Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 76857 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76857 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Maeve glanced up from her paper. “I’m going to need more than that.”
“How could he know you were throwing the test scores?” Idly braiding her hair, Agnes stretched out her legs and said, “None of us knew. And no offense, but you never struck me as brainy.”
Gloomy smirk on my face, I shrugged one shoulder. “What did I strike you as?”
“Stubborn.”
A dry laugh fell from my lips. Fair enough—I was stubborn. And apparently, also completely blind. “He knew because of the boy who died, Private Cullen. The one I was caught with when I was fifteen. I was tutoring him in trigonometry when we were found together after hours. There was enough there to get his attention, and he started analyzing the games I played with my tests.”
Agnes frowned, dropping her hair and growing sad. “I remember that. It's when the lockdown intensified. I wasn’t able to see Phillip anymore.”
Tamsyn gawked. “You were seeing Phillip?”
She didn’t try to be flippant or hide how she felt, Agnes openly sharing a secret grief perhaps for the first time ever. “Yeah, until he stopped showing up. He stopped talking to me completely actually. Watching his friend be hung must have made kissing me after classes seem a lot less exciting.”
There was nothing we could say to soothe that kind of ache. No platitudes or empty promises. Fact was, unless it was Phillip who chose her off the list, she would never be his.
And he had not been willing to risk his life for her.
Happiness of that sort did not exist within the walls of the academy.
“We're getting off track here,” Maeve reminded gently, attempting to steer the conversation over ground we might actually alter. “Why exactly did General Cyderial state you could not be a surveyor?”
That was the problem. He had not said much. After all, what did he care if my tests were high or low? My future was nothing to him.
Agitated thinking about it, I brushed wet hair off my shoulder and said, “There were some veiled threats about unmated females being attacked by male vorec looking to mate. He said they can’t tell we're half human and will… you know.” Sex was not something we’d been taught about in school. All most of us knew were gathered bits passed down from the older girls. As far as I was aware, I alone had suffered the detailed explanation from the general all those years prior. “They will try to breed me.”
Cocking her head, Maeve asked, “Implying that if you’re mated, they’ll only try to kill you?”
I shrugged. “I was not in the right frame of mind to do more than argue. He offered few reasons, most of them based on gender and the fact that I was unmated.”
Shrewd, Maeve leaned closer, reasoning the same as I had. “But if you put your name on the list, your mate will not allow you to go into the fog.”
“Exactly.”
Tamsyn interjected on our back and forth, “We have been taught about at least two female surveyors. The threat of that assignment held over our heads if our scores were unsatisfactory. So, females can have that position. But if they’re not mated and they are also unsatisfactory for the list, then…?”
Feeling the first spark of hope in days, I felt my lips form into a real smile. “They have been ruined.”
My sisters nodded.
Tamsyn, by far the most cynical of our group, sneered. “Consider this. All we know is that to be ‘ruined’ means nothing more than having sex with a male who did not hear your song. What if the men prevent us from intercourse, because if we are penetrated by someone who is not our ‘mate,’ then they won’t be able to control us? Have you ever met a woman who’d had sex outside of the bond?”
Maeve looked up from her notes, fully intrigued. “What about Sylvia—that night you helped lighten her hair? Did she seem different after having been penetrated?”
I paused to think back, recalling the scent of chemical lightener and glassy, far-off eyes, but shrugged. “She seemed out of sorts. Perhaps a bit lightheaded,” I said, remembering the way she’d staggered and swayed on unsteady feet. Unable to walk without whimpering. “I think she may have been sick before they took her away.”
“Sick how?” Maeve demanded.
“Feverish,” I offered. “She was sweating a great deal as we lightened her hair. Completely unable to sit still.”
Tamsyn, dark eyes flashing, made an excellent point. “They took her away, and we never saw her again. She was not publicly hanged. So either her execution was private, which I doubt, or she was placed with the male as his mate. Or, ruined, she is now in the fog, acting as a surveyor… assuming she’s survived this long.”
Maeve, studious as she considered, said, “Hypothesis. Lorieyn needs to fornicate with a male who cannot hear her song. But before we can consider that, we need to know what sex fully entails. Then, we’ll have to find a male who is not a student… and make sure the whole thing takes place away from General Cyderial’s authority.”