Byron walked in, and the candle I had guttered went still.

I stayed facing the glass.

Below the gallery glass, Celeste Vey was in her Fifth. The Fifth was the trial that separated the competent from the ranked, five invocations over a water bowl while three judges watched for any break in form. Every witch in the coven had taken one. Most had scraped through. Celeste was not scraping. Her voice held the invocation clean. Her hands were set correctly at the bowl's rim.

The water should have been cooling at the wrong rate by now.

I had opened the window at the back of the third-floor stairwell forty minutes earlier. The draft I had invited through the service corridor had reached the ritual room. The candle at the north wall had leaned with it. The room had been saying what I needed the room to say.

Then Byron opened the service door behind me, and the candle lifted back to vertical.

A different temperature in the corridor. His body in the doorway had redirected the air. That was physics, not skill. But no one had disrupted my drafts in four years.

He stood at the rail, two seats down, hands in his coat pockets.

"That candle was doing something," he said.

My face gave him nothing.

"It stopped when I came in."

Below us, Celeste moved into the fourth sequence. The water in the bowl was holding. My window was still open. But the air in the ritual room had shifted by the span of a hand, and everything I had set was now a degree off.

"The service door is usually locked," I said.

"I have a key."

He took it out of his pocket and set it on the rail in front of me. The standard gallery service key. Bronze. Evermere-issued. Auditors received one as part of their arrival package.

I had watched him sign for it at the registrar four days ago. The service corridor had not entered my calculations.

That was the problem. I had been reading every room in this building for four years and I had not read his.

"I should be able to read a room I have a key to," he said.

His voice had stayed level. No accusation. He was saying the sentence the way I would have said it to myself.

Below, Celeste finished her fifth invocation. The water in her bowl turned the color of rust, which was correct. The judges made small marks in their logs. Celeste stepped back from the circle and breathed out.

She had passed. Without my interference, without my help, without my draft. I had been prepared to watch her stumble on her sixth. That was not happening today.

"She recovered," I said.

"She might have needed more time. You would have liked to see that."

"I don't need to."

He looked at me for the first time since he had entered the gallery. I did not look back. The sconce behind him was catching the side of his face. I registered the shape. I let the registration pass without a label.

"You're not watching her anymore," he said.

"I don't need to."

He nodded once, to himself. He stepped back from the rail. He did not pick up the key.

"You can keep that," he said.

He left through the main door, not the service door. Below, Celeste was being walked off the trial floor by two of the proctors. One of them was smiling at her. The Matron, visible in the far corner of the ritual room, was speaking to the senior judge. Her face performed its satisfaction, the small warmth that resembled grace and functioned as a seal.

I stayed at the rail.

The key sat in front of me on the dark wood.

Byron had walked into my gallery, named what I was doing without naming it, and then given me the key. Not a threat. Not an accusation. An offering I had not asked for.

I picked it up and put it in my coat pocket.

The window stayed open. I walked down the service stairs he had come up. The air in the third-floor stairwell was still moving. I stepped inside and shut the window myself.

My corridor was empty. I went to my chamber. I closed the door. I set the key on my desk.

I was shaking in one hand. I did not investigate it.

A knock at my door before I had my coat off. The Matron's page, a Year 2 with a nervous mouth. A standing invitation to dinner tonight in the formal hall, the envoy from the Council was visiting. My presence was requested.

"What time does the Matron expect the Primes seated?" I said.

"Seven, Prime Indika. Formal dress."

"Tell her I'll be there."

She nodded and left.

I stood in my chamber with my coat half off.

The envoy from the Council was Byron's superior. Byron had been at Evermere for a week. I had known who he was. I had not let myself look at him properly until he took out a key and said the sentence I had been saying to myself for a long time.

Someone who read rooms the way I read rooms. Someone who had walked through a locked service door I had not accounted for, changed the temperature of my entire operation in under a minute, and left without raising his voice.

He was not supposed to be in the gallery without Matron authorization. He was not supposed to have made it past the third floor without logging his route. He had done both. Which meant he was either reckless or better at the building than I was.

I suspected the second.

I set my coat on the hook. I opened my drawer. I took out the ledger I did not show anyone, the one I had kept since Year 2 in a private, clean hand. I did not open it.

I put it back.

I stood at my chamber window. The grounds were a winter color. A cart was coming up the road with the Council envoy's luggage.

Tonight at dinner, Byron would be at the faculty table. I would be at the Prime table. We would not look at each other.

Managing that was going to be a problem.

The cart stopped at the gate.

I had been the Favorite for three consecutive cycles. Everyone at Evermere believed I earned my place through raw talent.

This morning, in the gallery, someone had walked in and outworked me in under a minute.

Fear was happening in my body.

So was interest. The first in a long time.