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The next part was easy, because it was the right thing to do for a sister. “I confess. It was me. I did the fornication with a boy. It wasn’t rape, because I gave him permission to kiss me. Therefore, you can’t kill him.”
In a blink, the man went from wild and glaring to exasperated and exhausted. A groan of, “God, help me, Lorieyn. Who does the braid belong to?” followed.
Never would he get that name out of me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. That’s my hair.”
He pushed back his chair and stood. Leaning forward, scary as hell, he stated, “I need to confirm if they are mates before I can decide if he lives or dies.”
I didn’t have a clue who the boy was, but I absolutely knew Sylvia. She was like a sister to me. And we all knew better than to trust the general. “I already told you. It was me. I accept the punishment.”
Leaning farther over his table, Cyderial ordered, “Let me see your hair.”
Grabbing the mass behind my back, I pulled it over one shoulder.
“Closer.”
I came forward and held it out for him to observe, yet it was all the more obvious the little braid did not come from me once he held it up to compare.
“Lying to your commanding officer is a serious offense.” The hand holding up the braid, the backs of his fingers brushed my hair as he lowered it.
“It was me.”
Sitting back in his chair, unsmiling and austere, he warned, “I will find out who she is.”
He may, but not until I’d given her warning to lighten her hair with the chemicals we used to remove blood stains from our uniforms.
Determined to get even with me for insubordination, I was then tortured for five awful minutes.
My punishment was to endure an explanation of what the word fornication meant and a vague description of how it was performed. From the general… while I turned beet-red.
My very sincere reaction at the age of sixteen had beenewww.
And I finally understood what he’d been so worried about. “So, rape is when a boy doesthatwithout permission?” Making out in that closet had been fun, letting a boy touch my boobs had been a bit weird, but the idea of someone doingthatto me was completely repulsive. “That happens here?”
The general did not answer my question. He had one of his own instead. “Are you still going to lie to me about whose hair this is?”
Deeply disturbed, I would not and could not meet his eyes. “Yes. That’s my hair. I did the fornication.”
Picking up the hairpins from his desk, the general passed them to me. “Go back to bed, Lorieyn.”
After being escorted to the female dorm and locked away behind the vault door, I disobeyed the general. I did not go back to bed. Instead, I secretly helped a strangely woozy Sylvia lighten her hair just enough that the shade of the braid would never match. They still found her out. By that evening, she was summoned to the general's office.
She did not return.
I missed her terribly.
After that, there was no more walking the halls at night nor kissing unknown boys in the dark.
The man who explained sex to me for the first time that evening had not touched me since. Nor had I been forced to endure any conversation of that type in his presence.
That had been six years prior.
Now, it seemed the unspoken rules had changed.
“Remain at attention, soldier,” General Cyderial murmured, stepping around his desk. And for the first time in years, there was no shield of furniture standing between us. Nothing to offer a flimsy illusion of distance or protection from this man I hated.
“In the ten years since I took over leadership of the Academy, we have met in this office on twenty-eight occasions. Not one of those meetings has been a commendation for exceptional performance. Seven of them have been purely disciplinary.”
Five by my count, but clearly I had missed some. I also didn’t really enjoy where this final conversation had begun… unless, of course, he was just going to comment on how mediocre my performance had been.
