“Free time is up,” Emmy unnecessarily announced.
Henchman Number Two had told us that we would be expected to attend the dining hall for the Commencement Celebration that night, in the presence of every sol at the academy. Apparently, they had a feast at the beginning of every academy life-cycle, and the new dweller recruits were one of the main attractions. Emmy was staring into the tiny, oval reflection glass stuck to the wall between the two single beds, fussing with her hair. She would have changed, too, if she hadn’t already been wearing her best clothes. I waited until she was done before moving over to the reflection glass myself and peering at the image of my own face. It was an okay face. Kind of like my mum’s. I had naturally pink lips, and naturally flushed cheeks—probably from the adrenaline of almost dying all the time. My eyes were a brown that seemed strangely translucent in most lights. The kind of brown that reflected other colours. It wasn’t at all odd for a person with blue eyes to think that mine were slate-brown, or a person with green eyes to think that mine were mossy-brown.
I didn’t really see all those different shades and highlights that other people mentioned. I thought they weretawny. Tawny brown eyes. Plain and simple. I also had tawny skin, a golden-brown from having spent far too much time outdoors. I was lucky that I didn’t also have tawny brown hair, or else I’d probably be blending into walls and trees. My hair was similar to Emmy’s—a white-blond, with a scruffy curl to oppose her sleek locks. It was also a little darker, with less silver. I pulled all of my hair back from my face now, slapping a hand over my forehead to see what I’d look like in a cap.
“Not bad,” I muttered. “But there’s still the boobs.”
“Okay, we’re leaving, before you start talking about that again.” Emmy lead the way, taking us through the many corridors and back into the dining hall.
The sols were already seated at their tables, indicating that we were probably late, but I was really good at being late, so I took Emmy’s arm, draggingherfor once. We plastered ourselves to the wall, moving along the line of other dwellers toward the middle of the room, where it would be easier to see all the tables. It wasn’t until we were properly stationed that I noticed the group of dwellers hovering out in front of the kitchens, a few sols standing in front of them. I recognised most of their faces, because they were the other dweller recruits.
Crap. We were standing with the resident dwellers.
“Welcome, dirt-dwellers!” One of the sols shouted, even though he was only standing a few feet away from the first line of recruits. “Welcome to our city, welcome to our academy, and welcome to the commencement ceremony! Now …strip!”
Wait … what?
The demon-sol laughed, his head thrown back, his dark, golden-onyx hair tousled perfectly around his face.Was that …?He looked exactly like Siret, except that I couldseeSiret standing right beside him, wearing the same clothes as this morning. The trickery-gifted sol had a twin? I could tell them apart, but the twin thing was clear. That wasn’t good. That definitely wasn’t good. But what wasworsewas the fact that the recruits actually appeared to be … stripping.
The seated sols started laughing, a few of them jeering rudely, and one of the resident dwellers next to me sighed.
“Why do the sols find this so funny, anyway? Why can’t Yael think of anything better to use his Persuasion gift for?”
I had no idea who the guy was talking to, but I decided it wouldn’t hurt to let out a matching sigh, lean back against the wall, and fold my arms casually. “I know, right? It’s getting old. And don’t even get me started on the twin thing. One of them is enough, am I right?”
The guy snorted. “Yeah, and five is overdoing it, just a little bit.”
Five? Five! Holy fu—
“I feel sorry for whoever’s assigned to their dorm rooms,” I whispered back, applauding my even tone.
“It’ll be one of the recruits,” my new friend informed me, lowering his voice even further and leaning my way. “You know it’s been absolute chaosin here since they turned up a few moon-cycles ago. They’ve had twenty resident dwellers assigned to them already, but they dismiss them like it’s in their schedule to get a dweller fired every few weeks. After the last one, Elowin announced that she’d start assigning them recruits. You wouldn’t know that because you aren’t one of the slaves attending the dweller-relations committee—I know, because Iam. Anyway, I guess she thought that if she gave them someone ‘fresh,’ they’d be able to mould them however they wanted.”
“Sounds creepy. So is Elowin giving them special privileges?”
“They’re the most powerful sols here. You didn’t know that? They’re our future gods—”
“And onthatnote,” Emmy broke into our conversation, leaning over me to glare at the guy, “you two should really stop gossiping about them.”
“Sorry,” I muttered to the guy, after pushing Emmy back. “She hasn’t eaten yet.”
He chuckled. “No problem. I’m Atti, by the way.”
“I’m Willa, and my grumpy friend here is Emmy.”
Atti shook his head, his short curls jumping around a little like they were trying to escape his head. “Why haven’t I seen you two around before? I know Elowin keeps us locked down in service to her, but I thought I’d crossed paths with most resident dwellers by now.”
Before I could fess up to my mistake and our recruit status, a commotion across the room stole all our attentions. The recruits—who were now wearing no more than underclothes—were dragging themselves out to stand in the centre of the room. They were being paraded around. The two almost-identical demon-sols—Siret and Yael—remained standing at their table. Juststanding.Smug, arrogant, assholes. They had these half-smirks on their faces, like they were enjoying the discomfort of the dwellers—feedingon it, even. Their huge bodies seemed to grow even larger, the perfect planes of their faces deepening. The shimmers of gold which tinted the darkness of their hair was stronger, almost as if they had this inner light which was shining brighter.
I was starting to see the gods-in-training thing, to reallyseeit. There was nothing dweller in these sols, no matter what the history said of the origins of the gods and sols.
“Why does no one stop them?” I murmured, my feet shifting. I had to force myself to remain against the wall, I couldn’t stand to see others humiliated like this.
It was different whenIwas humiliated. I was used to it; I could handle it. They couldn’t. They had once been the brightest, the smartest, the most honoured amongst their own people …and now? All of a sudden, they were less than garbage.
Atti answered. “The teachers tend to leave sols to deal with things themselves. They don’t monitor them outside of lessons. They say the gods are always watching, and that usually keeps most of them in line.”
Except for the Abcurse brothers. Clearly they weren’t worried about the gods and their spying eyes. I tilted my head to the right, my gaze catching on Emmy. She started shaking her head frantically at me.
