worse.

Part of me wanted to run to the library, even though that would just garner even more attention. I was glad I didn’t though, because as I forced myself to walk I learned more from the edges of conversations that stopped when I came near than I did at the library.

A founding trial was what made a triad real, official, recorded in the kind of book that didn’t get pulled off a shelf or hidden away. The other students spoke of it the way that they spoke of an epic battle they’d survived. They also talked about how the older students were tight lipped about it. One group even mentioned a student I’d noticed before in passing due to the vicious looking scar that went down his face, which apparently came from a founding trial. A trial that they had been given two years to prepare for.