He wore the gray coat of faculty, buttoned all the way to the throat. Narrow, clean-shaven, dark hair combed flat. He held his hands in front of him with the fingertips lightly touching, as if hehad been interrupted in the middle of judging something. His Mark sat at the inside of his wrist, pale and exact as a signature.
“Professor Caswell,” he said. “You must be Verita.”
He didn’t extend a hand, and his eyes went to my wrist before they came to my face.
“Astra.” I was getting tired of correcting that mistake.
He nodded, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t stick.
“Stand at the rim. Your hands at your sides. Eyes at the floor until I say otherwise. You will not be asked to do anything today. You will be asked to be still while the room does what the room does. This is standard procedure for new first-years.”
I went to the rim of the circle. There were two empty places. I took the one nearest the door because I didn’t yet know whether I would want to run for that door later.
The student to my left was a girl I didn’t recognize. Small, pale-skinned, with a Mark the same gold I had seen on a woman at the gate. She avoided my eyes. The student to my right was a boy with a Mark on the back of his hand. He didn’t look at me either.
Across the circle, opposite me, was Caspian Ashford.
He hadn’t moved when I came in. He just stood at the rim, his palms at his sides, his eyes on the floor.
To his left, also at the rim, was the girl I had seen with him in the dining hall my first day—the one who had put her hand on his sleeve. Her hair was swept back in a severe knot I would later learn belonged to her family.
Her Mark was at her collarbone, and the collar of her dress didn’t hide it. The lines were gold and fine, almost delicate, but the skin around them looked faintly pulled. As if the Mark sat a fraction too tightly.
I didn’t know enough yet to know why that bothered me.
But she made it immediately clear that my very existence bothered her with the look she gave me.
Caswell cleared his throat and drew my attention back to where he stood in the center of the circle. His feet were inside the inlaid stone. His palms were turned up.
“I am the instrument,” he said. “You are the field. I will speak the call. The room will do the rest. None of you will be asked to act. Some of you will feel acted upon. This is normal at first attunement. None of what is about to happen will harm you.”
He raised his palms to chest height and spoke a word… or something like one. It had no syllable I could repeat. It was a thing his throat had done, and once the sound reached the stone, the room changed.
The air thickened.
It felt like a room where water had been boiling for hours and no one had opened a door.
The Marks in the room were responding.
The girl to my left’s Mark brightened. The boy to my right’s began to throw light. Across the circle, Caspian Ashford’s Mark showed through the fabric of his sleeve.
I hadn’t known I could see Marks through cloth until that moment.
I hadn’t known many things until this week.
The Mark on my own wrist heated.
I’d been told I would be asked to do nothing, so I did nothing.
My Mark, apparently, missed that messaged.
The lines stretched toward Caspian Ashford.
They stayed on my skin, but they pulled toward his chest like a compass needle given one job.
My body followed. Wrist first. Then elbow. Then the soft, stupid place behind my ribcage.
Across the circle, Caspian remained motionless.
