Sylvia looked at him. "That was not a compliment."
Dean kept walking. "It was not inaccurate either."
She stared at the side of his face for another second, then gave up with a faint, helpless exhale that almost became laughter but did not quite dare. Perhaps because Andrea was still behind them. Perhaps because the corridor still remembered the shape of Dean's threat. Perhaps because there were moments, very rare and deeply inconvenient, when even Sylvia understood that mockery needed to wait until blood had fully returned to the room.
They entered the examination hall under the strained politeness of every adult present.
Dean took his seat.
The ring stayed visible.
The first paper was set before him.
And because Dean was, at his core, a man who did not like people mistaking absence for weakness, he destroyed it.
