The audience rose to its feet.

Rachel stood up immediately, beaming.

I pressed my boots firmly into the wooden floorboards.

I had proved my biological parents wrong about me being average.

I was finishing first in my class at a prestigious academy, and my total privacy was gone forever.

I didn’t look at the front row.

I didn’t look at the other cadets.

I looked over the heads of the standing crowd, straight to the very back row under the balcony overhang.