Page 71 of Zenith Tower

Hale’s face went flat. His anger had passed beyond showing.

“I’ll be in the review chamber,” he said.

“They may not allow it.”

“Then I’ll be outside. I’ll hear whether they let him speak.”

Hale looked toward the bend in the corridor. A door opened somewhere beyond it.

“Inside,” he said.

Caspian released my hand. Hale waited until my door closed before following him back toward their wing.

Through the stone, I heard Marrow’s measured footsteps approach.

Astra

By the time they let me see Delphine, the story of Kieran’s recovery had reached her wing ahead of me.

A steward unlocked her door and remained outside it. He left the door open a hand’s width, enough to hear if either of us raised our voices.

Delphine was sitting against the wall with the blanket folded across her lap. More color had returned to her face since I found her in the sealed room, though the broken line at her wrist remained dark and jagged. The skin around it had the pale, thin look of an old scar.

She waited until I sat beside her.

“Is it true?” she asked.

“What did you hear?”

“That Kieran stopped breathing and you repaired his Mark with your hands.”

“He’s alive. His Mark is whole.”

“And the bond?”

I turned my wrist so she could see the completedgreen-gold line.

Delphine studied it without touching. “Everyone knows something happened. The stewards have become very careful about not discussing it.”

“That usually means they’ve been told not to.”

“It also makes them terrible liars.”

Her mouth almost curved. For a moment I saw the girl who had shared bread with me at Zenith Hall and told me where not to stand during inspections.

Then her attention returned to my wrist.

“What did you do?”

I told her what I could. The cold beneath Kieran’s skin. The break in the Mark. The unfinished line reaching him where my hands could not. I left out nothing about the choice he had made, or the way the completed bond had carried the strain when his own Mark began to fail.

“So the bond saved him.” Her gaze dropped to my wrist. “And Hale’s line is still open?”

I looked down at it. “Yes.”

Delphine uncovered her wrist.

The fracture began near the base of her thumb and crossed two dark channels before disappearing beneath her sleeve. I had seen it through the glass and later beneath the silver light of her room, but never this close. The edges were too even in places, almost scored.