I picked up the pitcher and then turned to look at the others one by one. “Listen,” I said. “This whole system is based on keeping us divided. Competing against each other for higher spots when all of those here are at the end of things anyway. If we band together, they can’t enslave us quite so effectively. We can help each other. What do you say?”
The other girls were pale and still. I could see them mulling it over, each of them. Weighing the costs. Eyeing the others with concern.
On the floor, Selene sat waiting. She looked small and lost.
Finally, everyone nodded. Even the redheaded girl, although her mouth was pursed as though she didn’t like any of it.
“It’ll be our secret,” I said. Then, I went to the nearest slit of a window, opened it, and tossed the torn-up pages of the book out. As they fluttered like flower petals for the street below, I stared at the strange streets and tree-covered buildings that composed the city. My heart twisted.
Where in this strange place was my mother? And how was I going to find her?
~
Since there was only one punishment room, the guards placed Selene and me in it together. The air was still and hot, and the space even more cramped with both of us inside.
“What was the book about?” I asked Selene after the guards’ footsteps had faded away.
I couldn’t see her expression in the darkness. She shifted as if uncomfortable. “A romance. Nothing serious.”
“That’s a big risk for nothing serious,” I said.
Selene sighed. “I guess you could say it was an act of defiance. I couldn’t—I couldn’t breathe without a book. Any book. So, I stole one. One of the cooks downstairs brings books in to read when she’s on break. I never got to finish it either. It was called The Moon Princess. About a doomed love between a werewolf princess and a human girl.”
My stomach felt full of rocks. I thought of Vixor Rae and pressed a hand to my forehead. “You were reading a romance about our captors?”
“In the book,” Selene said, “the werewolf is just as much a captive as the human. She isn’t Sworn. She renounced her heritage and fled into the wilderness.”
I didn’t know what to say. “And the Sworn print such books?”
“No. They’re contraband. Published in underground presses by human sympathizers. But everyone reads them, sympathizers or not. What’s more interesting than scandal, eh?”
“Where are you from, Selene?” I asked.
She shifted in the darkness until she was facing me. She leaned her head back against the far wall and rearranged her legs. “I grew up here in the capital, actually. You?”
“Far from here,” I said. “In a village at the edge of the wilderness. I’d only ever seen a few Sworn before now. And where I came from, books were in short supply.”
“We have lots of them here,” Selene said. “But most Sworn hardly read. It’s seen as unnatural. Human-like.”
I thought of Vixor Rae and his library. Of his love of books.
I squashed the hope in my heart before it had time to flower and poison me.
Selene made a choking noise.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, alarmed.
“Oooh, my stomach hurts.” She let out a groan. “It’s cramping like I’m going to—urgh.” She turned her head and gagged. “I think I’m going to vomit.”
“Take deep breaths,” I said. I waved my hands, trying to send a puff of air in her direction.
Selene made another sound of distress. “Distract me. Tell me about your village.”
And so, I talked about my grandmother, and the honeysuckles in the woods behind my house, and the games I used to play when I was a child. I even talked about my childhood friend, Kassian, and how we would pretend to be soldiers. Selene listened, panting like a woman in labor, occasionally interrupting me with a loud groan. But she didn’t vomit.
When the guards came to let us out, we were both drenched in sweat, and Selene was moaning from the pain in her belly. She staggered straight for the toilet while I returned to the room. I couldn’t tell what time it was, although we’d been in the punishment room for what felt like hours.
When I reached the room, the other Chosen girls were already standing by their beds, dressed in their nightgowns for sleep.
No dinner, then. My stomach gurgled with hunger, but there were worse things. I’d gone hungry before.
At least I wasn’t also covered in vomit.
The sixteenth bed was empty. Whatever had happened to Agnes, she hadn’t returned. Everyone else was present and accounted for, except for poor Selene. We could hear her retching down the hall.
Selene returned, pale and faint-looking, by the time I’d finished dressing for bed. She had just pulled her nightgown over her head when Mother Shade stepped through the doorway.
“Number Twenty-Nine,” she called, and the redheaded girl from earlier stepped forward.
“Come here, please,” she said.
The girl came to stand before Mother Shade with her head lowered submissively.
“You are Number Twelve now,” Mother Shade said. “The former Number Twelve can take Number Sixteen’s bed. The rest of you arrange accordingly. Oh, Number Twenty—take bed Thirty-Two. The rest of you arrange yourselves accordingly.”
Some of the girls murmured under their breaths. Twenty-Nine, jumping so high up the order of things? Becoming Number Twelve in one swoop like that?
“One more thing,” Mother Shade said. “Look at your new numbers. I want Number Twenty-Six, Number Twenty-Eight, Number Thirty, Number Thirty-One, and Number Thirty-Two to step into the hall.
We moved without a word. Enna, Selene, several of the other girls who’d been in the room when I’d thrown the book out the window, and me.
Except for the redheaded girl.
A sinking feeling filled my chest.
Once we were in the hall, Mother Shade ordered us to stand with our noses to the wall.
“You will not stir an inch from these spots until morning,” she said. “If any of you faints, or falls asleep, or takes a step outside of the place where you stand, you will all be whipped.”
Mother Shade left, and Enna muttered under her breath to me, “I guess we all know why Number Twenty-Nine is now Number Twelve.”
The redhead. She’d sold us out.
“What’s her name?” I whispered.
“Elizabeth.” Enna almost spat the name. “She’s been scheming to move up the ranks since she got here, and she saw her chance and went for it.”
“Quiet,” the guard at the door ordered.
We were silent.
Exhaustion pulled at my muscles. I was already sore from the sparring earlier, and then the time spent in the punishment box, and I was hungry from skipping supper.
I could only imagine how poor Selene felt.
It was going to be a long night.
As I stood with my limbs aching and my feet hurting, I let myself imagine him. Vixor Rae. Dressed in his silver armor, with his dark hair falling over his brow and his piercing gaze holding me captive like the point of a knife. I imagined myself standing before him. Not showing my pain or confusion. Thinking of him gave me strength, and imagining the scene made me angry, and those were the things that kept me on my feet as the hours ticked past.