Page 38 of Wings of Destruction

I search him for some scrap of remorse and come up against a brick wall.

“I’ll never be done. You people think you can do whatever you want and trample on others but you don’t even know their names. Is that how you justify it? You pretend they aren’t human just because they aren’t you?”

Without fail, Kieran marches through the paneled door and down the first set of steps. His long strides are too much for my deadened muscles to match and I lose my balance, fall. Skip several steps until we meet a shallow threshold and he slides me along the floor. A wake of dust, cobwebs, and grime mark my trajectory.

“You’re making this harder than it has to be,” he grunts when he lifts me back up.

“Your other prisoners don’t fight back?”

I spit at his face, and he dodges the spittle.

“I never said that.”

“You don’t say much.”

He turns and tugs. “For a good reason.”

If he’s frustrated with me, then there’s a greater chance I’ll find some kind of weakness in a man who shows none. He’ll snap eventually. The one thing I do well, without fail, is needle people.

“I get it. You annoy people by speaking. It’s understandable, given how grating the sound of your voice is,” I tell him with false cheer.

Kieran reaches the bottom of the second set of steps and breezes through an archway into the bowels of the castle. And when he dumps me, unceremoniously at the feet of a stout woman with pigeon-like features, I scramble after him.

“You can’t leave me here!”

The woman silences me with a targeted kick of her pointed boot to my kidney. “Hush, girl. Hush now.”

I gurgle out a retort, curling into a fetal position against the pain.

“You’re not to speak to him like that, stupid girl. Do not address the son of the General in such a manner.”

“Thank you for your loyalty, Mrs. Milkin,” Kieran calls back. “You know what to do with her.”

“Of course I do, sir. Thank you, sir!” She sends Kieran on his way with much ego stroking.

Her simpering might have made me sick if she hadn’t aimed such a precise blow to my lower back.

I’ve never seen an expression change as quickly as Mrs. Milkin’s did. The second Kieran disappears from sight, she rounds on me, her thin lips pulling back from large gums.

“Let’s go.”

The pigeon woman, Mrs. Milkin, is the head of the housekeepers, and forces me into a large rectangular room.

The maids all share one open area instead of getting their own bedrooms. Cots and bunks line what seems, on my closer inspection, to be a dilapidated underground gym.

The space isn’t good enough for the elite anymore. And with the student population growing, the Academy needs more bodies to tend beds, clean toilets, and cook. Those are the more favorable jobs, as the ruddy faced head maid explains in mincing terms. Ours will be a tough task but someone must do it.

Now, that someone is me.

The servants’ areas are bare in contrast to the main spaces of the castle. In order to keep us from standing out, the maids tasked with cleaning the castle are dressed in gray.

The linen is scratchy, a little too coarse, but light. We’re made to blend in. The dresses are practical, ugly. A matching ribbon in the same dull granite hue will keep the end of my braid from going wild.

Luxury only extends to what is seen by the public, by the privileged. The light, airy vaults and arches dominating the foyer of DragonSpear are replaced by crudely carved doorways notched from the stone on our level.

A constant drop of water from some leaky pipe accompanies the general air of dismay.

“Your name, child,” Milkin presses again.