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.
