Page 49 of Summer

I passed into the school, even as all my instincts told me to run. I saw no light as the ship landed, no promise of anything else on this planet expect this school.

The headmistress is hunched and old, her voice high and grating. Even though I am a teacher, she treats me as if I were one of the misbehaving children. My introduction to the school was a list of punishments I must give a child who steps out of line. Some of them are so ghastly my stomach roils in revulsion.

She sensed my weakness from the start and sent me immediately to the intake room. There I was stripped, searched for contraband, cleaned with freezing water, and shoved into the most uncomfortable clothing I’ve ever worn. The neck of the dresses are high and stiff, resting just below my ears. The fabric of that one was a light grey, covering down to my wrists and ankles. They all fit like a sack, loose and shapeless.

The hood completes each ensemble, and it obscures most of my face. The headmistress warned that if I’m ever seen without the hood, if so much as a strand of my hair peeks out from under it, there will be consequences.

It’s impossible to tell the teachers apart. The students don’t even try, referring to them all as “Miss” or “teacher.”

All identity is stripped away.

I try to make friends with the other females in my room, but they pointedly ignore me. I don’t know if any of them can speak, or if they’ve chosen silence.

Silence is all I know these days. They don’t trust me to teach yet, so I’m made to do chores. I’ve never mopped or swept a day in my life, and I don’t know how to clean a chimney or feed a fire.

Every misstep is punished quietly. Half of my dinner rations taken away when I let a fire go out that I was supposed to tend. I’m barred from the showers because I couldn’t hold a broom for the blisters on my fingers.

Every night, I long for home.

In my dreams, I see the country estate. I chase Aaoric along the lake, beating him to the top of the rock. When I jump into the water below, the free fall is exhilarating. I swim through the water, a child again, free from the duties of marriage and the estate.

Summer is there, more often than not. Sometimes I swear I feel her lips on mine as I stir, a gentle wake up from a nightmare. When my eyes open and I see only darkness, hear only the sound of the other females breathing, I know it’s not nightmare.

It’s my life.

I’ve been forgotten.

Tomorrow is the wedding – I’m pretty sure. If I counted my days right, if time moves the same way it does on Hothin. Tomorrow, Summer will fake her death and escape, free at last. Aaoric will mourn her as long as he can get away with it, spending his time with Sessaly. Perhaps our parents will finally give up? It’s not as though they can throw their heir in a place like this.

Just their daughter.

I shut my eyes tight and think of the look on our parents’ faces as the carriage explodes. It’s what I’d wanted to see the most. Not the explosion, but the devastation on our parents’ faces. To have the duke and duchess fall to their knees, their carefully laid plans unraveling.

And the scandal! Their shoddy carriage kills Aaoric’s doting bride. The one he so clearly loved. The one he showed off at every ball, that he danced with and twirled and flirted shamelessly with.

I don’t care if it’s the undoing of our family.

But it’s not my family anymore, is it? Here, I am not Lady Gennelle, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Vestinhoth. I am Miss. I am a grey shadow, left to rot without the sun.

What a cruel twist of fate.

23

SUMMER

The morning of the wedding dawns, and Gennelle has not written us back. I bother Aaoric every day to send another, to do something more than send a stupid letter. I try her comm, only to find it disconnected. I search her room, but it’s been cleared out. When I wake the morning after she leaves, it’s to the sound of her room being packed up, all her dresses stored in trunks and sent away. Not placed in storage, as though she might return – but removed.

At my insistence, I’m to spend the night before the wedding in a small cottage along the edge of the estate. Sessaly comes with me, as does a large trunk with my dress and accessories. I hate how much I love the dress. It’s a gorgeous ivory, not yet stained by all the purple of the foliage on Hothin. The neckline scoops tastefully. It lacks the poofy shoulders some of the other brides have, instead favoring an off the shoulder sweep. My gloves are soft, inlaid with jewels.

If I were ever to be married, this is what I’d wear.

Sessaly brushes my hair as I stare into the mirror. Everything is ready. I snuck out in the night to make sure the carriage is fitted appropriately. Everyone will see me get in the carriage, then halfway to the estate I’ll duck out and it will continue without me. Once it’s in view, Aaoric will detonate the device, far away from anyone who might be injured by the blow. I’ll travel on foot for half a mile to a hidden carriage, which I’ll take to the outer edges of Celvae to board a ship wherever I want.

In my pack is a change of clothes, a wig, and some body paint. Escaping as a human will be impossible, but as an alien? Easy. No one will know the difference.

I run the plan over and over in my head. Once I’m free of Hothin, I can turn my sights to Frindun and work on getting Gennelle out.

I should have asked her to come with me. She deserves a chance at freedom, even if it’s not at her home. Picturing Gennelle without the backdrop of the Vestinhoth estate is impossible. But anything is better than wherever her parents dropped her off.