“Look,” he said.
I looked.
The water did what water in our basin had always done, since before me, since before my father—it took the lines of the bloodline and gave them back. Mine rose at the speed his had risen at his first reading. Mine settled at the depth his had settled. Mine drew, held, and did not fail.
He waited until I had finished looking, then said, “Good.”
Good.
That was the only word he spoke.
He did not embrace me. He had not embraced me before that day, and he did not begin then. The wordgoodwas the closest he would ever come to affection. It held the entire weight of his approval, given once, at the threshold, as a verdict.
He took his hand off the basin, then mine, and when he turned, I turned with him. We walked out of the reading room into the rest of my life.
I had beengood.
From the day he spoke it, I knew what I was being made into and what I was being made for.
I had spent every year after that performing toward the moment when the word would be said again.
He had never said it again.
He taught me another word at eleven: bedrock.
An Ashford man, he said, could be taught restraint, command, discipline, the proper reading of a Mark. None of it mattered if he could not trust the ground inside himself.
“Without bedrock,” my father said, “everything else cracks.”
He told me this in the basin chamber, with his hand on the marble and his eyes on the water.
By twelve, I had bedrock.
By thirteen, I had the densest, most stable Mark in my primary school.
And at fourteen, my father told me an Untethered was coming.
The Council had read the beginning of my Verse and found a girl in it. She would arrive with a Mark that would not settle.
Zenith would assign her to me.
He did not ask whether I wanted her.
He told me to prepare.
For years, I did.
Quarterly readings. Marks measured, recorded, approved. Small slights ignored. Challenges from other boys met and ended. No failures. No cracks in the bedrock.
By the time Astra Verita arrived, I had been good for years in preparation for her.
Now she was sitting two corridors over.
Her Mark would not settle.
And mine had warmed.
The Verse was coming to fruition. As far as I knew, they always did.
