ALESSIA
I did not run.
Every instinct built by three years with Ethan told me to run, to turn back into the courtyard and disappear into the crowd of grey blazers moving between buildings, and I might have done it if I hadn't spent nineteen mornings learning a different instinct — the one Carter had drilled into me until it overrode the old one. Do not react to the thing that frightens you. React to the thing that protects you.
So I did not run. I altered my course by exactly the amount a cadet might alter course to avoid a puddle, and I kept walking toward the residential block, and I did not look at Lillian again, and I felt her eyes on me the entire way across the courtyard regardless.
She hadn't recognized me. That was the only explanation for why I was still walking freely — short
