Chapter 26-Half the Room

Odett’s POV

  “Then cover half the main room,” Cassian said.

  “The exercise is about keeping residents safe, not making our layout convenient.”

  “We’re keeping him with the adult he knows unless one of them needs medical isolation,” Cassian said, straightening his shoulders.

  His voice shook at first, but it remained firm.

  I had solved the problem of the light, and I hated hearing that my answer was wrong. But the child would be frightened and alone in that shuttered room. At breakfast Mom had given me space without leaving me by myself; I should have understood why it mattered.

  I picked up the folded partitions and carried them toward the main room.

  “You’re right,” I admitted.

  “We can block the eastern windows and place both of them near the interior wall.”

  “Nolan will need to move two supply crates before the residents arrive.”

  Cassian’s startled expression made it clear he had expected a longer argument.

  “I will tell him,” Cassian replied with surprised confidence as he hurried toward the supply station before he could reconsider.

  “The blue side faces the windows, but watching you listen to the team leader was still inspiring,” Joshy remarked with exaggerated innocence while turning my backward partition.

  The first simulated residents arrived under the instructors’ watch. A young witch refused to enter because the combined magic made her dizzy. Cassian found a portable ward screen that softened the magic around her cot while letting her stay with the student playing her sister. I felt the lesson land a second time.

  “You were right about keeping them together,” I told Cassian with honest approval while helping him secure the screen.

  “Apparently, the lesson needed to find me twice.”

  His hands still shook, but his shoulders relaxed when I followed the next instructions without arguing.

  Then an instructor marked two food crates contaminated. Cassian sent Nolan to request supplies from another team and reduced the evening meal on the schedule until they arrived. He made the choice without looking to me for permission.

  “Last term, you would have calculated six alternatives first,” I remarked with genuine approval when the final resident settled.

  Cassian reminded me that last term I would have taken the command sheet from him. Joshy laughed from the medical table. I let Cassian have the point, though I refused to agree with Joshy’s assessment of my humility.

  The instructor kept us after the other teams were dismissed and reviewed Cassian’s command sheet, the shelter map, and each complication. Her expression revealed nothing while we waited. She returned the papers only after reading every correction.

  “Cassian made the final decisions, even when his team disagreed.”

  “Odett advised without taking command, although I suspect it caused her physical pain,” the instructor observed with measured approval while looking toward me.

  “Only briefly,” I replied with restrained humor while Joshy studied the ceiling to hide his amusement.

  “It improved once Cassian stopped making questionable decisions.”

  “She means once I stopped making decisions she questioned.”

  “There is a difference,” Cassian corrected with quiet confidence while folding the command sheet against his chest.

  The instructor dismissed us with a small, approving smile.

  Joshy and I got home in time for my session with Aunt Jess. Two wooden knives waited on the mat in the private practice room. She stood beside them with an expression that promised sore muscles; the heavier weapons remained against the wall.

  “Your mother told me you slept without another nightmare,” Aunt Jess said with casual relief after tossing me a wooden knife and settling into a fighting stance.

  “That is the last question I am asking about it unless you bring it up.”

  Her posture made it clear that the conversation was already over unless I reopened it.

  I tested the knife’s weight and allowed a thin current of power to move through my hand.

  “You are not going to ask whether my magic feels normal?”

  “Everyone else watches me before pretending they aren’t,” I added.

  Aunt Jess’s attention dropped pointedly toward my stance.

  Aunt Jess struck before I finished adjusting, and I barely redirected the wooden blade.

  “I am watching your feet because they are too close together,” she answered with blunt affection.

  “If your magic becomes unstable, Lorilie tells Shina, you tell me, or I notice when the furniture starts flying.”

  “Until then, you are my niece, not a problem waiting to happen.”

  She swept a leg toward my knee.

  Relief almost cost me the next exchange. I jumped clear of her sweeping leg, landed badly, and barely caught the next strike. She grinned, pleased that I was paying attention again.

  We trained until my arms shook from blocking her. My magic stayed steady, Lorilie kept close, and Aunt Jess corrected every hesitation without lowering her guard. By the end I was exhausted because I had worked for it. That felt good.

  Aunt Jess offered her hand and pulled me off the mat.

  “Better.”

  “You spent the first ten minutes waiting for something to go wrong, but you stopped once you remembered I would hit you whether you worried or not,” she praised with satisfaction in her voice.

  I accepted the compliment despite the threat wrapped around it.

  “Your teaching methods are deeply comforting,” I muttered with breathless sarcasm while wiping my face with the towel Aunt Jess tossed me.

  “I understand why Mom considers you emotionally supportive.”

  “Rainie considers me supportive because I know when to hug her and when to help her hide a body,” Aunt Jess replied with shameless affection as she hooked an arm around my shoulders and steered me toward the door.

  “The trick is figuring out which one she needs before your father catches us.”

  Mom waited in the corridor, proving she had heard at least the last part.

  Mom looked from Aunt Jess to me as though deciding which of us needed supervision. I waited for her to check my magic. Instead she took in my damp hair and tired smile, and her expression softened.

  “No bodies before dinner.”

  “Your father complains when we ruin his appetite,” Mom ordered with long-suffering fondness after kissing my temple and handing Aunt Jess a clean towel.

  Aunt Jess glanced toward the dining room as if reconsidering the schedule.

  “After dinner is still available,” Aunt Jess whispered with delighted mischief.

  Mom shoved her lightly toward the guest rooms, and their arguing followed us down the hall as it had a hundred times before. I followed them, laughing before I realized I wasn’t waiting for their voices to drop.

  That night, I wrote three lines in the warded journal. No dream, no surge of magic, no moment when I couldn’t feel Lorilie. I read them back and wished they told me something about Black Claw. They didn’t, but they were the first entries in days that I didn’t hate writing.

  I left the journal closed. Mom laughed at something Dad said in the hall, and I stayed in bed instead of going out to study their faces. If the dream came back, I would wake them. Tonight I listened to them talking until I stopped following the words and finally fell asleep.