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Chapter One
The rain pounded on the roof of our tent, and it even sounded cold. I shivered and pulled the blankets closer to myself and my equally frozen sister. We tried to stay in the shelter, not venturing out unless we didn’t have a choice, but in this case…we didn’t have a choice. The Judge had called for all young women aged sixteen and up to be tested to see if we had the gift, and depending on the results, end up assigned our husbands.
I still couldn’t quite believe it had happened. I’d almost convinced myself I wouldn’t be brought to trials. I’d made it to twenty, after all, so soon I would be too old to go through the ritual intended to determine if we were strong enough to take on the role of wife to the Judge’s Warriors. If I’d managed to age out of the ritual, I could have stayed in our city-state. I could have lived the life I always envisioned for myself, quiet, home, hearth—like my mother.
Despite the fact I had the gift.
Even my family didn’t know how good I was, but I knew.
From the morning of my thirteenth birthday, when I woke up bleeding with my first menstrual cycle, I knew I had the visions. I could see what would come very clearly. Too clearly, and not with enough accuracy to prevent the occurrence. Yet. But I would get there.
With time.
If it wasn’t for the ritual, my city-state could have benefited and…
“You’re doing it again.” The annoyance rolled off my little sister, Jayne, like smoke from an overenthusiastic campfire. Unlike me, she didn’t have the gift, or at least, she’d never shown any signs of it. After the ritual, she would be going home with our mother and father.
I sighed. “Can’t help it. I replay it in my head all the time. What if I just never got the gift? Then I could come home with you, assuming you go home.”
I didn’t have any vision about her, which I assumed meant there was nothing to see, since I normally saw Jayne in my sight, like when she fell out of a tree once as a kid.
Then again, I didn’t have any visions about the ritual at all. I couldn’t see what would happen during the ritual, and therefore had no idea who my husbands would be. I didn’t even know who was up for the roles currently. Which groupings are wifeless?
I lay back, and my stomach grumbled. Hopefully, Mama would finish dinner soon. She had been out in the rain cooking for a while, but Papa hadn’t returned from his night out with the other Barons. He so rarely got to see them that his few-and-far-between visits were important to him.
Mostly, he came home smelling like alcohol.
“Sloane?” Jayne rolled toward me and placed her head on my shoulder as she’d done since she was a bébé, when I’d been just old enough to hold her so Mama could work. Our brother, John, previously Papa’s heir in the city-state, had died the year before her birth, so they’d been so happy when a healthy baby arrived.
Now, of course, that heir would be Walter. He was just three, so they left him home when we traveled for the ritual. After losing so many babies to death in their quest for an heir, they wouldn’t risk Walter. I had a vision of him, though. He would live to be old and strong.
What kind of leader would he be? No clue, since I couldn’t see quite yet, but he would make it to adulthood. When I told Mama as much, she’d cried happy tears, and we all had stew that night.
Stew was meant to be a celebration, but I hated it.
What does that say about me?
“Sloane,” Jayne said again, so I smiled at her.
“Jayne?” I lifted my eyebrows. “Are you about to lecture me?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m about to tell you, if your gift hasn’t shown you the future, then perhaps you’re coming home, too.”
I wish I shared her optimism, although I’d only ever seen one Chosen wife and her husbands before. Our city-state was considered relatively safe, since mostly the monsters didn’t try to get us there. Only once had they come to secure us from a threat the wife had seen coming. I remembered the battle, which I’d watched, wide-eyed, from a hole in the basement wall where my parents stashed us to keep us safe, should the onslaught prove disastrous. The men fought hard, and in the end, the monsters left.
But other places weren’t so lucky. I didn’t know if I could do what the woman did—standing back and watching the men fight that which would kill them if given the chance. She seemed so lonely on that hill, with her dark hair shining in the night, and her pale skin practically the same glow as the moonlight. She was beautiful, wearing a gown like something from a dream, but somehow, she was also so heartbreakingly sad.
I don’t want to spend my life being sad.
Was that wrong?
I didn’t even know where the wives lived. Do they have to live in tents all the time?
I hated this tent.
“Sloane!” Jayne kissed my cheek. “Dearest sister, I’ve lost you again. Did you hear a single word I said?”
I heard. “What if I haven’t seen it because it’s so terrible, my gift won’t show it to me?”
