Chapter 5: Ten Paces

"I put my hand on a stove when I was seven," I said through the open window. "It felt warm. That's all."

"That's all," Bram repeated.

"It's what I told Ilyan. It's the truth, and it's what I'd report to the dean."

He stood very still under the beech tree, and I watched him decide whether to push.

"You've never felt cold," he said.

"No."

"Not in the water at the boathouse in October. Not in the wind on the north stair."

"I haven't been to either of those places."

"You will be," he said. "Classes start there tomorrow."

He took his hand off the sill, turned, and walked back to ten paces exactly.

He had not said the word.

He had not asked me what I was.

I couldn't tell whether that was mercy or patience, and it scared me that I wanted it to be mercy.

For the next three days he was a tall quiet shadow with a silver pin.

He sat at the back of every class I attended.

He waited outside the dining hall with his arms folded while I ate.

He took the corridor behind me and never closed the gap, and whenever I turned my head he was already looking somewhere else.

"He's counting your steps," Posy whispered at lunch. "I swear he has a little counter in his head."

"He's not counting. He's making sure I don't do anything weird."

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