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“I’m not allowed to walk the halls now?”

“You are.”

“Then what’s the issue?”

Hale looked past me to the clock tower door.

“That was not on your tour.”

“That wasn’t a tour. That was a map with most of the useful parts missing.”

“It was the map you were given.”

“And the tower?”

“Off limits.”

“There’s no sign.”

“There isn’t always a sign.”

“Who made the rule?”

“The same people who notice when it’s broken.”

He pushed off the wall.

“Go back to your room, Astra.”

“And if I don’t want to?”

His eyes moved to my wrist.

“Then know who you’re letting see you where you don’t belong.”

Then he walked away.

I stayed where I was for three more breaths, looking at the clock tower door.

Then I went back to Room 114.

Not because Hale had told me to.

But because I remembered what Juno had said about people documenting me, and the corridor had started to feel full of eyes that made my skin crawl.

When I opened the door to my room, an apple was on the bed with a note beside it.

I stopped in the doorway.

There was no one in the room, but thefeelingwas there.

Green apple hit first. Ordinary enough. Then the river stone, warmed by the sun, underneath it.

I grabbed the doorframe until the dizziness passed.

Then I looked at the apple.

Then at the door I was sure I had locked.