Chapter 5 What Voss Doesn't know
The notebook is against my stomach before I've even decided to hide it. My hands just did it on their own, some panicked animal reflex kicking in half a second before my brain catches up, and it's such a stupid, useless thing to do because she already saw it. She saw it the second the doors slammed open. Hiding it now is like locking the barn door after the horse has trotted past you, waved, and left the property for good.
"Headmistress." Cassian's voice goes flat. Not cold exactly. Empty, like someone hit pause on whatever he actually feels and left this careful nothing standing in for it. "This is my father's wing. I wasn't aware you needed an invitation."
"I don't." Voss's eyes haven't moved off me. Or the notebook. Or wherever it is she thinks the notebook currently is, since I am apparently doing a terrible job hiding a rectangular object against my own torso. "I arranged this conversation, Mr. Vale. With Miss Whitmore. I don't recall including you on the guest list."
So that's it. This was supposed to be her meeting, the one Voss promised herself would be nothing to worry about, and instead she's walked in on Cassian already sitting across from me with a locked cabinet standing open behind him.
"I got here first." He says it simply, like that settles it, like possession is nine tenths of whatever this is.
"So I see." Her smile doesn't reach anywhere near her eyes. "How resourceful of you."
I don't sit. My legs have decided that sitting means agreeing to whatever happens next, so I stay standing with the notebook pressed to my ribs and my heart doing this stupid uneven thing where it skips and then slams twice to catch up with itself.
"There was also the matter of the alarm." She says it like an afterthought, except nothing about the way she's looking at me feels like an afterthought. "East corridor. Near the old wing. I found the two of you down there myself, earlier today. I'd hoped that conversation was finished."
"I got lost." The same word Cassian used earlier, and I hate how thin it sounds coming out of my mouth a second time, like we rehearsed a story and didn't rehearse it well enough to survive a repeat performance.
"Lost." She says it back slowly, tasting it, finding it slightly off. "In a building you've walked the halls of for two years. How curious."
My brain's static, the word lost just sitting there doing absolutely no work for me now that it's been used twice, and I hate that the smartest thing I've got right now is silence while she watches me like she already knows and is just enjoying the show of me not admitting it.
"I already explained that to your guards." Cassian cuts in before the silence stretches too long, voice even, like this is the third time he's had to repeat himself and he's mildly bored of it. "The old wing's under renovation. Structural work, dangerous. She got turned around trying to find her way back to her room, and I walked her here myself once your people were done with us."
Better lie than mine. Smoother, and consistent with whatever he already told the guards in the tunnel, which is the part that actually matters right now. Even through the panic climbing my throat I notice he doesn't hesitate over any of it, like he built this excuse the second Voss's flashlight hit them both and has just been running it ever since.
Voss looks between the two of us. Long enough that I count four of my own heartbeats waiting for it to be over.
"Renovation." Slow, deliberate. "How interesting that I wasn't informed."
"You're not informed of everything, Headmistress." His voice drops quiet again, but not the scared kind of quiet. The kind with teeth in it. "Some things are still my father's to decide. Including who he lets into this wing, and when."
That lands. I watch it land, watch something flicker behind her eyes that isn't fear but is close enough to it that I understand, for the first time tonight, that whatever power she holds in this building has a ceiling, and Cassian's last name is standing right above it, casting a shadow she can't quite step out of.
"Of course." Her smile comes back thinner now, more careful than before. "Do be more careful where you wander, Miss Whitmore. You already gave this school one scare, out on that cliff road. I'd hate to have to explain a second accident to your mother."
She says it so pleasantly. Warmly, almost, like she's commenting on the weather, and that's the part that actually gets under my skin worse than any raised voice could have, the way she can threaten to kill me and somehow make it sound like a good-night wish.
She turns, guards falling into step behind her, and pauses at the door without turning back around.
"Oh, and Cassian." Still not looking at him. "Your father wanted me to remind you. Gala committee meets Thursday. He was very specific that you attend this year. No excuses."
The door clicks shut behind them.
I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding and my knees actually buckle a little, catching myself hard on the edge of the desk. Cassian's already moving toward me before I've fully processed that I nearly went down, one hand out like he means to catch me, and then he stops halfway, like he changed his mind about touching me mid-motion, which is somehow more awkward than if he'd either finished the motion or never started it at all.
"You lied for me." My voice comes out smaller than I mean for it to.
"I lie for a lot of people." Too fast, and he looks like he regrets the shape of it the second it's out of his mouth. "That's not — I don't mean it like that."
"Like what."
"I don't know." He looks away first this time. Small thing. But it's the first time all night he hasn't held my stare like he had something to prove by not blinking.
I don't push it. I file it away instead, next to the notebook, next to the black envelope, next to the growing pile of things about Cassian Vale that don't add up to the boy everyone in this school is supposedly terrified of.
"Why did she come herself." I ask it before I've decided to. "The first time, in the tunnel. She could've sent guards. Why does the headmistress do her own dirty work."
Something shifts behind his eyes, brief, gone fast. "Because she doesn't trust anyone else in this building not to talk." A pause, quieter now: "Including me. Especially me, probably, after tonight."
"The gala," I say instead, because it feels safer than whatever we were just circling around. "Thursday. What does that mean."
"It means my father wants to look at you." Flat again. Careful again, all the cracks sealed back over like they were never there. "In person. Where everyone can watch him doing it."
My stomach drops straight through the floor.
"He knows." Not a question.
"He suspects." Cassian's eyes find mine, and there's nothing careful left in them now, nothing performed. "And Augustus Vale doesn't ask to look closely at something unless he's already decided what he's going to do with whatever he finds."
I should say something back. I don't. I just stand there, Cassian's notebook against my chest, wearing the uniform of the girl this school buried and then watched walk back through its gates with no explanation. Three days. Three days until Augustus Vale looks at my face across a crowded room and decides whether I live long enough to see a fourth.
