Zenith Hall (The Star-Marked #1)

Chapter 1

The man from the Council, Linden, hadn’t spoken since we’d left the city. His silence had made it quite clear that he’d rather be anywhere in the world than in the driver seat next to me.

Not like I’d chosen this arrangement.

Three days ago, a Council notice had found me at the shop, congratulating me on my recruitment. I’d never applied, so I assumed it was a mistake and tossed the letter in the trash.

Then Linden had arrived to prove notices could grow legs and ruin lives.

There was no debate. A girl like me couldn’t debate a Council man. He’d given me ten minutes to gather my things, and then off we went.

The road we’d turned onto an hour ago was gravel that ran between fields that grew nothing I could name. Flat land. Dark soil. No fences.

I’d never been on this road in my life. All I knew was that Zenith Hall sat at the end of it.

For a while, there was nothing to see except the plains and the road and the gray sky pressing down on both.

Then we crested a steep hill, and the academy appeared.

Black stone. Tall lintels. A building so out of place with the rural landscape around it that it looked as if something too old to care where it landed had dropped it there and moved on.

Linden didn’t slow as we approached. Up the hill, the motorcar climbing at the same speed it had been traveling since I got in the passenger seat.

The closer we got, the more uneasy the academy made me. Something about it was disturbing in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

Maybe it was only the difference between that much stone and the paper thin walls of the tenements I was accustomed to.

Stone could keep more secrets.

We finally came through the gate at three in the afternoon and followed the topiary-lined drive to the front doors, where a woman waited on the steps.

She inclined her head at Linden. They didn’t speak and he didn’t get out of the motorcar after it came to a stop.

“Ms. Verita,” the woman said, approaching the passenger window.

“Astra,” I corrected.

She waited with her arms crossed. Like I had misunderstood the rules, but they would become clear to me eventually.

“Ms. Verita,” she tried again, “come along. You’ll want to bring your bags.”

I only had one bag, and it was barely holding together. When I shrugged it over my shoulder and got out, the woman glanced at it like its very existence offended her.

Linden put the motorcar in reverse the moment my door shut and was gone before the woman turned to lead me inside.

Welcome to Zenith Hall, I thought, since no one had bothered to say it.

She led my up the steps and through a set of large doors. Inside, the air smelled strange. Not bad or chemical. Just odd in a way I had no word for. Greener than lavender. Deeper than sage. A third thing similar to but beneath both that the corridor was breathing out from somewhere overhead.

The woman walked without speaking and I followed. Stone floor, stone walls, a stone ceiling painted in some pattern of constellations I didn’t have time to take in. The sound my boots made on the floor didn’t sound like my footsteps. The air didn’t taste like air I had any right to breathe.

I don’t belong here.

That was my first real observation upon entering Zenith Hall.

The woman, who still hadn’t bothered to introduce herself, led me to Room 114 on the ground floor. She opened the door without using a key and stepped aside.

“You’ll find we have provided the necessities. First reading will be at the bell in the morning.”

She’d probably said the same sentence to a thousand girls. Apparently a response was not required from me to complete her task. She said it, then she turned and walked away, heels clicking down the corridor.

The room was as advertised. The bare necessities. A desk, probably older than I was. A dresser with one drawer that didn’t close. The bed was made with a gray wool blanket I would hate the smell of by morning. And the window faced a wall.

Nice view, I thought as I dropped the duffel on the bed.

For an institution that had apparently seen fit to rearrange my entire life around it, Zenith Hall seemed strangely uninterested in telling me what to do next.

No tour. No schedule. No older student assigned to point out the bathrooms and tell me which professors enjoyed ruining lives before breakfast.

Not that I’d been oriented many places before. The shop had taken all of eight minutes. But even there, someone had taken the time to show me the break room.

I’d been told it was a school for those Marked by Fate. I’d be given a Reading and a chance at a new life. Recruitment had not been presented as optional.

The first wasn’t a lie, at least. On the way to my room we’d passed students milling, and I’d seen a quad through the long windows letting late afternoon light through an obscene amount of glass.

It looked like a school. Just not any I’d attended.

The chance at a new life, though… this wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind.

I waited for someone to come back.

No one did.

The room stayed cold. The building’s shadow grew longer on the wall outside my window. Somewhere beyond the door, a bell rang once, and the building answered with footsteps that all seemed to know where they were going.

I could only sit alone and do nothing for so long. Eventually, hunger won.

So I followed the smell of food.

When I reached the dining hall, I stood at the threshold for what was probably ten seconds and felt every face in the room do one of two things: stare at me openly or pretend not to.

The room was packed. No one waved me over or made space for me, so I walked toward the nearest table where a girl with brown hair and a Mark on the inside of her wrist sat.

I waited the four seconds politeness asked for, but she didn’t slide down or even look up.

A boy at the same table, three seats down on the bench, glanced at me. He didn’t slide down either. In fact, he spread out to take up more space.

In under two minutes, it had been made clear what my social life would look like inside Zenith Hall.

I went to lean on the wall because there was no place else for me, and snatched a piece of bread off the tray in the corner on my way. It was dry and stale, but I had eaten worse and called it dinner.

The bite had barely reached my mouth when the conversation at one of the nearby tables changed.

A pause passed through it, small enough that anyone who wasn’t paying attention might have missed it.

I was paying attention to everything.

One of the boys leaned closer to the girl beside him and said something almost without moving his lips.

At the center of their table, another boy looked up and looked at me.

He was my age, maybe a few years older, with blond hair and a formal air about him that immediately annoyed me.

The even more annoying part was that I noticed him back.

My attention caught on him and stayed there, as if some small, stupid part of me had mistaken being stared at for being summoned.

He stared long enough that I had to stop myself from shifting under his gaze, and he didn’t turn away until the girl beside him put a proprietary hand on his sleeve and shot me a glare.

I didn’t know what her problem was. He looked at me first.

Another girl with box braids passed me on her way out of the dining hall and paused to take me in.

“You’re new,” she observed.

“Does it show?”

She gave me half a smile and took it back before it could become friendly enough for the room to misunderstand.

“You’ll want to find the east kitchen next time. After hours. The bread there is better. So is the company.”

She was gone before I could thank her or ask her name.

I stayed at the wall until the dining hall began to thin. Then I went back to Room 114, lay down on the wool blanket with my boots on, and waited.

Somewhere down the hall, a door closed.

Then another.

After that, silence.

No one came to explain the school. No one came to ask if I had eaten. No one came to tell me I had done everything wrong in my first few hours.

But I felt like I had.