AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Why?
Indignant, and actually smelling quite ripe, I stood in the cold spray and eyeballed my aggressors. “You don’t like the smell? Stay out of my room.”
“Wedon’t like the attitude.” The usually reticent Agnes took a threatening step closer. “Not one of us deserves it from you.”
Ouch.
None of my scheming was ever supposed to cost them anything. I’d never harm them on purpose. “Tell me what you want; you can have it. I’ll even slice my own wrist to make sure the blood splatter is accurate.”
“Dear God.” Maeve’s eye-roll was legendary—but also very unlike her. She motioned to Tamsyn. “Do you hear this one?”
“Right?” Eyes an unusual brown shade like mine, Tamsyn sneered and glared at me with disgust. “Cold-blooded to the core. You always were a pretentious bit of work, Lorieyn, but I can’t believe you’d stoop to such dramatics. That hurts, you know!”
“Excuse me?” My eyes must have been just about to jump out of my face.
Fast, because she was an overachiever to her core, Maeve moved like a blur, punching me full-on in the nose.
Eyes instantly watering, a bit of blood coming from one nostril, I stood agape, too stunned to even stop her from moving the bone back into place with a snap.
“Ouch!”
Fist before her as if she’d been waiting a lifetime to land that hit, she snarled, “That’s for thinking the worst of your sisters, imagining we would actually turn our backs on you. You conniving, arrogant bitch. Have you lost your mind? You could have just asked, you know? We willhelpyou have your fog. And someday, I might even forgive you for thinking so little of me.”
She wasn’t done. “And while we’re talking about me, yes, I have goals too! And I am ready to punch you in the face, over and over and over again, until you listen to me and realize we’re not so egotistical that we wouldn’t ask for help when we need it.
“Also, it needs to be said. You’ve got a lot of conceit to think you can knock me out of my ranking at the top of our class based on one conversation with the old man.But, if you really do have some knowledge I don’t grasp, teach it to me! We have six weeks until graduation. Tutor me in exchange for the amount of risk I will be taking for you, and I just might not break your nose again.”
The water was making the blood run right down the drain. Making my sense come back. And also making me feel extra sticky and gross. None of those things mattered though. This wasn’t a game. “Do none of you grasp what he would do to you if there was so much as a rumor that a sister was helping me move against his will? He’d hang you.”
Tamsyn, dark skin and sloe-eyed, waved a hand in utter disregard. “No one is hanging a fertile woman. They save that show for the boys.”
Thinking of the dead Cullen boy, I knew it was different for me. I didn’t know if the general held some sort of vendetta about the stolen pink geode, or if he was just a sadist, but he’d taken a stand regarding my future, and I knew he would not budge.
“He won’t allow it. I either stay anotheryear or two,study a syllabus of his choosing, take the title of Assistant Instructor, or add my name tothe list. How could I possibly earn a commission the general will not approve?”
“How could you expect us to know how to answer that, when you have told us nothing about your plans… in what? A decade?” Maeve softened enough to sigh. “None of us have made a secret of what we want.
“I want a political appointment—that requires the highest academic pedigree to even be considered for an internship position on that career track. And you know what I did? I asked for extra classes if I didn’t understand the subject matter. I stayed up late studying with smarter students. My sisters helped me achieve this goal, becauseI will be an excellent leader.”
That was true. The blonde spitfire might achieve great things if she avoidedthe listand followed her passion. In a few hundred years or so, she might even have the voice to make things better for hybrid females.
With a condescending boop to my healing nose, she cooed, “If you really think you can unseat me, you better have a solid plan on what to do with your ranking. Moping in your room isn’t helping anyone, least of all you.”
The shower was icy, but heat came from my growing agitation. “I don’t want a leadership position. I don’t want accountability to anyone but myself. Out in the fog, I can explore and provide knowledge to those who don’t love the wilderness the way I do. Ranking has only ever been in my way.”
Maeve threw up her hands, gesturing grandly. “I want what I want. You want what you want. We all want something, and we only have each other. In six weeks, we lose this family and go out into their society with massive gaps in our understanding and no idea where they will place us. In order to leverage what we achieve here, we need to keep our eyes on the prize.”
Agnes shared a secret I had long suspected. “I want to study biology at the human university. I hate patrols. I hate the military. I might even hate humans, because they get everything we don’t, and we’re supposed to… what? Fight huge lizards or breed, so they can try to live on a planet that they are literally allergic to?”
Nodding in angry agreement, Tamsyn spoke up next. “Human women can go into the city, wear dresses, say what they want to whoever they want. I seriously want nothing more than to not have to do this”—she gestured at her uniform—“anymore. Why can’t I just be a young woman? I didn’t ask to be born to swing a sword at noisy dinosaurs. And I should not have to mate with a stranger to be allowed outside!”
“Do you all remember when we were younger, how we’d watch the older sisters slowly go insane? Some would wander about, confused. Others would start acting crazy.” Maeve cut a disapproving glare my way. “We can’t let that happen to us. Six weeks is a long time to plan an offense if we use it to our advantage. If we can’t find a way to force the general’s hand, we will help you attain a surveyor position, and you can walk into the fog free to die in it if that’s what you want.”
Maeve motioned to the bar of soap at my feet. “But none of us are helping you until you take a shower.”
7
Ihad bathed, as they’d ordered. Scrubbed my hair, cleaned my teeth. Fresh clothing had been fetched after I’d dried, and now, bone-cold from the icy shower, I sat huddled up with my sisters in a quiet corner of the females’ common room.
