I wanted to be sick.
Some of the other girls nodded their heads at Sister Rhea’s words. Others were motionless. Did the motionless ones disagree?
My legs and backside were numb from sitting in one position so long when Sister Rhea finally dismissed us for a lunch of bread, meat, and water. No one spoke during the meal. The only sound was the clink of utensils against the plates, and the occasional clatter of a glass being set down. Instructors paced around the table, watching our every move.
I had no appetite, but I forced myself to eat anyway. I needed all of my strength.
After lunch, we were taken back to the same room and given another lecture about how we needed to be loyal, docile, and obedient. The lecturer gave her name, but I didn’t remember it. My brain was too full of furious thoughts clamoring to be voiced.
The lecture had almost finished, and I had almost sweated through my robes from the flush of anger radiating from my skin, when a commotion came from outside the room. Shouting, followed by a thudding sound.
The lecturer paused and looked with an expression of concern at the door. The Chosen around me stiffened but did not speak.
The door flew open, and a man stepped inside, holding a bloody sword.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE MAN WAS human. He was filthy, his boots caked in mud and his trousers slashed by brambles. The sword dripped with blood.
“Agnes!” he cried out, scanning the room. “I’m looking for Agnes!”
One of the white-clad Chosen stirred in shock. “Ben?”
“Guards!” the instructor shouted. Her voice was hoarse and frightened. “Guards!”
“Shut up,” the man said. He strode over to her and put the tip of the sword to her throat. “Not another word, or I’ll cut you in two. I’m here for my sister, and no one is going to stop me. Agnes, come.”
Agnes stumbled to her feet. Her face was a mask of shock, but her eyes shone. “Ben,” she cried again. “This is madness. What are you doing?”
“I can’t let you be given to the monsters,” he said. He stretched out his free hand. “Come on. Quickly—”
A hiss of air was all the sound we heard, and then two metal shafts embedded in the man’s body with a sickening crunch and squish of tissue and muscle. He gasped, his back arching in pain as he fell to his knees. The sword hit the ground with a clatter. The instructor kicked it out of his reach and slammed her knee into his face.
Agnes screamed, “Ben!”
Three guards surged through the door, crossbows in their hands. They surrounded the man and hauled him up. Blood streamed down his back and dripped on the floor.
“Agnes!” he cried as the guards dragged him out.
“Ben.” She crumpled to the ground in a crouch, her head almost touching her feet, as if her spine had stopped working. She stretched out a hand toward the door where her brother had been moments before.
The instructor picked up the sword and laid it on the desk at the corner of the room. She approached the weeping Agnes.
“Get up.”
Agnes didn’t move. Her shoulders shook.
“Return to your place, Number Sixteen.”
Agnes shook her head. She rocked on her heels, still keening with horrified grief. “What’s going to happen to him?”
A black-clad figure filled the empty doorway. Mother Shade. Her eyes moved from the blood on the ground to the sobbing Chosen girl.
“Number Sixteen,” she said, her voice cold and sharp as frozen steel. “Return at once to your place and cease your crying.”
Still, Agnes did not move. She lifted her face toward Mother Shade. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and her face was puffy. “What are you going to do to him? Please, let him go.”
“If you do not return to your place, then you will be punished,” Mother Shade said.
When Agnes still didn’t move, Mother Shade strode across the room and yanked her to her feet by her elbow. She dragged the girl from the room, leaving nothing but a smear of blood on the floor behind where the brother had fallen.
I was shaking.
When Mother Shade returned, she was alone.
“Come,” she ordered us. “It is time for the third lesson of the day.”
~
The third lesson took place in a new room, with soft mats on the floors and padded equipment lining the walls. The girls murmured to each other as they filed inside the room, whispering about Number Sixteen and her brother’s attack.
I caught Enna’s eye.
“What is this?” I asked her under my breath.
“We are judged on our looks, our health, and our ability to hold our tongues and memorize the facts being drilled into our heads on a daily basis,” Enna muttered. “But most importantly, we are judged by our ability to fight.”
Ability to fight?
I didn’t understand.
I had no time for more questions. We took our places on the floor. Now there were two empty places in our formation. One for the girl eating the book upstairs, the other for the girl whose brother’s blood was still on the floor in our previous lesson room.
Mother Shade stood at the front of the room beside another woman, who singled me out with an appraising glance.
“The Sworn,” our new instructor, a woman who was well-muscled and cold-eyed, said to me in explanation, “desire their mates to be fierce and strong warriors. You might be only human, but you are still expected to possess the qualities of a warrior. You will be trained in combat. When you are chosen by a Sworn, he will fight you in a special ceremony observed by a crowd. Upon defeating you, he will declare you to be his mate before the witnesses, and it will be so.”
I spoke, the words jumping from my mouth before I could stop myself. “What if I defeat him?”
One of the girls laughed before she could stop herself. She clapped her hand over her mouth, eyes wide.
Mother Shade slitted her eyes at me. A shiver chased across my skin, but I didn’t look away.
When she spoke, her voice was like a lash. “You will not defeat him. You are only human, after all.”
“But what if I did?”
She leveled a glare at me that made sweat break out across my shoulder blades, but I held that glare with one of my own.
My mind screamed at me that this was a mistake—that I was going to sink my chances of rescuing my mother—but I couldn’t make myself cower and shiver. Not after the acts of cruelty I’d witnessed already. In that moment, I was blind to reason. I only wanted that horrible woman to know that she hadn’t broken me.
Mother Shade paced across the room to stand before me, crooking a finger beneath my chin. Her fingernails were sharp as knives, and one grazed my skin painfully.
“You,” she said. “You think you can fight a Sworn and win? Such arrogance is unbecoming in a Chosen.”
“It’s just a question,” I breathed.
Mother Shade’s eyes glinted.
“Against the wall,” she ordered.
I stared at her.
Mother Shade jerked her head, and two of the guards that stood at the door came forward. Their hands closed around my arms and yanked me toward the wall. They threw me against it, and my hands came out to catch myself.
“Hold her,” Mother Shade ordered.
The guards grabbed me again. One held each arm. I tried to turn my head, but I couldn’t see.