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“This morning was the first time he came to someone’s rescue. He didn’t speak up for Daciana.”
“I doubt that was about me,” I said, pushing up. “I wasn’t looking for a rescue. More likely, Hondros pisses him off and he jumped on a chance to humiliate him. Speaking of, we should get started on those scrolls. And I need to get caught up on the week, so we don’t get any more.”
We buckled down and passed the next hour studying, reading, writing, and prepping me for what was coming. Sirena, the Titans, and Hondros caught me off guard. I wouldn’t walk in with my head down again.
“Next is history, then self-mastery,” Daciana murmured to me. We molded into the crowd of novices shuffling out of the dorm wing. “Afterward, the mess hall opens for two hours. Once it’s closed, it’s closed and we don’t eat again until it opens after the day’s lessons.”
“That leaves combat and field medicine for the afternoon. Not so bad.”
“Think again,” Nitsa said, falling in step with us. “After that, we have mountains of coursework and studying to do. They really pile it on in the first couple months to prepare us for the culling.”
“The culling,” I repeated. “They mentioned that in the welcome book. It’s a test to determine if we’re ready to move on to the second part of our novice training. Did they tell you guys more about it while I wasaway?”
“No, nothing,” Daciana said. “I asked our history instructor because she’s less horrible than the rest, but even she was cagey. She said something like ‘knowing too much about the test will change it.’ Whatever that means.”
“We already know enough,” Nitsa added. “Anything called the culling can’t be good.”
Neither of us had a response for that.
The trek to the history room was less eventful than the throbbing, bleeding wound I had courtesy of my run-in with Sirena and the Titans.
Our crowd of Sisypheans turned left down the wall where it split around the reflection room. Light spilled through a rare window, casting a warm gift on my cheeks as I passed through. I stopped for a breath, just soaking it in.
I wasn’t afraid of the dark. Eight years in a cave rid me of such childish things, and instead gave me an appreciation for the light. If life awaited me after the coming battle with the goddess, I’d build a home that was all windows, even the ceiling. All day the sun would shine on me. All night the stars would watch me sleep.
“Aella?” Daciana snapped me out of my daydream. “I said she’s less horrible than the rest, but that doesn’t mean she’s cool with latecomers.”
“Coming.”
I left the sunlight behind, trailing my friends into the history hall. My lips parted but nothing came out.
Books. Books as far and wide as I could see. We came out on the second-floor loft—students breaking up to make for the two spiral staircases leading down to the lecture floor with its desks, and those desks piled with more books.
“Wow,” I breathed, moving to the gold-and-iron railing to look up, not down. Another loft of bookshelves going all the way around promised the knowledge of fifty lifetimes. The true name of the goddess was here. It had to be. I couldn’t believe there was a secret that escaped this temple of knowledge.
“Down in front. Down in front.”
I snapped around as my instructor exited a side door hidden behind the shelves.
“Fill in the front rows first,” said Madame Remis. “Come now, novices. The rumors that I bite are greatly exaggerated.”
I watched Sirena lace her fingers through Alexander’s and tow him to the front row. A band of gorgeous, strutting Titans packed in around them. I watched two of the girls who said they’d back Sirena up if she mauled Nitsa, set her books in front of her and fuss with her hair—making it more perfect than it already was.
What are they? Handmaidens?
I was not looking to make more trouble for my friends, so if Sirena and her group were front row, it was the back row for me.
My friends and I settled on the Sisyphean side, far enough back that Sirena would have to crane her neck tossing smirks my way.
“Good morning, everyone. I trust you all have scrolls for me,” Remis began.
I studied her as she moved a pile of books off her desk, then perched against it. She was quite pretty. Thick, dark hair cut short above her shoulders in a cut as severe as her sharp cheekbones. Should’ve made her seem severe, but she was softened by large, fawn-brown eyes and a tiny little coin of a mouth. I put her in her early thirties. Twenty years younger than Vasili at the very least.
Mixed feelings swirled in my chest. I wasn’t sure what to make of her. She led me like prey into a trap, misleading me about the Tantalean bread and standing silently by while her boyfriend rendered me unconscious and locked me in a torture device. But the fact remained they were following the orders of the pompous, soft-bottomed schoolteacher who now hates me. If they didn’t do it, Drakos would’ve done it himself.
“Pass them up.”
There was shuffling and murmuring as everyone passed up their summary of the first chapter in our textbook, History of Olympia. I took out mine.
