I felt angry and afraid in equal measures now.
Maybe I needed to stoke that anger. Maybe it would give me the strength to fight.
And I needed to fight if I wanted to get out of here.
Mother Shade spoke to me as the platform rose.
“The girls here are numbered in order of desirability as potential mates. There are thirty-one here…” She glanced at me and amended herself. “Thirty-two now, with you. Each girl is given a number based on her health, beauty, and fertility, as well as submissiveness and cleverness for learning her lessons. Those with the highest numbers have more free time, better beds, and nicer clothes. So, mind yourself. You are number thirty-two today because you arrived late. But who will you be tomorrow?”
I listened without response.
“You will go to bed and rise at the sound of the bell,” she said. “If you are late, or inattentive, you will be punished. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mother Shade,” I said.
“Look at me,” she commanded.
I snapped my gaze to hers and refused to cower beneath her piercing stare.
“My, my,” she murmured. “Such ferocity. Such spirit. Don’t worry, Thirty-Two. We will break you of it soon enough.” She touched my chin with one of her cold fingers.
I pushed her hand away. I couldn’t bear to be handled like an animal any longer.
Mother Shade lifted an eyebrow. Her mouth turned. “For that, you will forego your dinner, Thirty-Two.”
When the platform halted, and we stepped into a new hall on some high-up floor, she snapped her fingers, and another human guard appeared, this one female. She was tall and muscular, her hair cut to her scalp, and her eyes were blank as they looked at me.
“Strip her of her clothes, giver her new ones, and then take her to the punishment room,” Mother Shade ordered. “Leave her there till the night bell.”
The guard wrapped her fingers around my upper arm and yanked me down the hall. She was strong.
She stopped before a metal door with a single slit, and then she made me take off my clothes, including my father’s red cloak, which I tried to keep. She yanked it from my hands and threw it over her shoulder.
I stared at the crumpled black and red on the ground behind the guard. I shivered in the chill as I stood nearly naked in the hall. My father’s cloak. I wanted it back.
I opened my mouth to beg them not to burn it, but the guard pulled the door behind me open, revealing a windowless room the width of a coffin, with a hard, wooden floor and cracked plaster walls. She shoved me inside and slammed the door behind me before I could speak.
CHAPTER TWO
I LAY STUNNED on the ground where I’d fallen for a moment, my heart drumming as I listened for the lock click, and then her footsteps thudded as she walked away. I turned sideways and drew my knees to my chest. They stung from landing on the hard floor. My toes banged against the opposite wall, and I stubbed one on a loose floorboard that bowed a little in the middle. A glimpse of light came through the slit in the door, but otherwise, I was in darkness.
This wasn’t the first time I’d found myself in a cell.
I feared it wouldn’t be the last time, either.
Claustrophobia wrapped its sweaty fingers around my throat, making me dizzy, but I forced myself to take deep, even breaths. If I was going to survive, I had to adapt. That meant not losing my mind in solitary confinement. They wanted to break me. I had to be unbreakable.
How could I learn to be unbreakable?
A sound halfway between a laugh and a sob rose in my throat as I remembered the last time I’d been imprisoned like this—after I’d tried to take the fall for Neil to save his life.
At least that cell had a window.
Thinking about that time made me think of Vixor Rae again. How I’d glimpsed him from the cell. How he’d saved me from the whipping block. From my death sentence.
Would he save me now?
The thought, however brief, made me furious with myself. Kassian—no, Vixor—had lied to me. He wasn’t the person I’d known. He was a traitor to humankind. I couldn’t depend on him. I’d been betrayed by him.
I needed to remember that fact. Brand it upon my psyche lest I forget, lest I romanticize my situation.
He wasn’t going to help me.
How could he?
He wasn’t even here. And for all I knew, he was never coming back.
I needed a plan. If Mother Shade thought I was going to fight her every step of the way, I’d be punished and forced into submission every step of the way. I’d never find my mother. No—I needed her to dismiss me as just another Chosen girl. As much as it galled me, I needed to act like she had broken me.
She had to believe that I was pliable. Weak.
Submissive.
~
When the guard opened the door again, I was drenched in sweat from the hours I’d spent crouched in the cramped darkness and stale, unmoving air. I rose to my feet with a groan as my limbs tingled from being forced to stay in such an uncomfortable position for so long without relief.
The guard tossed a white robe at me.
“Your new clothes,” she said.
I struggled into them. Plain, white robes that covered me from neck to feet, with long sleeves that were semi-transparent and showed the mark on my wrist. I managed to keep them from seeing my honeysuckle necklace, which the garment covered. My eyes went longingly to the place on the floor where my father’s red cloak had lain earlier.
It was gone now.
My heart wrenched, and tears filled my eyes.
Mother Shade stood in the hallway, her hands clasped together, waiting for me. She wore a grave expression, but her eyes held a triumphant smirk.
“Let me see your eyes,” she commanded as she took my chin between her finger and thumb.
I kept my face blank as her gaze bored into mine. Her mouth puckered in a cruel excuse for a smile.
“Better,” she said, and then she slapped me, hard.
I swallowed my anger words as the pain from the strike reverberated through me.
“You didn’t say, ‘Yes, Mother Shade,’” she said.
“Yes, Mother Shade,” I ground out.
“Lower your gaze,” Mother Shade commanded. “Go and undress for bed. Yours is the one numbered thirty-two. Can you read your letters and numbers?”
“Yes, Mother Shade.” I seethed, though I was careful to keep my gaze on the floor. Did she think I was raised like an animal? Of course, I could read.
“Good. Go now, Thirty-Two.”
“Yes, Mother Shade,” I said. Every syllable felt like vomit passing across my tongue. I tried to convince myself that I was playing a game—a sadistic version of that childhood barnyard game, Simon Says.
I would play it perfectly if it meant finding my mother and getting out of here.
I stepped past her into the room she indicated.
Two rows of beds lined the room, each nothing but a plain metal frame with a mattress, pillow, and sheet. Young women stood beside each bed, wearing white nightgowns that fell to their knees. They stood with their hands clasped and their faces pointed toward the floor, but a few looked at me out of the corners of their eyes as I passed.
The last bed, number thirty-two, was empty.
My bed.
A folded-up nightgown sat on my pillow. I hastily stripped myself out of my clothes and pulled on the gown. The air was cold after being in the punishment room, and my sweat-slick skin pebbled with goose bumps.