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Before me, a pile of food was slowly dwindling as I found my appetite. Food pilfered from their own trays while I’d been sulking. And to show my gratitude for the gesture, I ravaged even the stale meat cubes and my least favorite kind of compressed vegetation patties.
Accepted by my sisters, embraced even with my flaws and deceits, I began to thaw. Maeve’s arm against me offering heat and support. Tamsyn’s shoulder to mine. Agnes’s feet tangled with my own across the couch.
I had taken them for granted.
It wasn’t that I didn’t love them; it was the desperation the academy drilled into a person. I needed out. I needed freedom.
And there was nothing I could do for them.
But it seemed they were more than willing to do anything for me—risk punishment, even execution. To help me.
“Cough it up. What exactly did General Cyderial say to you? Be specific, Lorieyn.” Maeve was prim, her blonde curls caught up in a bun, ignoring her damp sleeves as she prepared to take ubiquitous notes.
After a deep breath and a shaky exhale, I let my thoughts drift back over a situation I longed to forget. “General Cyderial was aware I’ve been throwing the tests.” An uncomfortable moment of remembered embarrassment flared to life, my cheeks going pink and my scales glittering. “Wait, that's not right. First, I failed uniform inspection, because my jacket was too tight. He also noted that I smelled like children. Then he told me he was failing me and suggested that I should join the list.”
Maeve glanced up from her paper. “I’m going to need more than that.”
“How could he know you were throwing the test scores?” Idly braiding her hair, Agnes stretched out her legs and said, “None of us knew. And no offense, but you never struck me as brainy.”
Gloomy smirk on my face, I shrugged one shoulder. “What did I strike you as?”
“Stubborn.”
A dry laugh fell from my lips. Fair enough—Iwasstubborn. And apparently, also completely blind. “He knew because of the boy who died, Private Cullen. The one I was caught with when I was fifteen. I was tutoring him in trigonometry when we were found together after hours. There was enough there to get his attention, and he started analyzing the games I played with my tests.”
Agnes frowned, dropping her hair and growing sad. “I remember that. It's when the lockdown intensified. I wasn’t able to see Phillip anymore.”
Tamsyn gawked. “You were seeing Phillip?”
She didn’t try to be flippant or hide how she felt, Agnes openly sharing a secret grief perhaps for the first time ever. “Yeah, until he stopped showing up. He stopped talking to me completely actually. Watching his friend be hung must have made kissing me after classes seem a lot less exciting.”
There was nothing we could say to soothe that kind of ache. No platitudes or empty promises. Fact was, unless it was Phillip who chose her offthe list, she would never be his.
And he had not been willing to risk his life for her.
Happiness of that sort did not exist within the walls of the academy.
“We're getting off track here,” Maeve reminded gently, attempting to steer the conversation over ground we might actually alter. “Why exactly did General Cyderial state you could not be a surveyor?”
That was the problem. He had not said much. After all, what did he care if my tests were high or low? My future was nothing to him.
Agitated thinking about it, I brushed wet hair off my shoulder and said, “There were some veiled threats about unmated females being attacked by male vorec looking to mate. He said they can’t tell we're half human and will… you know.” Sex was not something we’d been taught about in school. All most of us knew were gathered bits passed down from the older girls. As far as I was aware, I alone had suffered the detailed explanation from the general all those years prior. “They will try to breed me.”
Cocking her head, Maeve asked, “Implying that if you’re mated, they’ll only try to kill you?”
I shrugged. “I was not in the right frame of mind to do more than argue. He offered few reasons, most of them based on gender and the fact that I was unmated.”
Shrewd, Maeve leaned closer, reasoning the same as I had. “But if you put your name onthe list,your mate will not allow you to go into the fog.”
“Exactly.”
Tamsyn interjected on our back and forth, “We have been taught about at least two female surveyors. The threat of that assignment held over our heads if our scores were unsatisfactory. So, femalescanhave that position. But if they’re not mated and they are also unsatisfactory forthe list, then…?”
Feeling the first spark of hope in days, I felt my lips form into a real smile. “They have beenruined.”
My sisters nodded.
Tamsyn, by far the most cynical of our group, sneered. “Consider this. All we know is thatto be‘ruined’means nothing more than having sex with a male who did not hear your song. What if the men prevent us from intercourse, because if we are penetrated by someone who is not our ‘mate,’ then they won’t be able to control us? Have you ever met a woman who’d had sex outside of the bond?”
