Every student in the alignment cycle stood along the walls in formal dress. First-years nearest the doors. Second-years waited beyond them. Upperclassmen closer to the raised circle. Rev remained beside me, which meant she had decided the cycle could survive being inconvenienced for one more minute. Faculty and instructors stood behind the students in dark coats, arranged by rank. Council witnesses occupied the chairs at the far right, faces calm, notebooks open.
Silence held the whole arrangement together.
The whole hall had been built to say what a privilege this was.
Quill stood beside the Convergence basin.
Linden sat to his right. Caswell stood behind him. Juno was there too, two places down from Aldric, her face unreadable and her hands folded in front of her. The woman from the interrogation sat near the witnesses with a fresh notebook.
Lord Magnus Ashford stood at the far side of the circle.
He looked less like Caspian up close.
Caspian’s control had cracks in it now. I had seen them in his room.
Magnus’s did not.
He looked me over once, assessing whether I might become expensive enough to ruin.
Then I saw Caspian.
He stood at the foot of the raised circle in formal black, wrists bare in a hall where everyone knew what Ashford men wore to ceremonies.
The sight hit harder here than it had from the window. In this light, his Mark looked almost blue-black against his skin, darklines held still by will rather than obedience. His hair had been tied back. His face was calm enough for the hall.
His eyes were not.
In the candlelight, his eyes looked less gray than storm-lit.
He didn’t look at my dress first.
He looked at my face. He met my eyes.
My Mark pulled toward him.
The answer went through me low and sharp.
Caspian felt it. Nothing moved except the pulse at his throat, but I could feel his heart speed up like it was beating in my own body.
Magnus looked at his son’s throat.
A small thing to notice.
But of course he noticed it.
Cosima touched my elbow once. Briefly. Permission and warning in the same pressure.
“Go,” she said.
I stepped into the hall.
The music changed.
It lifted, strings and low pipes. The first-years bowed their heads as I passed. The second-years did the same. By the third row, I wanted to tell everyone to stop doing that.
Then Kieran caught my eye.
He stood with the third-years near the left alcove, formal coat unbuttoned at the throat because apparently even doom could not convince Kieran Marsh to behave fully. His face was pale, but his eyes were bright green and fixed on mine, and when I passed, he gave me the smallest tilt of his head.
