The drills ended and the pack didn't disperse.
They stayed in his shape.
Maren at the heat line with her ears up.
Selah a few steps off with the cold still beading on her own hands.
Mona surfaced at his heel through a fresh hole.
The moth held on his collar where Dani had stopped calling it back.
The rank yard emptied of everyone but them.
He stood in the middle of it and let himself look at what he'd built, out in the open, marked, with no door left in the wall.
◆◆◆◆
Once, the academy had handed him a class nobody wanted.
Class Z.
The charity rank.
The slot they filled with the ones who'd wash out so the real classes had a floor to stand on.
Soren was on the floor.
So had every line on his map, back when they were strangers the system had thrown at a boy it expected to fail.
That class was gone.
What stood in the yard now hadn't been assigned to him.
