The spark is more startling than it is painful: it's like the zap of static electricity, or the frisson on your lusus's scales after he goes rolling in the laundry. Still, you step back, folding your hand safely behind you as you consider.

Sipara said he had a hive. Was she expecting you to take him all the way to the city outskirts? It's distressingly plausible: your brownblooded friends are a lot of things, but considerate has never been one of them.

You can't bring him back to your dormitories. If he were a caste or two higher, you might be able to pass him off as a quadrantmate and gain an exemption that way.. but Proctor Sungazer disapproves of caste gaps, and expects his creche to abide strictly by the three castes or less rule, analogous colours only. And you can't just bring Pheres in as a friend. No one would believe that.

You won't get culled, of course. You're a jade, and the caste is too rare for any physical reprimands short of outright treason. But Pheres certainly would be, and the consequences for you would be still be distinctly unpleasant.

(You've seen the girls with cut horns, and yours may not be very large, but you like them the way they are.)

You chew on your lip. Your confidence is slipping: you don't know Sappho nearly well enough to decide what she would do now, and you don't know what you should do. This is why you like staying in your dorms, with your books as company. Books, like the laws, are predictable and precise: they follow rules, and if you only pay attention, you'll always know how the plot will go, and what the characters will do.

You wish life was that simple.

"No," you finally say. "I don't think they would."