At seven-fifteen, the dining hall was beginning to thin.
Students drifted toward their evening routines — the library for the academic, the common rooms for the social, the training halls for the ones who were constitutionally unable to let a day end without one more session of something.
William was in no particular hurry.
He had Reylan's homework and Ashcroft's reading and the resonance layering exercises that the morning class had introduced, and he would do all of them, but not urgently. The evening had enough room in it for food and for thought and for the specific kind of sitting still that the week had not provided much space for.
Liam had left ten minutes ago, departing with the energy of someone who had somewhere to be that he was genuinely looking forward to. Marcus had gone to the library with Sara, the two of them having apparently reached an arrangement about working through the assessment preparation together.
