I sank into a chair, surveying the line of closed doors and wondering to whom the rest of them belonged and whether their residents were mostly away for the holidays. An instinct to snoop came over me, and I batted it away. The fact that the young men of the Academy were probably pretty interesting, on the whole, had exactly nothing to do with my current situation.
I looked up at Chessie and updated her in brief as she poured water over tealeaves and moved the pot to the table, between the stacks of journals. ‘And it was a good thing you didn’t go up there, after all. A bit… you know.’
‘Very good,’ she acknowledged. ‘He’ll be just fine. Perfectly all right. And you’ll let me know if you think it’s safe for me to go up.’
I nodded, then tilted my head.
She tilted hers right back at me. ‘
