I had about thirty seconds before whoever was outside came in.

I pulled off the blood stained shirt and dropped it behind the bed where it wasn’t immediately visible. Then I pulled the blanket up over the sheets, smooth and casual, the practiced efficiency of someone who had spent twenty years hiding evidence of difficult nights.

"Should I come in?" Azure’s voice through the door.

"Yes. It’s okay."

She entered. She found me standing, shirtless, and her eyes did a fast scan of the room before they found mine. Not obvious. The kind of scan you only catch if you’re looking for it. She was checking for damage. For evidence of what she already suspected.

Then she smiled.

"Morning." 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

"Good morning, Azure."

"You okay?" She framed it carefully, the specific framing of someone who already thought the answer was no and was giving me room to confirm it gently.

I opened my mouth, but she beat me to it.

"I told you not to leave the room,"

"Azure." I held her eyes. "I’m good. Really. Relax."

I held her by the shoulder and guided her to sit on the bed, on top of the covered sheets, which was either very trusting of her or very good instincts on my part. Probably both.

"I thought," she started.

"Something bad had happened to me," I finished for her.

"Yeah." She didn’t dress it up. "Something really bad. What time did you leave?"

"Around two."

"Did you run into anything?" Her eyes were on mine. Reading them the way the system read ability users, looking for tells, for the specific quality of someone managing information.

I weighed it. What to tell her and what to keep. What was safe for her to know and what put her in a position she didn’t need to be in.

"I saw her," I said.

The color in Azure’s face did something complicated. "Abram... did she see you?"

"We talked."

"And you’re still breathing." Not a question. The disbelief of someone doing math that wasn’t adding up.

"I told you," I said, keeping my voice even. "I’m dangerous."

She stared at me. "How the hell are you still alive?"

I didn’t answer that. I let her sit with the question the way she had let me sit with questions in the library, giving space for the thing that couldn’t be fully explained yet.

I could see it working in her eyes. She had felt what I was last night. She had seen what I had done to her level. And now I was standing in front of her having survived something people didn’t survive. The picture she was building of me was getting more interesting by the minute.

"Do you know who she was?" she asked.

"No. But I saw her face." I held her gaze. "Does that help?"

"Brown or black hair?"

"Brown."

Her eyes moved to my neck. Looking for marks. Finding nothing. The system had closed it overnight, clean and complete.

"That’s Celestine," she said quietly. "Vince’s younger sister."

And there it was. Not hidden anymore. She hadn’t meant to confirm who her master was. She had just been speaking about Celestine and the name had done the work on its own.

Either she hadn’t realized what she was giving me or she had decided, somewhere in the night, that I had earned it.

"Their family’s helped maintain the walls for years," she continued, her voice settling into the careful tone of someone reciting information they have lived with for too long. "Their family’s helped maintain the walls for years. Sometimes the government sends criminals to the school at night... as payment. They don’t hunt innocents without reason. Unless someone crosses into their path."

Unless someone sleeps with their slave, I thought. Which apparently qualifies as crossing into their path.

"Everyone at school knows there’s a predator," she went on. "They just don’t know exactly who. They know the rules, though." She stopped short, like she’d heard herself and realized she’d said too much.

She was holding a family’s secrets. Years of them. That explained the walls she put up. The book she wouldn’t show me. The empty chair in the classroom that nobody sat near. The people who kept distance from the girl who knew too much about the wrong family.

"Anyway," she said, standing up abruptly. "I just came to check if you were still alive." Her eyes met mine again. "And you are. So... don’t sit near me in class."

She meant it as protection and I heard it as that.

I caught her hand before she reached the door and pulled her into me.

"Is it because of him?" I said it quietly, close to her ear.

"Yes." No hesitation.

"Should I kill him?"

She went very still. The question had confirmed to both of us that I knew exactly who we were talking about now. That there was no more pretending the name was hidden. She didn’t answer.

"I’m going to kill him," I said. Quiet. Certain. The voice I used for things I had already decided.

I tapped her shoulder gently and she walked out.

***

I stood in the room and thought about what I had just said and found that I meant it, which was interesting information about where I was after two days at School Central.

Vapour came in a minute later with the specific energy of someone carrying something he considered good news.

"Bro." He dropped onto his bed. "There’s a gig. Pays a full silver card. Was gonna run it with Bony, but the idiot broke his foot."

"Not interested," I said.

"It’s at the Vale mansion," he added, grinning. "Not far from here. They pay stupid well."

I looked at him.

The Vale mansion, I thought. Vince. Celestine. The family Azure called untouchable. The family that fed on criminals at night and kept a girl as a slave and had apparently been doing both long enough that everyone had made peace with it.

I had promised Azure something thirty seconds ago. A promise needed a starting point.

"Tell me more," I said. "I might be interested."