“He had compulsion—”
“And you think the Advenians we’re going up against won’t?”
I didn’t answer right away. Memories from the last couple of weeks at Kitlarn Academia flashed in my mind. Of Lander ripping my clothes off, of him using compulsion and forcing me into the bath… of Greyland watching it all…
“Look at me,” he said, and I realized I’d been avoiding his face. “They ripped my fucking eye out of my head, Lilia. Do you want that to happen to—”
“Stop,” I cut him off. I knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to scare me so I wouldn’t write my name down. But why did he even care? He acted like I didn’t exist ever since Sie brought me here. “I liked you better when you were ignoring me,” I said and watched as his jaw set.
He stepped toward me, close enough that I could smell the mint on his breath as he bent his head down to look at me.
“Sign your name up for the healers, Lilia, or don’t sign up at all.” His voice was lethal, set, hard.
I should listen to him. Despite the fact that I was sick of people telling me what I could and couldn’t do, what he was saying was smart, even if it pissed me off.
The idea of fighting terrified me and it didn’t help that I wasn’t getting better at it. Peter told me I had to train if I was even considering it, but I was awful. He tried to mask his frustration, but I could see it. Vallie was moving strides past me while I was still stuck on the basics. Ishouldsign up for mending, but Iwantedto fight.
Ever since I watched the broadcasts where they were murdering all those zeroes, my mind was officially made up.
It should have terrified me even more, and honestly it did. Luxians were brutal. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared, but Iwasfighting. For all the zeroes who were killed, for how they treated us in school, for my parents…
I was going to fight for them.
I wasn’t going to just sit back and let things happen to me anymore. I was going to make a difference…
“You can’t fight,” he said again when I didn’t respond. “You don’t have—” He cut himself off, but it was too late. I knew what he was going to say.You don’t have any abilities.
I stared at the zero brand and my scar down my forearm. I instinctively pulled my sleeve down to cover it. Greyland noticed. Of course he noticed. He went to open his mouth to say something, probably another crude remark, but then closed it.
My wrist was burned, while his was still blank. I couldn’t take it anymore. Not after what happened.
It felt too raw.
I wanted powers so badly. I wanted to be strong like Peter,but I wasn’t. I had nothing but my two hands—my two powerless hands.
“I didn’t mean that,” he said softly, but I barely heard him. For some stupid reason my brain started to replay the day in school when they came to brand everyone that was a zero. All the students were forced into the Kitlarn auditorium. Then one by one, they made us walk onto the stage, passed us a knife, and had Alec compel us to cut our forearms.
Then they separated us into two groups. The ones who were forced to cut their own skin and the ones who could refuse.
If we were compelled, it was a telltale sign that we were a zero. A compulsion user couldn’t compel a ranked Tennebrisian. And although I knew I was a zero, I knew there was no magic in my bones, I’d still held onto hope all these years. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe my powers were simple. Maybe it just hadn’t manifested yet.
But when Alec placed the dagger in my hand, and when the cold tip of it felt like it was burning a hole through me, I heard his compulsion sing through my body. My hands shook as I dragged it from my elbow to wrist, carving the blade deeper than I’d intended. I watched in horror as blood poured out of me, as I gasped in pain, and tried to drown out the sinking sensation that came with the realization of what just happened.
It was my first time I was ever compelled.
I didn’t even get a second to process it before I was thrown toward the back of the stage. They branded us, marked us before our Trials, then sold us as slaves to our classmates.
It was meant to humiliate us, and by doing it in front of everyone… it worked. They didn’t want us to wait, didn’t want any of us walking around without the entire world knowing we were nothing to them… that we were all nixes.
I tried not to cry as the poker clamped down around my wrist and the zero was sealed into me. I tried to not dwell on the fact that this was final.
I’d been so scared they’d pull us all out of school and wouldn’t let us take our Trials at the end of the year. But thinking back to my last weeks there, it would have been a mercy if they took us out that day. They forced us to finish the year, but the way our classmates were allowed to treat us afterward…
I huffed. How trivial it all was now. My parents were dead. Greyland’s parents were dead. We only had each other and our older brothers, and Greyland could barely stand to be around me.
Did I make everything up?
He never liked me in school. I knew that. He ignored me like I was the human plague.
