Chapter 10
The stolen blanket hadn’t made the room warm.
It had only made the cold more specific: toes, shoulders, the place between my shoulder blades where the wool had slipped while I slept.
I was awake and shivering when the basin filled.
One moment, the corner of the room was dark and the basin was dry.
The next, water stood black to the rim.
I rolled my eyes, grumbled, “This again?” and watched as pale words wrote themselves across the surface.
Public reading. Main hall. Second bell.
Then the water cleared.
It gave me nothing except the hour, the room, and enough time to wonder whether public reading meant I would be read or only made to watch.
At breakfast, the dining hall had gone too quiet.
There were still cups, chairs, knives against plates, the low sound of other first-years pretending they weren’t afraid of what second bell would bring. Upperclassmen stood in tight groups, whispering while trying to look like they had no reason to whisper.
I looked for Delphine before I looked for bread.
The third table was empty where she should have been.
For a second, I stood there holding my tray like it might give me instructions on what to do next.
Delphine had been the only person in this room who waved when she saw me coming.
Barely.
Self-consciously.
Like friendship was a thing she hadn’t quite learned yet.
Just like me.
I sat in the chair where I always sat, alone, and didn’t eat because my stomach was churning.
At five minutes before the second bell, I followed the crowd to the Main Hall.
It was on the south side of the building, on the ground floor, with a door on three sides and a stone wall at the fourth.
The fourth wall was the west wall.
Names had been carved into the dark stone there, cut deep enough that centuries had not weathered them away.
Some names had dates beside them.
Some had none.
Nothing indicated what the wall recorded.
That seemed to be the point.
In the front of the room, a basin was set into a low platform.
Headmaster Quill sat beside the basin as if the chair had been placed there because he had decided where the room’s center was and that he would be in it.
His dark coat was immaculate. The silver at his temples looked less like age than a deliberate part of the uniform.
A narrow black folder rested on his knee.
When I came in, he looked at me once, utterly expressionless, then he looked away.
I sat in the back row. Three first-years were already there. None of them looked at me or moved over to give me a place. I took the aisle because it was open and because I would be able to escape faster after.
The hall filled by year, first-years pushed to the back, older students closer to the basin.
Faculty stood at the sides: one at each corner, two at each main door. Aldric was at the southeast corner. Caswell was at the northeast. Astor was at the southwest.
Juno wasn’t in the hall.
Linden was at the side door on the west wall. The door that opened on the names.
Quill raised a hand at four o’clock exactly. The hall stopped breathing all at once.
“This is the eleven hundred and seventy-eighth public reading at Zenith Hall,” he said.
“I have presided over four hundred and three of these. The protocol is unchanged in my time at the chair, and it remains unchanged today. I will read each first-year in the order the school has written. I will leave settled Marks unnamed. I will announce any Mark that has failed its expected shape.”
The hall exhaled.
Quill opened the black folder.
He read four names before he read the one I had been waiting to hear.
“Delphine Moreau.”
I had been listening for it. Waiting for it.
A chair scraped near the west wall.
The sound came from a place I hadn’t noticed because someone had placed it just outside the line of the back row, near the side door Linden guarded.
Delphine stood there, separated from the rest of us before her name had even left the air.
My stomach dropped.
She had been in the room the whole time.
Set aside.
Already halfway to gone.
Delphine dragged her feet as she walked to the basin.
Her face was pale, her sleeve already pushed back, the Mark on her forearm exposed before Quill asked for it.
She knew what would happen next.
She put her right palm on the rim of the basin.
For the four students before her, the basin had brightened the Mark and let them go.
For Delphine, it went still.
The expected light never came.
Not even a fraction of gold.
Then the color lifted out of her Mark.
A thin, pale thread rose from her skin and hovered above the basin.
Delphine’s fingers tightened on the rim, her knuckles white.
When the thread vanished, the Mark on her forearm was paler than before.
Less there.
Quill stared at the Mark for a long moment.
Then he said, “A Dimming has been observed.”
That was the word for what was happening to Delphine.
The one she had been asking for.
The one they had withheld until the moment it could be used against her.
Dimming.
The hall held still.
Delphine took her hand from the basin.
She didn’t look at me.
Caswell was already at the west door with Linden.
That was when I understood: this had never been a reading.
It had been a choreographed exit.
Quill murmured something none of us could hear to Delphine.
Whatever it was, it made her look once toward the west door.
Then she walked toward Linden and Caswell.
Linden opened the door.
The name from yesterday moved through me.
Zenith Tower.
Caswell set a hand on Delphine’s shoulder, light as a courtesy and final as a lock.
She passed through.
Caswell followed.
The door closed.
For one awful second, the hall stayed silent.
Then Quill looked at the empty place where Delphine had stood and said:
“The reading continues.”
He read the next name.
I didn’t hear it.
I sat in the back row with my hands clasped in my lap. I held them so still they didn’t feel like my own hands anymore. The second pattern around my Mark—the negative Juno had taught me to read—pulled thin in my wrist and I willed it to stop. To be steady.
The rest of the reading moved around the hole she left.
Five more first-years were read. Their Marks brightened. They returned to their seats. The hall breathed when Quill allowed it.
Every time Quill looked down at the page, my legs prepared to stand.
He never called my name.
That should have felt like mercy.
It felt like a postponement of my own doom.
The west door stayed closed.
Delphine didn’t come back through it.
The reading ended at half past four.
When the hall stood, I stood with it.
Students filed out by year. First-years at the back. Second-years at the side. Third-years at the front.
I followed the third-years because that was where the aisle took me, and because my body was still pointed at the west door no matter where my feet went.
In the corridor, someone had put lilies on the small table near the turn.
White. Fresh. Arranged before anyone was supposed to know they were needed.
I walked past them.
The smell followed me all the way to Room 114.
The stolen blanket waited at the foot of the bed.
I wrapped it around my shoulders and sat against the wall, still cold in places wool couldn’t reach.
Quill had finally named what was happening to Delphine.
Dimming.
Then he had let them take her through the west door.
He hadn’t called my name.
I should have been relieved.
I was the farthest thing from that.
At Zenith Hall, being spared only meant someone had chosen a later hour.