Page 38 of Zenith Tower

Now I could feel her breathing against my neck.

“You remembered,” she said.

“You made sure I would.”

Her grip tightened. I held her carefully. Her shoulder blades felt sharp beneath my hands. I had never seen her this thin.

“Rev found your letter to Lior,” I said. “She sent it out with the flour wagon.”

Delphine pulled back far enough to see my face. “Did he get it?”

“I don’t know for certain. But it left the Hall.”

She closed her eyes. Her shoulders lowered as the breath left her.

Fists struck the door again. Caspian shouted my name from somewhere beyond it, followed by a guard ordering him to the ground.

“That’s Caspian,” I said. “We bonded at the Hall.”

“Your Mark reached for him that first day,” she said.

Her sleeve had slipped back while she held me. At the Hall, the lines of her Mark had been fading toward nothing. Now they were fractured near the center and dark around the breaks, the skin there badly healed.

“They did this after they brought you here.”

Delphine covered the Mark with her other hand. “They said they might be able to reverse the Dimming. The first readings did nothing. The last one broke it.”

“Marrow was there?”

“He came in after they started. He told the readers to stop.” Her voice flattened. “They didn’t stop quickly enough.”

“What were they trying to find?”

“They called it recovery. No one answered when I asked what that meant.”

In the tunnel beneath the Hall, I had promised myself that if Delphine was alive, I would bring her out. Now I was locked in with her, and Caspian had gone silent on the other side of the door.

“Sadie,” I said. “You carved her initials beside yours.”

Delphine lowered herself onto the bed. I stayed close enough to catch her if she slipped.

“She went through the west door before I did,” she said. “I found her name in one of the old ledgers. After they brought me here, I heard a healer say she had been kept in this wing too.”

“Where is she now?”

“They moved her before I arrived. Nobody would tell me where.”

Metal groaned outside. A bar dropped across the door with enough force to shake the hinges. The key in my hand no longer mattered.

“Can you walk?” I asked.

Delphine looked toward the door. “Not fast.”

“Then lean on me.”

Voices rose outside, then quieted at a command I could not make out. A moment later, Marrow spoke from the other side.

“Open it. Now.”