Chapter 2
The window had no light to give me when the first bell rang.
What little sky I could see beyond the wall was still dark. The room was colder than it had been when I’d fallen asleep.
I had passed out in my clothes. They were rumpled and stiff, so I changed into the uniform I found in the closet. I wasn’t under any illusions that they’d make me fit in better, but at least maybe I wouldn’t stand out quite as much.
There was a small basin in the corner of my room. I drank from it because I was thirsty and no one had told me not to.
Later, I would learn Zenith Hall had rules for every basin in the building. None of them were meant for drinking. But I didn’t know that then.
The woman from yesterday had said the “first reading” when the bell rings. As if that explained anything.
I figured I had better try to find it if I wanted to avoid making a worse impression on my second day than I had on my first.
In the hall, a boy in a dark school coat that matched mine came around the corner carrying a stack of books, and I stopped him.
“Where is the first reading?”
He pointed up a staircase without speaking and continued past me.
So up was the only answer I had.
Better than nothing.
I walked to the stairwell and climbed one flight of stairs, then another.
By the third, my breath was working harder than I wanted it to.
The stairs finally ended at a fourth-floor landing with one open door.
I peeked inside. A stone basin, low and round, suspiciously like the one in my room, set into a small chamber.
A woman beside the basin.
She wore the same kind of belt as the woman from yesterday. A dark Mark ran along her forearm.
She didn’t hide it.
When I came in, she bowed her head.
“Verita.”
“Astra, please.”
She didn’t smile or acknowledge the correction, but she took her hand off her knee and gestured me toward a small wooden chair beside the basin. The chair had been built for a body smaller than mine.
I sat in it anyway.
“My name is Juno,” she said. “I am your Oracle.”
“My what?”
“Oracle.”
She said it like it was an office. Like registrar, or guidance counselor, or something. I’d never heard of a school oracle, and I told her so.
She ignored my comment.
“I will be your Oracle for the rest of this year, and probably longer. Most students have years to prepare for Zenith. You had three days.”
“Two and a couple hours,” I said. “If we’re being generous.”
She didn’t seem amused by that either.
“The first reading will take less than ten minutes. You will see things you have not seen before. Some of them will make your body do things it has never done. Most are harmless. My job today is to read your Mark and keep you stable.”
“Stable?” I echoed.
“Stable,” she repeated. “It is a word with more weight than I will give it now. We will use it more in the coming weeks.”
She rested her hand on the rim of the basin.
“Do you know what a Mark is?”
“I know people have them.”
“But do you understand what they are?”
I shook my head.
“A Mark is the shape your Fate takes when the basin reads it. Some are inherited. Some are not. Some settle early. Some change with age, training, injury, grief, desire. Most students arrive with a family record of what their Mark is expected to become.”
“And I didn’t. Because I have no family.”
Juno’s eyes moved to my face.
Only for a moment.
“Correct,” she said. “You arrived with no record the school is willing to use.”
That was the first thing she had said that sounded like the kind of problem I was used to dealing with.
“What if I don’t have a Mark?”
Juno’s gaze went to the water.
“You do. Or else you wouldn’t be here.”
Then she said, “Please put your right hand on the rim opposite mine. Palm down. Wrist exposed.”
I did as I was told.
The cold of the stone went through my hand and traveled up the bones of my forearm, stopping at my elbow. Juno studied me, but whatever she saw, she didn’t name it.
“Now look at the water.”
I gazed into the basin.
The water did nothing for what felt like a long time.
Then it stirred. A line rose in the basin—thin, pale, drawing itself across the surface from where my palm met the rim.
Then another line, perpendicular. Then a third, curved this time.
A fourth followed more slowly, cutting away from the others as if it had no intention of joining them.
The lines climbed out, found my wrist, and laid themselves on my skin.
They were warm.
I had expected—I don’t know what I had expected, but definitely not this. What I had was four lines: three reaching outward, and one that seemed to belong only to itself.
“Your Mark,” Juno said.
I glanced at the lines again, then back at Juno, who was still staring at the basin, where the water was still moving.
“Are they supposed to—”
“They are supposed to settle.” Juno frowned. “Yours isn’t.”
She watched the water too long.
When she looked back at me, whatever she had been thinking was gone from her face.
The lines on my wrist moved again.
Not by much. They shifted half a thread. Like a draft I couldn’t feel was working on them. Then they shifted again. Then they came to a rest that wasn’t quite rest—like water at the top of a glass before it spills over.
Juno took her hand off the basin.
“That will be enough for today.”
I blinked. “That’s all?”
“That is more than I was told to write in a first-day report. I will write it anyway.”
“What does it mean?”
“That depends on what your Mark does next.”
For a second, I thought she would say more. Then she chose a different sentence.
“You should return to your room.”
“What were you going to say?”
“Something unhelpful.”
The basin kept moving behind her, but she didn’t say anything else.
I wanted to press, but I could tell from her expression that it wouldn’t get me anywhere.
So I left.
Down the three flights into a corridor full of students who, unlike me, knew what came next.
No one looked at me.
Last night they had stared. This morning they had already decided I wasn’t worth their attention. Or they were pretending I wasn’t.
I went back to Room 114, flopped on the bed, and stared at my wrist.
The Mark was still there. The lines hadn’t faded. They had moved again, though, while I’d been on the stairs—settled into a new arrangement that was not the one they had been in when I left Juno’s room. I watched them for a full minute. They didn’t move again while I watched.
The school still moved outside my door: footsteps, bells, a voice once, then nothing. No one came to explain the reading. No one came to tell me where I was supposed to be next or to reassure me that the lines on my wrist were normal.
I already knew they weren’t.
I could have gone back to the dining hall, but anxiety had twisted my stomach into a knot.
The school still moved outside my door: footsteps, bells, a voice once, then nothing. No one came to explain the reading. No one came to tell me where I was supposed to be next or to reassure me that the lines on my wrist were normal.
I already knew they weren’t.
Laying there, I thought of the shop. I had never loved it. I had never loved the cramped rooms above it either, with the neighbor’s baby crying at all hours through the plaster.
But there, at least, things had been simple.
A customer wanted ribbon. The landlord wanted the rent. The coalman wanted coin before delivery. Here, everything had a rule no one had told me and a record I had not agreed to enter.
The only place I knew here was the dining hall, and I didn’t want to eat. Anxiety had twisted my stomach into a knot.
By afternoon, the light against the wall outside my window had thrown shadows across the polished floor.
A draft ran under the door.
I felt it because I had taken my boots off. The cold touched my foot first. Then the latch moved.
I stood so fast the wool blanket slid off my lap.
A man stood in the doorway.
Everything about him had been arranged before he reached me: the dark coat brushed clean, the silver at his temples cut even, a narrow black folder tucked under one arm.
I squinted at him. “Is knocking not a thing you do here?”
He didn’t acknowledge the question or step inside. He just stood there, which, honestly, made it even more disconcerting.
His eyes drifted to my wrist, and I had the inexplicable urge to pull my sleeve down and cover the Mark.
“My name is Asher Quill,” he finally said. “I am the Headmaster of Zenith Hall. I had not intended to meet you today.”
“Great,” I said. “Well, since you’re here now, maybe you can tell me what I’m doing here.”
Quill frowned.
“I understood your admission had been explained.”
“The notice said school. Chance. Future. Mandatory. It left out the Mark and the basin and the part where water crawls onto your skin.”
“Ah. The basin. Juno sent word after your reading. That is why I’m here.”
That made my wrist feel colder.
“What did she tell you?”
“That your Mark did not behave.”
This time I did tug at my sleeve.
“I will not enter your room,” Quill said.
“I do not need to. I have come to tell you that the reading you did this morning will be the most important reading of your life. Juno may guide you. Caswell may test you. But when the school determines what is to be done with a girl like you, the authority will be mine.”
“A girl like me?”
The briefest pause.
“An unsettled girl.”
He inclined his head and turned around.
Over his shoulder he said, “The bell at six rings whether you have slept or not.”
Then he was gone before I could ask him what, exactly, I was supposed to do when the bell rang.