Ray and Alexia were asked to gather a cadre of Cadets from the list Juliana gave them on their way out.
And so, around twenty teenagers were currently standing at attention in the clearing by the base of the Ebony Castle.
Juliana was whispering while I followed behind, her murmurs only audible to me as we walked down the line of candidates.
"All these people are in our batch's top ranks. They possess useful abilities, solid combat experience, and have taken on enough missions to show they can follow orders," she explained.
I kept nodding along. It was impressive how quickly she dug up their backgrounds. But this wasn't exactly the first time I had seen her show off her freakishly good memory.
She claimed it wasn't photographic.
Which, honestly, sounded like something someone with a photographic memory would say.
According to her, she had this place in her mind — a memory palace, she called it — where she'd carefully organize every face, name, and fact she wanted to remember.
