Janina quirked her mouth, pointing at Kamine’s eyes. “That’s fitting.”
Kamine held back a groan. She didn’t know how the cohorts had been sorted into their rooms, but she couldn’t believe it was just a coincidence that she ended up where she did. Her purpleeyes were a unique trait, one of the few things she had inherited from her mother.
“I don’t even know where that is,” Kamine muttered.
“I think the point is we figure this place out,” Janina shrugged, brushing her fingers through her long black hair. “The faster we can navigate these endless halls, the better.”
Kamine didn’t question it. Of course the school would make a game of something as simple as finding where they’d be staying. One would think they would want the students focused on training or studying—not on navigating these old, dark halls.
“Want to grab dinner together later?” Janina asked, casually.
Kamine tried to not act stunned at the invite. In her village, people kept away from her, as if she was too sacred to be near. A descendant of such an honored winner, a legend, was too good for everyone else.
Feigning comfort, she shrugged, and replied, “Sure.”
Janina left her, and the other participants began making their way to wherever the hell they would be sleeping for the next few months.
Kamine took one last moment to look up into the small hole in the ceiling to glimpse the sky above before she was locked away.
A soothing voice started from behind Kamine. “Your mother got so lost her first day, she ended up sleeping on the floor in here. When someone questioned her on it, she just said that she wanted to see the stars.” The Headmaster laughed, her coiled, dark brown braids bouncing. “She was so prideful. Your father saw right through it. ”
“Well, she lost that stubbornness after her Undertaking,” Kamine snapped, tired of people speaking about the version of her mother that she never got to meet.
“We were all sorry to hear of her loss.”
Kamine scoffed. She didn’t need the Headmaster’s sympathy. “I wasn’t sorry. I’m glad she’s no longer suffering.”
Even though that wasn’t entirely true. A deep part of her hated her mother for choosing to leave her and her family without so much as a goodbye letter. It was a selfish decision. A decision made out of guilt for her own actions. Yet, here Kamine was the one suffering for it.
Kamine stormed off with a quick farewell to the Headmaster, disappearing into the tunnels. She chose the direction that the mysterious man had gone earlier. Some internal instinct told her it was the right way, though there were no signs to guide her. She noticed other participants already running around the tunnels, exploring. Kamine just wanted to rest for the night.
Tomorrow everyone would learn how incapable she was, how her powers hid from her. It was a secret her mother had ruthlessly kept from everyone—a tactic that backfired, because the villagers now believed that Kamine would be their savior, that she had the same skill as her mother to protect them. And that couldn’t have been farther from the truth.
In the distance, she spied a faint, purple glow. A breath of relief escaped her lips as she headed towards it.
Kamine startled back when she noticed a door swing open.
“You made it!” A voice said, cheerily.
A purple flame danced by the entryway. This must be Purple Hall, but there was only one room.
“I’m Zoya, your roommate.” A tall, slim woman with two blonde braids said, as she extended her hand to Kamine. Her skirt and top looked to be hand knitted, the colors vibrant and the pattern chaotic. Her pale skin glowed purple in the light.
The room Kamine entered could barely be considered a closet. A bunk bed and a dresser—that’s all that they were provided. Kamine’s shoulders slumped.
“Where’s the bathing room?”
Zoya’s eyes widened. “I’m not sure. That’s the next thing we need to find, I guess. It’s likely a shared bathing room that we’ll all need to use.”
“Of course it is,” she said under her breath. “I’m Kamine, by the way.” She didn’t want to start this out on the wrong foot. The one blessing of all this was that she no longer had to deal with a four-year-old boy barging into her room, and destroying it all.
“Oh I know,” Zoya responded. At Kamine’s scrunched brows, she added, with a smile on her face as if it were obvious, “We all know who you are.”
“You do?”
“Everyone knows that your mother won her Undertaking.” The unspoken words flitted in the air.Everyone knows that your mother is the reason that the Thunder Court survived for another year.
Just what she needed: everyone in her cohort to compare her to her mother.
