Chapter 133

Kade

Imogen wanted the training hall, and nobody in it but the four of us.

Ryan cleared it at sundown. He moved the evening drills to the north field, and posted two of his own at the main doors and one at the side, and then stood in the doorway for a long time looking at me sitting on the bench against the wall, as if he were trying to decide whether to say something.

“Go,” I told him.

“If anything—”

“You’ll know before anyone else does. I know.” I looked at him. “Go, Ryan.”

He went. The door shut behind him, and the bar came down on the outside, and then it was only the hall, and the cold, and the four of us in it.

***

Somebody had opened the high windows again. All of them, every one along both walls, so that the night air came down into the hall and pooled on the floor like water, and my breath went up in front of me when I breathed out. The lamps were out. There was only the moon.

It came in through the windows on the