Chapter 65: The Exam Had No Place for a Throne

Professor Bell explained the difference between taking control and possessing more power while Dante stood beside the equipment-room door. The student listened carefully, which was considerate of her and deeply inconvenient for the reputation Dante had been building.

“A small hand can turn a valve attached to a large pipe,” the professor said. “That doesn’t make the hand stronger than everything moving through it.”

Dante nodded as though he had intended to add the plumbing example himself. His private council filed the correction under useful information delivered with unnecessary witnesses.

By the next morning, he had studied the assessment diagrams until Jett threatened to charge them rent. They walked to the practical hall past a cloud caught on a flagpole, where two sky pixies were arguing over which end to pull first.

Inside, individual workstations faced a long spectator window. Each held three wooden pieces of different weights, two upright frames with marked gaps, a padded catch tray, and a charge indicator. Professor Bell demonstrated the permitted route with an empty pointer before anyone touched the equipment.

“Move each piece through its marked gap, lower it onto the numbered pad, then end the lift,” he said. “If a piece tips, use the catch tray and restart. You will lose points for the mistake, but breaking it loses more.”

Dante examined his three pieces. A ruler should not have been required to prove himself against painted lumber, but he supposed the university needed a fair starting point.

At the signal, he lifted the first piece higher than necessary. Its corners gleamed under the hall lights, and the charge indicator dropped while he enjoyed the view.

He lowered it before grandeur could spend his entire allowance. The piece passed through its gap and settled on the first pad, where he released it cleanly.

The second carried more weight along one edge. When he tried to turn it, that edge dipped and the opposite corner approached the frame. He almost forced it level, then remembered Posey changing her hands beneath a landing partner instead of fighting the whole fall.

He guided the piece sideways into the catch tray, let its weight settle into the padding, and ended the lift. It had not broken, although the examiner’s pencil moved with the satisfaction of a weapon finding its target.

Dante took a breath and started again from lower down. He brought the heavy edge through first, turned only after it cleared the frame, and lowered the piece onto its pad.

The final block required less height and a longer horizontal path. He moved it close above the bench, leaving space beneath the upper rail, then placed it without adding a triumphant flourish. The indicator still showed charge when he raised his hand to finish.

At the station beside him, another student’s last block struck the rim and fell into its tray. The student swore softly, checked the remaining charge, and started again while Dante waited for his own mark. Nobody cleared the room for failure, and nobody treated a caught mistake as the end of a future.

He thought of the nights when doing badly had felt like giving the whole world permission to laugh. This time he had made a mistake, handled it, and finished. He wanted the score partly because it proved he could, which was a much less impressive reason than destiny and considerably harder to joke about.

Professor Bell inspected the placements and checked the catch tray. “One avoidable loss of balance, followed by a controlled recovery. Your release was clean on all completed placements.”

Dante accepted his score with suitable restraint until he reached the corridor, where he checked it twice to ensure greatness had not been recorded against the wrong student.

Posey came through another classroom door carrying her own assessment sheet. Her long blonde hair had escaped its ribbon in a few places, and she pushed it back before asking how he had done.

He showed her the result, then pointed to the marked recovery. “That part came from watching you catch someone. I moved with the weight instead of trying to bully it back.”

Her smile arrived before the blush. “You remembered that in an exam?”

“I was considering several things you could do with your hands, and that one was useful.”

She looked down at his sheet as though it required immediate examination. “Did you watch anything besides my legs?”

“Your timing, your hands, and the way you knew where she would land,” he said, listing the details before he considered how closely he must have been watching. He paused because honesty had apparently decided to become reckless. “Also your legs, but they weren’t on the test.”

Posey pressed the folded paper against his chest, laughing quietly. He kept her hand there for a moment longer than receiving a document required.

Jett appeared with a passing result of his own and declared that successful education needed fries. They took their food to the hall’s open seating area, where a cleaning golem waited beside Jett’s chair until he removed his shoes from the seat opposite.

“It looked empty,” Jett told the golem.

“So did your part of the cleaning schedule,” Dante said, and Posey laughed before trying to hide it behind her drink.

The woman from the corridor arrived with her notebook. She asked whether Dante had ended the lift before taking his hand away or waited until the piece had stopped moving. He explained the placement, weight, and release in the order Professor Bell had taught them, using a fry box as the target.

Two students at the next table listened. One asked whether the same sequence worked after taking somebody else’s guard spell.

“That’s a different connection,” Dante said, remembering the professor’s open doorway with painful clarity.

“So the clip didn’t show how much of it you understood?” the student asked.

Dante gave the notebook woman a time and place for practice before turning back. “It showed what happened. You can ask Professor Bell about the recording.”

The student nodded, but the easy interest at the table had thinned. Posey moved her chair closer while Jett offered the remaining fries to anyone still hungry.

Across the hall, the assignment screen changed. Dante, Jett, and Lucan appeared together beneath the next practical’s title. They would move a load through three connected water sections, handing control between them without upsetting it.

Lucan stopped beside the table and read their names with an expression of sincere pleasure. “Good, we already know how each other moves.”

Dante read the next rule twice. No single student could complete more than one control section, and failure to release would cost the entire team points.

His next victory required giving Lucan command, and his enemy was smiling as though he had arranged it.