Page 57 of Zenith Tower

“Both readings rose again.”

Hale reached the room with a guard behind him and a healer close after. He went straight to Kieran’s left side. The healer opened her case on the floor and pressed her fingers to Kieran’s throat.

“His pulse is too fast,” she said. She bent over Kieran, listening to his breathing. “Help me turn him.”

They moved together. Hale’s hands remained steady, but his face had gone bloodless.

I knew those hands from the lower salle, where they had corrected a careless grip or caught a falling body before it reached the floor. Hale had always made steadiness look effortless. Now his thumb trembled once against Kieran’s jaw before he forced it still.

The healer pulled Kieran’s torn collar away from the Mark. The green-gold fracture widened while she watched.

“Can you stop it?” I asked.

“I can keep his airway clear. I can’t repair a Mark.”

Her case lay open beside the bed, crowded with folded linen, glass vials, and silver instruments. She used what she could. None of it touched the broken light.

Marrow appeared in the doorway.

His gaze took in the healer, Hale, and the broken light beneath Kieran’s skin. Then it settled on my hand clasped around Kieran’s.

“Move away from him.”

“No.”

“Your readings were rising together before this began. Until the administrator determines whether your presence is worsening the fracture, you step back.”

I tightened my hold. “And if leaving makes it worse?”

Marrow looked toward the reader.

She clutched the ledger against her chest. “We don’t know.”

“Then you don’t move her,” Hale said. He kept one hand beneath Kieran’s jaw while the healer worked. “His Mark has been pulling toward hers. Taking her away now could be as dangerous as leaving her here.”

Marrow held the doorway a moment longer. He did not order the guard forward.

“Where is the administrator?” I asked.

“She has been sent for. I don’t know how long.”

Kieran convulsed beneath the healer’s hands. Hale caught his shoulder before it struck the wall, careful not to touch the Mark. The light spread farther across his chest.

The healer called his name. He did not answer.

“His pulse is falling,” she said.

Hale bent close to Kieran’s face. “Stay with me.”

Terror struck through my bond with Caspian so sharply that I lost my breath. It came from beyond the room, from somewhere past the locked corridor.

The emergency bell had stopped, but raised voices carriedtoward us. A guard tried to block the doorway. Caspian came through anyway, another steward close behind him. No one had sent for him.

His eyes found me first.

Then he saw Kieran.

“What happened?”