Page 110 of Embers of Midnight
“That’s routing wolves through kitchens and calling it logistics.” I nod at the panel. “Faculty clearance on Hunters is not containment. It’s consent.”
Something tightens under his left eye. He smooths it with practice I suddenly hate. “You want more than safety. You want answers. Some records are sealed. I can get you past seals. I can get you into rooms that respect what you can do.”
“What rooms.”
“Origin files. Travel markers that don’t appear on student maps. Training that fits your actual profile, not what a committee guesses from a hallway rumor.” He keeps it general because he doesn’t have the details. If he did, he’d use the name like a hook. He doesn’t. He’s hoping I’ll hang myself on it.
“Which lock did you push just now,” I ask, as if I’m agreeing and need his breadcrumb. “Service Stair C.”
“Exactly,” he answers, too fast and too smooth.
We don’t have a Service Stair C in admin. He doesn’t flinch because he doesn’t know the building the way the people who bleed in it do.
“Thank you,” I say, and it’s not for the information. It’s because the anger in my chest stops fizzing and turns into something I can use. “Here’s mine. You don’t get me by aiming Hunters at my door and calling the blood a map. You don’t get me by promoting sanctioned cruelty to ‘metrics.’ You don’t get me with keys to a room you haven’t found.”
“I put Inferna in position to find you before anyone else did,” he says, mild as water. “I’ve been guiding operational tempo since Alaska. You survived because I chose speed.”
“You chose a timeline,” I say. “They chose me.”
A hairline crack runs through his patience. He covers it with that same brochure smile. “Come now and I’ll open what I can. We step through and start work where it matters. The men you live with are loyal. They are also an anchor. They will slow the necessary work.”
“They keep me alive,” I say. “They do not slow me. They sharpen me. There’s a difference you’d know if you ate at our table.”
“I don’t ask students to manage strategic burdens,” he says. “I remove obstacles so you can do the work you were made to do.”
“Funny,” I say. “From where I stand, you’re the obstacle.”
He turns his palm over the lintel rune and the doors seal with a clean, decisive thud. The rings along the wall brighten by half a shade. The hum lifts. The air goes from neutral to held.
Morrow’s growl climbs into something you feel in bone. My fingers find Pyrelight’s guard without drawing. My ribs ache under the wrap. My breath stays with the count. I think about tea in his office and the way he told me not to worry. I think about the time he “happened” to be on the path when I was walking alone and used small talk to check the edges of my fear. I think about Cassandra smiling while I burned the air tight and how noone stepped in until I did. My throat tastes like blood and salt and the first time someone said “family” and meant it. It is not romantic to say I trusted him. It is humiliating. It is also true.
“You sat in my kitchen,” I tell him. “You told me I was safe. You watched me learn to breathe and you filled the room with words that sounded like care.”
“They were care.” The words are soft enough to pass for mercy. “They still are. Stand beside me and none of this theater in the quad would be necessary again.”
“None of this theater happens if you stop opening doors for men with helmets,” I say. “You want me to pretend that’s complicated. It isn’t.”
“You want me to pretend the world outside your house is soft,” he says. “It isn’t.”
He moves closer, measured steps you could overlay on a training tape. “I am not your enemy, Seraphina. I am the reason you are still breathing.”
“You are a reason,” I say. “The others are standing in a yard you helped flood because you like clean numbers.”
“If I hadn’t ‘flooded,’ as you put it, bodies would be stacked in the hallways you use to sleep.” His voice cools, a shade at a time. “I don’t expect students to understand operational realities.”
“I expect headmasters not to send wolves through kitchens.”
His hands clasp behind his back. The move is so calm I want to break every finger he hides. “You’re angry. Good. Use it correctly.”
“Don’t you dare take credit for anger you caused,” I say. “Don’t you dare ask me to be grateful you chose where the blood fell.”
“You talk like a girl who thinks refusal is strategy,” he says. “It isn’t.”
“You talk like a man who confuses control with care,” I answer. “It is not.”
He studies me the way he studies a sigil he intends to redraw. “You do want answers,” he says quietly. “I can give more of them than they can.”
“If answers exist, they won’t come from a man who lies about everything.”
