~Ezra POV~
I found Kate in the east wing at the end of the corridor that led to the secondary library, which told me she had been using the time everyone else spent fighting to read.
That was Kate. Even cornered, even desperate, she was still gathering information.
She heard me coming and did not run. She turned and faced the corridor and waited, which was either confidence or resignation. With her, the two had always been difficult to separate.
"Ezra," she said.
"Kate," I said.
We looked at each other across fifteen feet of corridor. She had a cut above her left eye from wherever she had been before this and her jacket was torn at the shoulder. She looked like someone who had been moving hard for two days and had not stopped long enough to address any of it.
"You tracked me through the secondary passage," she said. "I thought I had closed that route."
"You did," I said. "I used the one behind the west panel instead. I have known about it since my third week in this house."
