The final week of term arrived with the specific compressed intensity that academic calendars produced everywhere — assignments due in clusters, the library's evening population swelling past its usual capacity, the particular quality of stress that came from knowing an ending was close enough to see but not yet close enough to touch.
William moved through it with the steadiness that the term's larger events had built in him. Reylan's final assessment, Ashcroft's essay, the practical examination in essence theory that required him to demonstrate the multi-element control that had once been his closely guarded secret and was now simply known, accepted, the unremarkable fact of who he was at this academy.
