Chapter 159: Finish the Sentence

Blair woke up wrapped in a wolf.

That was how it felt. Sometime in the night the hoodie had twisted all the way around her. The hood had slipped over half her face, and the sleeves were knotted around her hands. Every breath she took was cedarwood.

She lay still and breathed it in for much longer than she should have.

It smelled like the back of his neck.

Her face went hot. She pressed it into the collar anyway.

Across campus, Daemus would be sitting down to his algebra exam about now. She hoped he checked his signs. She hoped he didn’t always write that x was five.

Then she saw the paper on the floor.

Someone had slid it under her door.

East Wing armory. Ten o’clock.

Her next exam wasn’t until the afternoon. She had no excuse.

* * *

The armory looked smaller by daylight.

The broadswords she had polished until her fingers bled were back on their racks, gleaming. Only one of the fireplaces was lit. The grandfather clock in the corner said two minutes to ten.

Jack sat on the edge of the long table with his coat beside him and a cigarette between two fingers. Her History exam lay open on his knee.

"You’re punctual," he said. "I suppose that essay did some good after all."

Blair stopped just inside the iron doors and studied the floor.

His red eyes moved over her slowly. Down the hoodie to where it ended at her knees, and the sleeves swallowing her hands.

"It’s warm in here." He set the exam aside and stood. "Come here."

She went, because her feet always went when he said that, and she stopped an arm’s length away. Jack closed the rest of the distance. He hooked one finger through the hoodie’s drawstring and drew it, very slowly, until she had to take a step to keep from being pulled.

Now she was close enough to smell him.

"Who is this meant to keep out, Ms. Willows?" he asked softly. "Me?"

Her heart was beating in her throat. "Everyone."

"Hm." He wound the cord once around his finger. His knuckle brushed the hollow of her throat. Jack’s nostrils flared, very slightly. "It isn’t working."

Then he let the cord go and stepped back, as if none of it had happened.

Blair stood there with her face on fire and her knees not entirely working.

Jack picked up her exam. He turned it to the last page and held it up to the window, the way he had in the exam hall.

"It is not sufficient," he read. "The Rift was not an accident. The people who..."

He let it hang in the air.

"Finish the sentence, Ms. Willows."

Blair stared at the nearest broadsword.

"I wrote something I can’t prove," she whispered. "So I took it out."

"Historians erase what they can’t prove." He lowered the paper. "You erased what you could."

She said nothing.

Jack looked at her for a long moment. Then he sat back down on the edge of the table, rested his elbows on his knees.

"A truth for a truth, then," he said. "I’ll go first. Consider it a courtesy."

Blair looked up despite herself.

"The avian factions signed the Treaty forty years after everyone else. The textbooks say it’s because we wouldn’t give up the sky." He tapped ash into the cold grate beside him. "That’s not quite right. We wouldn’t give up what we saw in it."

The fire popped. Blair didn’t breathe.

"Crows were flying over that coast the morning the Rift opened. My grandmother was one of them. She told it to me as a bedtime story." His voice was very flat. "No flash. No heat. No cloud. The sky came apart like wet paper. Then it stayed open, quite still, as if someone on the other side were holding the door."

He drew on the cigarette.

"I believe I once called your questions ghost stories," he said. "I was raised on this one."

Blair’s throat ached. For the first time since she had met him, she understood that he wasn’t testing her. He believed the line she had erased. He had believed it before she ever wrote it.

"Your turn," Jack said.

She twisted the sleeves around her fingers. She thought about the white room, and then she made herself stop thinking about it.

"The people who did it," she started, "meant to."

"Who?"

She shook her head.

"You said a truth," she whispered. "Not two."

The silence stretched long enough that she was sure she’d made a terrible mistake. Then the corner of Jack’s mouth moved.

"You’re learning," he said.

He folded her exam in half and slid it back into the inside pocket of his coat. Then someone knocked on the iron doors.

"Come in, Your Highness," Jack said.

Every hair on Blair’s arms stood up.

The doors opened. Killian walked in with his hands clasped behind his back, silver hair neat, and stopped three steps past the threshold.

His tongue flicked out. Tasted the air. Went back in.

He didn’t look at her. He looked at Jack, and his voice could have frozen the fire.

"You said you had something for me."

"I do." Jack tipped his cigarette toward Blair. "Her."

Blair’s stomach dropped through the floor.

"You’ve spent the better part of a week hunting whoever borrowed your name," Jack went on mildly. "You’ve found nothing. Ms. Willows read those forms once, and I’d wager she remembers every date on them. You don’t know a single one."

A muscle jumped in Killian’s jaw. "She is a lesser."

"She is the lesser who placed second. Behind you." Jack stubbed out his cigarette on the grate. "You want the man who stole your name. She wants her roommate back. I find that efficient."

She stared at Killian’s shoes. She waited for him to refuse. She prayed for him to refuse.

"Fine," Killian said.

He turned toward the doors. He still didn’t look at her.

"Human. You’ll walk three steps behind me, and you’ll speak when you’re spoken to." He paused. His tongue flicked again. "And take that thing off. It reeks of dog."

Blair’s fingers closed around the sleeves.

"I didn’t agree to working with him, Professor."