Mabel had noticed the changes in Liam long before the announcement of the Nalim assessment had ever been made.
They had been subtle at first, small enough that anyone else might have dismissed them as ordinary shifts in temperament from a student who had already been difficult to read.
Liam had always been quiet. He had always carried himself with a detached calm that made him seem older than he was, or perhaps simply less affected by things that should have affected him.
But in the weeks before Nalim, something about that calm had changed. It had become less like control and more like absence. He responded to things with the same flat expression, the same measured tone, and the same sharp awareness, yet the spaces between his reactions had grown colder.
