My fingers curled into fists at my sides.
“Come, girls,” Mother Shade ordered us.
We shuffled past the weeping Number Twenty, who was still chewing the second page when the door slammed shut behind me.
~
Downstairs, we ate at a single table that stretched the length of the room. Breakfast was quick and hearty—meat, apples, oatmeal. The others ate without speaking, keeping their eyes on their plates.
I thought of the girl upstairs, and my oatmeal stuck in my throat.
When we were finished, the girls moved in a silent line to another room and sat cross-legged on the floor in neat rows. I took my place beside Enna at the back. There was an empty place where Twenty would have been.
I wondered what her name was.
When the door opened, I expected Mother Shade again, but this time it was a different woman. She was also human, dressed in the same black robes as Mother Shade wore, but her belt was merely a length of rope, and she carried an armful of books.
“Good morning, girls,” she said.
“Good morning, Sister Rhea,” the Chosen murmured.
The woman placed her books on a desk in the corner and scanned us. “I see we have a new sister among us,” she said. “Number Thirty-Two. Welcome. Here, we learn about the history and customs of the great Sworn empire, and how we can best serve in our roles as Chosen mothers.”
I wanted to be sick. Her face was plain and tranquil, and her expression almost kind, but I couldn’t fathom how anyone truly kind or good could work here, doing this.
She was just another Sworn lackey.
Just another prison guard.
“And I see that Number Twenty is not with us,” she continued, her gaze lingering on the empty spot. For a moment, Sister Rhea’s smile faltered. “I spoke with Mother Shade. She explained the situation. Someone will have to catch Number Twenty up to speed later. Do I have a volunteer?”
The room was quiet.
Sister Rhea waited with her hands clasped in front of her like everyone seemed to do here. Her eyes swept across the room.
No one moved.
The silence hummed.
I thought of the girl crying upstairs, forced to eat the book she’d hidden beneath her pillow. Had she been desperate for the memory of who she’d been before she was taken? Had she been looking for maps or descriptions of geography to find a way to escape? Or was she studying merely to get ahead of the others?
I decided it didn’t matter. She was a person in the same situation as I was—a cruel, harsh prison. If we didn’t practice kindness toward each other, what would we become? What would they make us into?
I raised my hand.
Besides, it would give me an opportunity to talk to the girl. I needed to figure out who I could trust and what everyone knew if I wanted to get anywhere. I needed to gather information and make friends.
Enna looked at me out of the corner of her eye. She gave a slight shake of her head, but the deed was done.
I put my arm down.
“Number Thirty-Two,” Sister Rhea said, and a wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows. “Girls, what did Number Thirty-Two do wrong?”
The others turned their heads to look at me. Some of their faces were carefully blank. Others looked sick.
A sinking feeling settled in my stomach.
This was a trap.
“Number Sixteen,” Sister Rhea said. “Tell me what Number Thirty-Two did wrong?”
The girl called Number Sixteen spoke so softly I almost couldn’t make out the words. “She demonstrated weakness for a rulebreaker.”
Sister Rhea nodded. “We are to be united in our loyalties, girls. We are loyal to the Alpha, and to our Sworn families. Outliers do not deserve our loyalty or our pity. That is not our place. It is for the Alpha and our other leaders to decide such things. It is your place to wait, to listen, to be ready to act on the orders you are given.”
My cheeks burned with anger. This had been a trap to see if we still retained any compassion for each other?
Monsters. They were monsters.
“You will do as you volunteered, and you and Number Twenty will both spend an hour in the punishment room for it,” Sister Rhea said, her voice almost cheerful. As if she were announcing the weather, or the menu for lunch.
I trembled with fury.
“Now, girls, today we will be discussing the glorious Alpha’s rise to power…”
Sister Rhea lectured for nearly an hour, and I did my best to pay attention, for I suspected we would be quizzed on this information later, and besides, I had promised to convey it to poor Number Twenty upstairs. I had paid dearly for the privilege. I wasn’t going to waste it.
“Some humans can, as you know, be turned into werewolves. If we took ten men and infected them all with the righteous venom that the Sworn produce upon a full moon, nine would die. One would survive,” Sister Rhea said.
I thought of Kassian, my Kassian, before he was Vixor Rae. Turning into a werewolf was his greatest fear, he’d told me.
He’d gotten his greatest fear in life, and I’d gotten mine in losing him, Mother, and Father all in one fell swoop.
Sympathy pinged at my heart. I tried to push it away. He was Kassian no longer. He had turned werewolf, sworn himself to the Alpha, and become someone else. I had to remember that.
“Besides,” Sister Rhea was saying. “Humans come with weaknesses. Loyalties, emotions, beliefs that do not serve the Alpha. It is better to raise up soldiers that are blood with the pack. That’s why you girls are so important.”
Anger burned in my belly, and I bit my lip until it bled to keep from shouting something at her.
The lecture turned to more mundane topics, and I tried to pay attention, but I was distracted by a thousand other thoughts and feelings. The sharp taste of shock, the scorch of righteous fury, and the dull heat of hatred. The other girls sat motionless, looking like rows of drying laundry in the loose and flowing white robes, their eyes fixed forward on Sister Rhea. Beyond the closed door to the hall, I heard footsteps, and once, a clattering sound like a dozen metal rods had been dropped. In the distance, we could hear the sound of someone crying.
Was Number Twenty the one weeping, or had Mother Shade punished some other unfortunate person?
I dragged my mind back to the lesson. Sister Rhea was extolling the virtues of the Alpha—strong, loyal, fierce, unemotional, humorless, and ruthless against all enemies.
I blinked. Humorless? Was that a lauded Sworn trait, then?
Sister Rhea didn’t smile as she went on to tell a story in which the Alpha had watched an entire troupe of human comedy actors perform without smiling once.
Apparently, the Sworn valued such things.
What a grim, horrible world. How could the rest of them sit and listen to this? Did they believe that it was true? Had they already been indoctrinated? Or had they come willingly, already believing themselves to be inferior?
The Chosen were silent around me except for an occasional cough or rustle of fabric. They all appeared to be riveted by the lecture.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to jump to my feet.
I stayed still and thought of my mother. I was going to find her and rescue her. I could endure this poison until then.
“As wives to the Sworn, you will be expected to embody the virtues of their kind,” Sister Rhea said. “You will be expected to teach these values to your children. You must reject the weak impulses of humankind—sensitivity, pathos, laughter, mercy, passivity, and excessive emotional displays. You must be strong. Sworn women do not weep in front of others. They do not make hysterical displays. Mankind is weak. The werewolf is superior in every facet—physical, mental, emotional. We must strive to be like them. What we cannot ourselves have, we can give to our children, for our children will be born of the Sworn.”