“You arenotgoing,” my mother said again firmly, and for the first time in two years, I saw some of her spunk back.
I frowned. “Iamgoing. I have the mark. I have the letter.”
I hadn’t really decided if I wanted to go until this very moment. Until my mother told me I couldn’t.
Her mouth set into a thin line as she glanced at my chest another time, “You’re barely eighteen! You have no magic, and you’ve never attended an Elite school in your life. You don’t have a weapon, nor have you ever been trained tofight…”
My fists balled, lip quivering as tears lined my eyes.
“You think I’m not good enough!” I screamed.
She shrank back, rubbing her temples. “No, I meant you weren’t raised for that life. I won’t send my daughter to die for the Elite’s entertainment.”
“I wasn’t raised for that life? And whose fault is that!” I spat at her, the tears now flowing freely.
“Not mine!” she shouted back. I was pretty sure the neighbors could hear us at this point, and I didn’t care.
“Exactly, Mom. We havenochoice. We are born into this life, given a label, and forced to work for next to nothing. We go to bed with empty bellies, and we can’t even dream of full ones because we know it will never happen. Well, I have a choice now. I’m going!”
She shook her head. “Brynn, you don’t understand them. This is some mean joke. They will ridicule you, and then they will kill you.”
“I have the mark and the letter. I’m an initiate. I have a sponsor.” Even though he was currently dead. “And I’ll bond a wolfkin who will protect me.” That was the entire reason the Elites bonded wolfkin before the trial, for protection as they moved through the different obstacles. I was convincing myself more than her at this point. She sighed and walked over to the corner of the room, grabbing a broken piece of mirror. She buffed the mirror with her dirtyshirt tail.
“Look,” she told me.
I grabbed the slice of mirror and looked. Tears swam in my green eyes. I had black ash caked in my hairline, in the crease around my nose, and in my ears. I had a small scar on my chin from when I was a child. My normally silver hair was a grayish black, covered in soot. It was obvious who I was: a Dreg rat, a magicless, untouchable.
“I’m just trying to protect you,” my mother whimpered.
I nodded, handing her back the mirror shard. “I understand that, Mom, but I’m not worried about them hurling insults at me. Think about what is being offered here. If I win the trial, ourentirebloodline gets magic and becomes Elite overnight,” I whispered.
My mother gasped, dropping the mirror. It shattered into a dozen pieces.
I didn’t think she’d put it together until that very moment. The opportunity to raise up her, my two aunts, my uncle, andallof their children. Forty of us in all. My entire bloodline would be given magic. That’s how it worked.
“Honey, winning the trials withno magic… I love you, I think you are so smart and beautiful… but do you really think it’s possible?”
No. I didn’t. I was pretty sure I’d die within the first hour. Probably even before that,when I bonded the wolfkin. They said it was a painful and powerful process, and that it alone might kill me, but I wasn’t going to waste this opportunity. Because there was a small chance that if I bonded a powerful wolfkin and survived it, I might not need magic. He would protect me until I could win the trials and get the magic. Then I’d become an Elite. I’d become untouchable in a different way.
“I have to try. Father would tell me to do it,” I said.
“He’d never want you to be hurt,” she challenged.
I nodded. “But he’d tell me to follow my heart, and my heart says to do this,” I countered.
I saw the moment she relented. Her eyes cast downward, and she just nodded once.
“If you have decided, then May the Creator bless your way.”
I didn’t sleep a single minute that night.
Chapter Three
Isnuck out before the littles woke. My mother and I decided only to tell Tyrus what I was really doing. He’d have to take over my two jobs to keep food on the table, but we vowed to tell my other siblings I was away for a special job for the next month and would try to visit. I kept my goodbye with my mother brief because I was starting to lose my nerve.
Was I crazy?
An eighteen-year-old magicless about to enter the Arcane Trials? Did I have a death wish? Maybe… but the thought of my mother and siblings and aunts and uncles and cousins all getting magic overnight and becoming Elites, it kept me going. It forced me to swallow my fear.
