Selah overloaded on a Thursday, and it was a good performance, and Soren had already decided he was done watching it.
They were in the training hall.
She was running a controlled frost sequence, textbook, and then her output "slipped," the cold sheeting off her in a wave that iced the near wall and dropped the room fifteen degrees in a breath.
Her eyes went white.
Her breathing went short.
The system did its part.
[DING! — Selah Young: output destabilizing. Recalibration advised.]
It was flawless.
It was the same overload she'd been having all season, the ones that put her in his room on the system's own advisory, and a year ago he'd have crossed the hall and grounded her without a second thought.
He'd since watched her hold perfect control through the worst night of her life, under three continents' worth of eyes, and place frost ferns to the inch while coming apart in his bed.
So he didn't cross the hall.
He leaned on the rail and waited for her to finish.
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