I lost track of how many times it happened.

  Twenty? Thirty?

  Time smeared across my mind, threads of almost-identical conversations and csses and stolen ughs tangling together until I could hardly tell where one loop ended and the next began.

  But Cael's arc never changed.

  No matter what I did, he always ended up walking down that corridor with his back turned, while Seraphine's heart snapped like a bowstring behind him.

  Desperation made me reckless.

  I stopped just trying to be Seraphine's ally and started digging into Cael himself. Asking about his family, his fears, the things that kept him awake at night. I listened when he whispered that he was scared of failing his oaths. I watched his expression when instructors praised him for reporting minor infractions.

  He liked it.

  Not the cruelty of it—never that. But the crity. The certainty that he was doing the right thing. That someone would pat his shoulder and tell him he was good.

  When I cornered him in the practice yard one afternoon, sweat still damp on his colr, I took a breath and asked the question I'd been circling for too long.

  "If the Tower told you I was dangerous," I said, "would you turn me in?"

  He froze, wooden sword halfway to the rack.

  "That's... a strange hypothetical," he said carefully.

  "Is it?" I smiled, brittle. "I break rules all the time."

  "You're careless," he muttered. "You cut curfew, you forget to return books, you talk back to instructors. But you're not dangerous."

  "What if they said I was?" I pressed. "What if they ordered you to punish me?"

  His throat bobbed.

  "That wouldn't happen," he said.

  He didn't answer the question.

  I told myself I didn't notice the way his gaze had started to linger on me more than Seraphine. The way his irritation pricked sharper when I teased him. The way his jealousy fred when I pulled Seraphine into some joke he didn't get.

  I told myself it didn't matter.

  It mattered the night everything finally went sideways.

  Curfew bells tolled, muffled through the high windows. The library was almost empty—just a few other novices packing up, a lone instructor scribbling corrections at a back table.

  I waited until the st of them left. The mps dimmed themselves with obedient clicks, plunging half the room into shadow.

  Then I slipped from my chair, heart hammering, and padded toward the rope cordoning off the Restricted Section.

  I'd done this every loop. Step over the boundary. Ignore the prickling wards. Dive into forbidden stacks and drag out what I needed.

  Tonight, as always, the books called to me.

  Tonight, for the first time, footsteps followed.

  I didn't hear them at first.

  I only realized I wasn't alone when a hand caught my wrist just as I moved to duck between shelves.

  The grip was iron-hard.

  I sucked in a breath, swinging around, already framing some lie about being told to fetch a text—

  "Cire."

  Cael's eyes were very, very awake.

  He stood in the gloom just beyond the mplight, shadows striping his face. His training whites were rumpled, as if he'd come straight from drills. His hand still cmped around my wrist, thumb pressed to my pulse.

  My heart stuttered.

  "How did you...?" I began.

  "I saw you leave study hall." His jaw clenched. "You left your book. You didn't tell Seraphine where you were going. So I followed you."

  Perfect. Exactly what an overprotective friend would do.

  Except his gaze flicked past me to the Restricted shelves, to the neatly knotted rope, to the ward-sigils faintly glowing along the archway.

  Cael's hand closed around my wrist like a shackle.

  "Of course," he breathed. "Of course it's this."

  I forced my voice steady. "Cael, let go—"

  "You're going to get her killed."

  The words hit like a sp.

  "What?"

  "You whisper things," he said. "You tell her her little... experiments are fine. That the rules are made to be bent. That the Tower is wrong to restrain her."

  "I said nothing of the sort," I snapped. "I said she should be allowed to think."

  He stepped closer, crowding me back against the rope.

  "And you come here," he continued, low and furious. "To the forbidden stacks. Alone. Night after night. You think no one notices, but the attendants talk, Cire. You're reckless. And she follows you."

  Guilt twisted in my stomach.

  His eyes searched my face, dark and intent.

  "You and Seraphine," he said, voice roughening. "Always together. Always sharing secrets. You look at her like she's the only one in the world."

  I stared at him, thrown. "She's... important to me, yes—"

  "What am I, then?" he demanded.

  The question was so raw it stalled my answer in my throat.

  For a moment, the Tower's doctrines, the looping nightmare, all of it fell away. There was only a boy, a little older than me, hurt and furious and clinging to something he didn't know how to name.

  "You're our friend," I said quietly. "Isn't that enough?"

  His face closed.

  "No," he said.

  My pulse skipped.

  The air seemed to thicken between us. Something ugly and aching boiled up behind his eyes—fear, possessiveness, a desperate need to reassert control over a world that had drifted away from him.

  "You're leading her astray," he said, jaw tight. "Both of you. But you, Cire—you're the one who makes her smile at the wrong things. You're the one who urges her to... question."

  He said the st word like bsphemy.

  "I'm trying to keep her sane," I snapped. "The Tower doesn't care about living. They care about obedience."

  "And I swore to them," he bit out. "I swore to uphold their ws. To correct those who endanger the order."

  His grip on my wrist shifted, twisting. Pain shot up my arm.

  "Cael," I said, biting down on a yelp. "You're hurting me."

  "Good."

  The word chilled me.

  He stepped in, hard enough that my back pressed to the wooden post holding up the Restricted rope. The wards buzzed against my shoulder, reacting to my nearness.

  "Don't move," he said.

  Something in his expression had gone too ft, too calm. His training voice. The one I'd heard him use on younger initiates when ordering them to formation.

  I swallowed. "What are you doing?"

  "What I should have done long ago," he said. "What they would praise me for, if they knew. Marking a line. Making an example."

  His free hand cmped the back of my shoulder and shoved downward.

  My knees buckled, hitting the floor hard.

  "If I bring you to the instructors," he said, voice low, "they'll tear you apart. They'll tear her apart. Irregur magic traced to irregur friends."

  His fingers dug into my shoulder through the cloth. "But if I correct you myself—if I make sure you remember where you belong—maybe they won't have to."

  He reached for the back of my colr.

  I twisted, panic fring white-hot.

  "Cael, stop. Listen to yourself. This isn't correction, it's—"

  "Discipline," he snapped. "You don't respect gentler forms."

  His hand bunched the fabric at my nape, trying to drag me down, to fold me into a position that would be easier to strike. My robe dug into the backs of my knees. The wards hissed.

  For a heartbeat I saw what he saw: a transgression, a secret he had caught red-handed, the chance to reassert control over a girl who kept slipping past his grasp. In his mind, this wasn't cruelty—it was mercy. A little pain now to save us from a greater punishment ter.

  He was going to hurt me and call it love.

  And ter, he was going to do the same thing to Seraphine.

  There it was. The hinge.

  Not just betrayal. Not just fear. The point where his need to be praised for righteousness outweighed his willingness to see the people in front of him as human.

  "You think this is about rules," I said, breath shaking. "It's not."

  He froze, mid-motion.

  "It's about you," I whispered. "You're terrified the Tower will decide you're wrong. That if you stand with us, they'll turn that gaze on you instead. So you hurt us first, to prove you're safe to keep."

  His fingers twitched.

  I pushed, desperate, words tumbling out faster than reason.

  "You're doing it to me," I said. "You will do it to her. You do it because you're more afraid of a disappointed instructor than a crying friend. You tell yourself it's duty because the truth is too ugly to look at."

  Something cracked across his face.

  For an instant, Cael looked like the boy from the very first loop—small, horrified, eyes wide with the realization that someone had read his worst secret out loud.

  "How do you...?" he started.

  The library shuddered.

  Shelves blurred at the edges of my vision. The wards' hum rose to an earsplitting whine. The dream bucked, resisting, as if I'd jammed a stick into the spokes of its wheel.

  I grabbed his wrist with my free hand, gripping hard enough to hurt.

  "You care about us," I said. "More than you want to admit. That's why it hurts this much. That's why you're so angry. It's not because we're wrong. It's because you're scared you might be."

  His lips parted.

  The world split.

  The floor yawned open, swallowing the Restricted Section, the rope, the mps, Cael's shocked face. I fell through fracturing shelves and shredding pages, through a thousand overpping corridors where Seraphine cried and Cael walked away and I arrived just a little too te.

  Darkness rushed up to meet me.

  As it closed over my head, a single thought burned clean through the chaos:

  This isn't a test about whether someone can fight the Tower.

  It's about whether someone can stand between Seraphine and the people who weaponize their love for her.

  Rocher had done it with a sword.

  I was going to have to do it with the truth.

  The nightmare lurched, gears grinding, as the next loop cwed itself into shape.

  Somewhere ahead, I heard a little boy's voice shouting Seraphine's name.

  This time, I thought, bracing for impact, I know where you break, Cael.

  And I am not letting you shatter her again.