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Then someone knocked very softly.

12

Chapter 12

Wren

Iopened the door and found Silas standing on the landing, nearly filling the doorway.

He was wearing a clean gray shirt that someone had found for him, though it pulled tight across his shoulders. Both hands were bandaged over the knuckles, and in the lamplight his face looked more tired than it had that morning. The strain of the day had settled visibly into him. He had to stoop beneath the low lintel, and even after I opened the door wider, he remained slightly hunched, as though he wasn't entirely certain he should be there.

"Thank you," he said.

His voice was rough and unsteady enough that I had the sense he had rehearsed the words and still hadn't known how they would sound once he said them. He had climbed all these stairs in the middle of the night just to tell me that, and now that the words were out, he seemed to have no idea what was supposed to come next.

"Come in," I said.

Silas hesitated before ducking through the doorway. He turned his shoulders sideways to clear the frame, as he always did, then stopped in the middle of my small round room and glanced around as though he had only just realized how little space there was.

I pointed to the only chair.

He looked at the chair, then at me.

"No," he said with complete seriousness.

I laughed. After another wary look at the chair, he lowered himself onto the floor instead and settled with his back against the wall beneath the window. His legs stretched nearly to the bed. I sat on the edge of the mattress with the blanket wrapped around my shoulders, and for a while neither of us spoke.

Eventually, I asked, "What happens now? To you?"

"I was already here on recertification." He lowered his eyes to his bandaged hands. "After what happened today, it should have been terminated automatically. Under Council rules, I should be sent back into custody."

He paused before continuing.

"Oda invoked her discretion as Headmistress and Elder of the Flight. She extended my recertification provisionally until the end of term. There'll be an exam." He ran his thumb carefully along the edge of one bandage. "She said she did it because of you."

Because of me…? Because I calmed him down?

"Can she actually do that?"

"She can delay the Council's decision, but she can't overturn it. Her authority only holds until the end of term. After that, the exam decides what happens to me." His mouth shifted slightly. "She said she'd never seen anyone pull a man back from the Red with their bare hands, and that it would be a waste to cull the only man on the island you'd managed to do it to." There was the faintest trace of dry amusement in his expression. "She's got an odd sense of humor."

“Well…” I studied him for a moment. "It was you in the Hollow Wood. The bear."

"Yes."

"And the salve."

"Yes."

"And the towel. For Jax."

Silas was quiet for a beat.

"He's all right, Rivera," he admitted, sounding as though the confession had been forcibly extracted from him. "Talks too much."

I smiled, and when he saw it, some of the tension left his face.

"What did it feel like?" I asked. "The Red?"