My Mark reached for him.
Green apple. Pain hidden under silk and jokes.
I nearly missed a step.
Rev muttered something low behind me, and I remembered my feet.
Hale stood on the instructors’ side.
At first I thought his sleeve was buttoned.
Then I saw it was not.
He had folded it once at the wrist, just enough to show the lower edge of his Mark if a person knew where to look.
I knew where to look.
Leather. Rain-dark stone.
His Pull steadied me before it hurt.
That was almost worse.
Three directions opened under my skin.
Caspian ahead of me.
Kieran to the left.
Hale to the right.
The hall wanted a single line.
My body refused to draw one.
By the time I reached the raised circle, my wrist was bright enough to draw the nearest witnesses’ eyes.
Quill smiled.
That was when I became truly afraid.
“Astra Verita,” he said.
His voice carried beautifully, because even sound behaved better when Quill used it.
“Zenith Hall welcomes you to the alignment formal.”
The hall answered, softly and together:
“Witnessed.”
The word moved over my skin.
Quill inclined his head toward me.
“You stand before your cycle, your instructors, your Council, and your invited witnesses within the first cycle of alignment.”
The first cycle. A tidy phrase for a thing that had already taken more from me than it had any right to.
