Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 76857 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76857 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Before I could continue to point out the flaws in their plan, icy water hit the fabric wrapped around my frame. Soaking-wet sheets were even more annoying than dry ones, and I’d had enough of their shoddy plan. Talons made short work of the sad covering, sopping cotton ruined as I sputtered and fought my way out.
The round room was familiar—the women’s communal shower. All water flowed from the center, where twenty of us might wash at the same time before the bell signaled that we were to rotate for the next group.
It was not like the pretty pools in my magazines. It was a place for utility and haste.
Cold water soaked through my rank pajamas and limp hair. My feet now beneath me, I squared off against my friends.
Maeve sneered. “If you expect me to wash you, I won’t be gentle.”
A waning bar of soap hit me right between the eyes. “What in the hell, Maeve?”
“You smell so bad that suffering through it to speak to you is impossible. For the love of God, take a shower!”
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.”
“We don’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 will help you 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 another year or two, study a syllabus of his choosing, take the title of Assistant Instructor, or add my name to the 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.