Page 112 of Zenith Tower

Marrow stepped into the doorway. “Cover it.”

“No.” Delphine held her arm toward the clerk. “Record what you see before anyone touches it. The fracture and the scarring. Then write down the pain in my hand and the gaps in my memory that I can identify.”

The clerk stared at the Mark. “Why before?”

Delphine looked at my covered wrist, and I understood what she was protecting.

“Because if Astra attempts a repair,” she said, “the Council will claim anything I remember afterward wasplaced there by her. I want my statement taken first. I want the record to show what I knew before she came near me.”

Marrow reminded the clerk that the Council had forbidden contact.

“Put that beside my request,” Delphine said. Her hand shook harder, but she did not lower it. “Write that I asked Astra to examine the damage after her third bond completed. Write that she made no promise to heal me. Write that either of us may stop.”

The clerk looked toward Marrow.

He stood with one hand on the doorframe, his face giving away nothing.

“Record both,” he said at last. “Her request and the Council’s denial. No one will be able to claim the restriction was unclear.”

The clerk bent over the page.

I watched the words appear in dark, even lines. The clerk did not soften Delphine’s account or replace her language with the Tower’s. When Delphine paused to find a word, the clerk waited.

“I don’t know what home will feel like,” Delphine said quietly while the pen moved. “Lior may remember a sister I can’t be anymore.”

“He kept the letters,” I said. “He knows something happened after you wrote them.”

“Knowing isn’t the same as seeing it.”

“No.”

I did not tell her it would be easy. I did not tell her Lior would understand every silence or recognize the person who came back to him. The Tower had taken too much from her for comfort built on guesses.

“What should we tell him?” I asked.

Delphine looked down at the broken Mark.

“Tell him I remember what I asked him to do.” Her nextbreath caught. “Tell him he was loud enough. Tell him I want to come home. I just don’t know when they’ll let me.”

“I’ll tell him.”

Marrow ended the interview when the clerk filled the third page. We waited while she copied the statement onto the second set of paper.

Delphine signed each sheet in both sets. The tremor made the first signature uneven. Before signing the duplicate, she flexed her hand until the fingers answered her again and wrote her name more clearly.

The clerk sanded the original pages and tied them together with gray thread.

“Where do they go?” Delphine asked.

“The original enters your case file. The duplicate goes to the administrator under her order.”

The clerk sanded the duplicate and tied it with blue thread.

Marrow escorted me back through the east corridor. He carried Delphine’s original statement beneath one arm. I watched the gray thread at its edge with every step.

“You knew she intended to ask for the repair,” he said.

“She asked before Hale and I bonded. I told her I would examine the fracture if the third bond completed and if she still wanted me to.”