Anees—
From a table near the front, the chatty woman from the brig stepped forward, her brown face hard as granite and her black hair pinned up in a tight bun. A thin, silver square with two diagonal lines crossing through it decorated the shoulder of her uniform, and at her hips, two daggers hung like an optional extension of her arms.
How?Howwas Anees here when she’d just chattered along in the brig? How had she become one of those heartless killers so fast? Or had she been in the academy all along?
Anees walked up the stairs, joining Falcrest at the front, and drew her blades.
“Kill them.” Like the day before, the Master of Veils didn’t hesitate to give the order, but today, the ashlings weren’t prepared to die.
“Please,” the shorter of the two begged. He had a red square on his shoulder, and Lory remembered correctlyhis name was Taren Blackroot. Her chest constricted as he dropped to his knees. “Please. I didn’t mean to be late. It was an accident. I ripped my shirt and had to get a new one?—”
“In these halls, it doesn’t matter why you are late, Ashling,” the Master of Veils thundered, cutting Taren off. “In these halls, you either are smart enough to survive, or you are not.”
The second ashling whimpered as Anees took aim and ran Taren through with a dagger from the side, not bothering to step around him to catch his heart from the front, the way the thornling had done the day before.
Taren screamed, clutching his ribs as he collapsed at Anees’s feet. The bell rang, blocking out all other sounds, and Lory couldn’t help but give a little yelp as the other ashling seized the moment, hopping off the dais and making a run for it. A spark of hope flared in Lory’s chest as he made it halfway through the still-open side door, but it was squashed as the Master of Veils lifted her hand and he fell over his own feet, bound by an invisible rope and dragged back to the dais.
“What’s his color?” Nefetari Brunn asked in the same emotionless tone that had ordered Lory’s execution.
“Green, ma’am,” Falcrest responded, expression empty.
The Master of Veils glanced at him. “Take him to the dungeons and make sure green receives an extra lesson in loyalty today.”
Falcrest merely nodded, but when Anees was ordered to remove Taren from the dais, he bent over and helped, his gaze flicking across the room and meeting Lory’s for a heartbeatbefore he hauled up the now-dead body and dragged it down toward the door, Anees right behind him.
Despite her hunger, Lory didn’t eat breakfast that morning.
After an hour of testing their bodies’limits with pushups and running in the oval sand lane in yet another courtyard, Lory gulped down what felt like half a pond. Sweat dripped from her face, making the shirt stick to her skin, and her muscles were shaking.
She didn’t struggle half as much as some of the blue ashlings, thanks to her lifestyle of climbing onto roofs and running from the city guards, Gargoyles, or others, but she wasn’t in as splendid a shape as Tabi or Frost, who made the laps in a third of her time. Even Brycon beat her every round, probably still in shape from basic training in the common military.
“You will run laps every morning before breakfast from now on,” Hand Sil informed them from her spot at the side of the yard, arms folded over her chest and her shortswords hanging on her hips. “Within a month, I expect you all to keep pace with the thornlings.”
Lory set down her cup, ready to lie down on the ground and just exist for a couple of minutes.
“Make your way back to the Blue Room, ashlings,” Sil ordered. “You’ll be received there by your next instructor.”
“Any chance you’ll tell us what we’ll be instructed in?” an ashling with short black hair and umber skin, whom Lory had learned was named Ronan Dray, asked.
Sil cocked her head at him, narrowing her eyes in a clear message to get lost, and none of the ashlings lingered to experience an outburst of her wrath.
They made it to the Blue Room—that’s what the room they’d been led to by the blue magic line the day before was called—in record time, not wasting any time on changing into fresh clothes. Instead of an empty space, this time, rows of chairs were facing a desk set at the front of the room, where Hand Dunveil was drinking from a slender glass of water, watching them all trickle into their seats.
He was wearing the same black uniform as the rest of them. Only his wasn’t sweaty, and he wasn’t panting.
Lory found a chair at the back of the room, where she had a good overview of what everyone else was doing.
Brycon and Tabi sat near the front, Ronan Dray right behind them. While most of the students seemed to be dying to get a space in the front row, there was only one other who headed straight for the last one, taking a seat two chairs away from Lory near the center of the row.
Frost inclined his head at her, deep blue eyes sharp as he assessed her the same way he had when they first met.
“Welcome to your first Knowledge lesson,” Hand Dunveil opened the second everyone was seated, not allowing them a moment to catch their breath. “I see you’ve had the pleasure of Hand Sil’s morning training.” He got to his feet and sat on the edge of the desk, flipping over a page in an open book.
“You’ve been ashlings for all of twenty-four hours, and you’ve already watched two fellow students die. I don’t wanta blue to be next, so you’d better spend your time here well. Pay attention in classes, and learn wherever you can. Ashthorn is about more than becoming the elite of this kingdom’s military. It is about discipline, skill, and perseverance. You won’t achieve one without the other, and at Ashthorn, you won’t succeed without excelling in all of them. You won’t be able to master your magic without absolute control over your mind and your body first, so you’d better take even the most basic of training seriously. Blue has a long tradition of bringing forth remarkable ashlings, and I expect this year to be no different.”
He closed the book, bracing his hand next to it.
“Some of you come from families with a history of magic, and some of you are new to it. Whether you know your ability or you are oblivious to it, whether you signed up or were …invited… to join the academy in another way, you all are here for a reason, and I expect you to live up to it.”
