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That didn't mean he had disappeared.

Later, I saw Ronan in the doorway.

He stood just beyond the reach of the candlelight with his black coat buttoned to the throat, watching the Hall without stepping inside. For a few seconds, his gaze moved over the students packed around the tables, the spilled drinks, the dancing, the music, and the ridiculous volume of it all.

Then he found me.

I couldn't quite read his expression. There was affection in it, certainly, but something quieter as well, something that made him linger there longer than I expected.

He gave me the smallest incline of his head, the same formal gesture he had used so many times from behind his desk.

Good night, Miss Hale.

Then he stepped away from the doorway and disappeared into the dark.

24

Chapter 24

Wren

Silas found me a little after midnight, when the party had grown louder and looser and Tamsin had fallen asleep under the High Table with her head pillowed on a Saltmere boy’s sweater.

He didn’t say anything when he came up to me. He only held out his hand, and when I took it, he led me out of the Great Hall, across the frosted courtyard, and through a door I recognized. From there we descended a long staircase cut into the rock beneath the south wall, the way lit by iron-caged lamps. The farther down we went, the warmer and damper the air became.

I knew where he was taking me before we reached the bottom.

I stopped halfway down the stairs. “Silas, I can’t. Not there.”

He turned on the step below me, bringing his face level with mine. The lamplight picked out the stitches along his hairline, the bruising on his cheekbone, and the steady brown of his eyes. His sling was gone. Shifter healing had already repaired most of the torn muscle beneath the stitches, quickly enough that Marion had spent half the evening muttering about the unfairness of his biology.

“There. That’s exactly why we’re going,” he said quietly. “They took something from you down there, in that water. I know you have been scared to go there since then.”

He took my bandaged hand and pressed it lightly against his chest, over his heart.

“I’m not letting them keep it,” he said. “We’re taking the place back.”

I watched him for a moment, then nodded.

Silas bent and lifted me into his arms.

By then, I had stopped being surprised when he did that. One arm went beneath my knees and the other around my back, and he carried me down the final curve of the staircase and into the cavern.

It was exactly as I remembered it, though seeing it again changed the shape of the memory.

Steam gathered beneath the high black ceiling. The pools descended through the cavern in broad natural steps, each one catching the lamplight on its surface. Mineral heat filled the air, and somewhere beyond the far wall, the sea pushed through a crack in the cliff with a slow, repeating boom.

Then I saw the stone bench beside the highest pool.

That was where I had folded my clothes that night. It was where I had looked up and seen three figures dressed in black coming down the stairs, laughing.

My body reacted before I could stop it. My shoulders tightened, my arms started to draw inward, and my breathing turned shallow. For a moment I could hear their voices again, hear someone telling me to stand up, hear the snap of laughter around the flash of a camera.

Silas felt the change in me, but he didn’t stop.

He carried me straight past the bench and stood with me at the edge of the pool. He didn’t tell me to calm down or ask whether I was all right. He simply held me there and waited until my breathing eased and the tension began to leave my shoulders.

Only then did he set me down on the warm, damp stone.