The awful teens were muttering to each other, giving Gideon looks, giving each other looks, then muttering again. The wholesome older man leaned over and gave them some bracing rebuke. They subsided reluctantly, only casting the occasional dark glance her way over their soup and bread, not knowing that she was physically immune. Back in the Ninth she had endured each meal under Crux’s fantastically dismal stare, which had turned gruel into ash in her mouth.
