Page 61 of Raven’s Fight

He's watching Raven.

She's in the faculty row, which is her place this year, beside Callan, facing forward. Taking in the briefing, showing nothing, and entirely aware of every person in the space, including the one twelve feet behind me who has been tracking her since he sat down.

She knows he's watching. The quality of her stillness tells me so — she's taking the attention in the way she takes in anything that's true and can't be acted on yet. Filed. Kept. Ready.

I don't look at him. I hold my seat and go on appearing to attend to Balor while I follow where he's looking, the angle of it, the tell in his left hand. All of it kept.

When the briefing ends and the room empties, I stay in my seat eleven seconds after he leaves before I stand.

Eleven seconds is plenty.

✦ ✦ ✦

She finds me in the east corridor an hour later.

I know she's been looking, not because she said so but because I know how she moves. After a formal session where she's had to watch and record without being able to act, she needs a stretch of walking before she can be still again. She'll have taken the east corridor, the south walkway, and looped back. The east corridor is where she'd find me if I were where I said I'd be.

I was where I said I'd be.

She falls into step without preamble and we walk. The corridor is empty at this hour — dinner pulls most of the academy to the main hall and leaves the teaching wings quiet in the way they only manage twice a day. The torchlight is thinner here than in the central buildings, the stone holding the day's warmth the way stone does.

"You know," she says.

"Yes."

"How long?"

"The Eastern Isles. You came back carrying the kind of settled that means you've made a decision rather than reached a conclusion."

She's quiet a few steps. "The difference matters to you."

"You reach conclusions constantly. They lead to more conclusions. A decision is different. It closes something, and you carry yourself differently afterward."

Another quiet. Then: "And?"

I consider what and is asking for. My assessment, my reaction, how I feel about the next twelve days. All of those are real and all of them are available to her.

"And nothing," I say. "You made the right call. The one who's been watching you since the briefing began is going to have a very educational Purge."

She looks at me sidelong — the expression she wears when I've said something she wasn't expecting and she's deciding what to do with it.

"You saw him."

"Outer row, twelve feet behind me. Following your line of sight since he sat down. Left hand on his knee, gripping harder than he needs to. He's good." A pause. "Not good enough."

"I know. I felt him."

"I know you did."

We walk. The corridor runs its length and turns. I'm very aware of her beside me — the familiar weight of her presence, the warmth the bond carries when we're this close, the thing that has been steady for twenty-three years and that I have been conscious of, at varying strengths, for every one of them.

"Come back to the suite," she says.

"Yes."

We don't talk about it.

That's the right call and we both know it. There's nothing left to say that hasn't been said, nothing to trade that hasn't been traded, no planning left undone. The Purge is two weeks off. The positions are set. The decision is made. What we have between now and the bell isn't more time to prepare. It's just time, and what you do with time once the preparing is finished is a question most people can't answer.