Page 27 of Zenith Tower

The relief reached the bond in a rush. Caspian caught my hand, his fingers closing around mine.

“You’re sure?” I asked.

“I spoke to the healer who has been with him since the collapse.” Hale’s voice roughened. “She said he asked whether the bread had improved in his absence.”

I laughed, though it came out unsteadily.

Hale sat in the chair beside the bed and covered his face with one hand. Caspian drew the second chair closer to him. No one mentioned our own rooms.

I folded the blanket back and set Kieran’s cup within reach. Then I sat between Caspian and Hale to wait for morning.

Kieran

The healers kept their word. On the sixth morning, they removed the monitoring lines and declared me well enough to leave the infirmary, though not well enough to be left alone. Hale received the instruction with the gravity of a military appointment. He walked beside me through the corridors, close enough to catch me without making a show of it.

Astra and Caspian were waiting when we arrived. Astra rose so quickly her chair scraped the stone.

“You’re walking.”

“That was the condition of release. Marrow remains unmoved by my requests for a sedan chair.”

Her mouth tightened. The joke had been for her, and we both knew it.

Caspian crossed the room and put a hand on the back of my neck. He held it there for a moment before stepping away.

“Sit down,” Hale said.

“I have missed your tenderness most of all.”

“Sit.”

I sat.

The room showed signs of their waiting. The blanket had been folded back from my side of the bed, my cup stood within reach, and two chairs had been drawn close. My clothes remained on the shelf, with the ledger tucked safely beneath them.

Hale set out the draughts and repeated the healers’ instructions. I let him. Caspian asked what food I could keep down, and I let him ask that too. Their concern filled the room until it crowded even the lamplight.

Astra said very little. She watched my right hand whenever she thought I would not notice.

“Something happened,” I said.

Her gaze lifted to mine.

“You all look as if you’ve agreed not to tell me.”

“I followed your copied record to the archive below the records stair,” she said. “They had added a cover page.”

I looked from her to Caspian. “You went into the archive?”

“She did,” Caspian said. “Hale and I made sure she came out.”

Astra ignored that. “Your record was classified under Untethered association. The cover named Sadie Corwin’s file for comparison.”

The name took a moment to settle. I knew it from the initials Astra had traced through the Hall, a girl removed from its records but remembered in Delphine’s carvings.

“They’re using my decline to study your Mark,” I said.

“We think they might be. I found Sadie’s file, but I didn’t have time to open it.”