Chapter 24: Read It Slowly

The Academy held its year-end ceremony on the first warm day of summer.

Every first-year cadet wore the plain grey robe, and every rank was read aloud from the stage.

It was the same ceremony I had missed in my own trial hall, the one where nobody had listened.

I stood in line on the field with the rest of my class.

The silver band sat on a cushion in Ferris's hands, three steps behind me.

"You could wear it," Ferris murmured. "Technically, you are required to wear it."

"I know."

"Torin said you'd say no."

"I'm not saying no," I said. "I'm saying not for the first hour."

"A gamble."

"I want to be a cadet for one hour," I said. "Just once, with nobody bowing."

Ferris sighed through her nose, and the corner of her mouth went up.

"The crown will keep," she said. "I'll hold it."

The field was packed with families.

I had asked to see no guards in the stands, only people.

On the left, near the front, sat Jared in his plain black suit.

Beside him sat Mom, in her dark green scarf, with a thin book open on her knee.

It was a book of my favorite poems.

She had been reading it for weeks, she said, to learn the answers to the questions she had not yet asked.

She looked up and met my eyes across the field.

She did not wave.

She only nodded once, and she stayed in her seat.

I nodded back.

It was enough for today.

In the second row, in a dark coat with his collar turned up, sat Torin.

He had not worn the crown, either.

He sat between two parents I did not know, and he was clapping at all the right times, and no one looked at him twice.

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