Page 113 of Zenith Tower

His grip tightened on the pages.

“Her consent does not change what you are capable of doing to her.”

“It changes whether she is being forced.” I looked at the statement beneath his arm. “The Tower left that fracture untreated while it recorded her as resolved. She wants me to look at it. You can stop calling those facts the same thing.”

He stopped at my door without reaching for the latch.

“The restriction will hold,” he said.

I did not answer. Arguing at my locked door would change nothing, and he knew it.

Marrow unlocked the door and waited until I stepped inside.

Before he closed it, I looked once more at the statement beneath his arm. Blue thread showed beneath the gray where the duplicate rested behind it.

Delphine’s signatures would reach two different rooms.

Astra

The knock came after midnight, a soft scrape against the wall beside my door followed by a pause and another.

I sat up.

The Tower had been restless since the Council’s answer. Boots passed our rooms at irregular intervals. Keys tested locks that did not need testing. Even after the corridor quieted, I could feel the others through the completed lines at my wrist: Kieran’s exhausted warmth, Hale’s pain held under careful control, Caspian awake somewhere beyond the wall.

The scrape came again.

I crossed the room and opened the door.

A young reader stood in the water-light. Her gray uniform was buttoned to the throat, and her brown hair had been pinned so flat that no loose strand could give her trouble. I had seen her twice during review. I could not remember hearing her speak.

“Let me in,” she whispered.

I looked past her. The corridor was empty as far as the western turn.

She slipped inside before I had decided whether to move aside. I shut the door and kept my hand on the latch.

“You’re taking a risk,” I said.

“Yes.” Her hands were clasped hard enough to whiten the knuckles. “So are you if they find me here.”

“Then tell me why you came.”

She drew a folded square of cloth from inside her sleeve.

“Professor Aldric sent this.”

I stared at the fabric in her hand. “He sent it himself?”

“As directly as he could. The Council removed him from Zenith Hall after your transfer and put him in outer records review while they decided what to do with him.”

Outer records review sounded less like punishment than opportunity, unless they had kept him far from anything useful.

“How do you know him?”

“I don’t.” She held the cloth out to me. “Three years ago, my sister was taken into Council custody after her Mark failed a reading. Aldric found a transfer order with the right seal on it. By the time anyone discovered the order was false, she was gone.”

“Where is she now?”