The Display of Rank
The Great Hall didn’t feel like a room; it felt like the inside of a ribcage. Massive, soot-stained stone arches curved overhead, and the air was thick with the scent of ancient pine and the nervous sweat of five hundred teenagers. “Don’t look at the High Table,” Jade whispered, her shoulder brushing mine as we joined the throng of students funneling into the tiered benches. “The Chancellor is a human lie detector, and the Regents behind him are worse. Just find a spot in the mid-section. Not too high to be noticed, not too low to be a target.” We slid into a row of dark oak benches. The wood was cold, carved with the initials of a hundred years of students who had survived this place. At the front of the hall, standing behind a podium made of a single block of white obsidian, was Chanc
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