“It’s a general assembly.” She pushed the leaflet under my nose. “This is where we meet everybody, trainers and scholars included. And it looks like everyone who lives here gets an invite. They’re probably just here out of curiosity, I guess. Anyway, after the assembly, we get shown around the building, probably so we know where to go when classes start tomorrow. I’m guessing the scholars are the equivalent of preceptors.”
“Yeah, Nathan mentioned those.” I cast her some serious side-eye. “Speaking of which, he seemed more interested in you than his monsters. And I can’t remember the last time I saw you blush like that. Do I sense a little crush?”
She crinkled her nose, like she smelled something sour. “Not a chance. He’s got no sense of humor, and I can’t deal with that. He has the looks, sure, but what’s the point if he’s lacking the je ne sais quoi that actually makes me blush? I was just warm from running.”
“If you say so.” I grinned at her.
She rolled her eyes. “I do say so. I even threw in some French so you know I’m serious. A guy has to have a… spark of something, you know? He can’t just be nice to look at, or you might as well get a hologram of a movie star.”
The double doors opened with a ground-shaking boom, and the crowd began to move like water draining down a plug, pouring into the room beyond. As Genie pulled me forward, she flashed me a mischievous smirk. “I liked his tweed, though.”
Men had always fallen over themselves at the merest sight of Genie, to the point where she could have had her pick, but her heart had some major walls around it—a by-product of her upbringing, where the words “arranged marriage” had been bandied about frequently over the years. She hated the subject, so we didn’t talk about it often, though it always saddened me when we did. It was a tradition I’d never be able to wrap my head around. Anyway, I sensed the prospect of romance was the furthest thing from her mind. We were there to work and study and learn, even if men were literally tripping over their own feet in her presence.
Careful not to get wrenched apart in the rush of people, we squeezed through the crammed doorway into the assembly hall. Genie tugged my hand, leading me to a cloistered walkway off to the side, where there were fewer people. Everyone else seemed eager to get a front-row seat, fighting over chairs to get as close to the stage as possible.
“Forget that.” Genie hopped up onto a stone ledge between the cloisters, and I jumped up beside her. “I’m not about to get claustrophobia for the sake of an assembly.”
I laughed nervously. “No, me neither.”
“I’d say we got the best seats in the house.” Genie leaned out, her arm wrapped around the cloister pillar. Keeping up my I’m-totally-fine façade, I peered out with her.
“Wow…” The scale of the hall took my breath away, though that might have been the memory of not being able to get any air. Regardless, it made the SDC’s assembly hall look like a pipsqueak of a gathering spot. A cavernous dome arched overhead, forged of stained glass that depicted great monster battles of bygone days: vast giants waged war against tiny mortals; jeweled thunderbirds struck at their human captors; silvered selkies swam in seal form through cobalt water, while in the next frame they stood in their beautiful human forms on pebbled beaches—shedding their sealskins while oblivious to the hunters lurking behind glass trees, waiting to strike. The colors of the conflicts spilled down onto the congregation in rainbow shards, as though there’d been a happy ending to the tales.
It wasn’t happy for the Purge beasts, though. I drew my eyes away, realizing that I’d fixated on the stained-glass monsters instead of their human counterparts. A part of me had wanted to cry out to the selkies and warn them off the beaches. But that story had already been told, and the real selkies were likely in the Bestiary somewhere, or in a coven Aquarium, being used as back-up generators.
Genie plucked me out of my thoughts by pointing out the towering septet of white marble dragons. There was one at the head of the room, standing sentinel over the stage, and three down each side of the hall. I didn’t know if they were loadbearing or just decorative, but they packed a heck of a punch. They glowered down at me with golden eyes, which sparkled in the rainbow light cast by the overhead dome.
“Do you think they’ve got dragons in all these places?” Genie asked, giggling. “How did we end up with bronze ones at the SDC? I wonder if it’s a hierarchy thing—a sign that a coven or an institute is compensating.”
I clung tighter to the cloister pillar. “I don’t know, I kind of like our bronze ones. They’re homey, and this is all very… regal.”
“Maybe that’s why I feel like I should be whispering.” Genie beamed, drinking in the atmosphere.
Everything had a clean, luxurious air, down to the rows and rows of plush white and gold chairs that everyone shuffled to. And beneath all of that were white marble floors streaked with veins of pink and gold. The stage rose up in a balustrade of that same veined marble before giving way to a semi-circle of polished white stone that was neither marble nor the Institute’s favorite concrete. There, figures began to emerge from the wings, but I only recognized one: Victoria.
Two of the women were sharply dressed in identical tailored suits of ruby red. Very fitting, considering they looked identical, too. I assumed they were the famed Basani twins. Beside them stood a younger woman who bore a startling resemblance to the twins. She was a bit older than Genie and me, dressed more
