Cassidy Holt reported up a chain.
The girl waiting for Soren three days later had already read the report.
She was sitting on the low wall outside the drill yard when he came out alone.
Gray uniform. Class A trim. Not a tamer's kit though, no beast-bond hardware on her, and that was the first wrong thing.
Everyone at this academy walked with a beast or the socket where one used to sit.
She had the socket.
"Soren Kane," she said. "You don't have to stop. I already know all the parts that matter."
He stopped anyway.
"Celia Ashcroft."
She didn't offer a hand.
She looked at him instead, slow, top to bottom, checking a structure for the crack she already knew was in it somewhere.
"You've got five," she said. "Six, if the quiet one with no thread counts, and she does, she costs the most." A pause. "I read Holt's note. She thinks the interesting thing is that your circle won't sell. That's not an interesting thing."
"What's the interesting thing?"
