Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 69923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
“We already know enough,” Nitsa added. “Anything called the culling can’t be good.”
Neither of us had a response for that.
The trek to the history room was less eventful than the throbbing, bleeding wound I had courtesy of my run-in with Sirena and the Titans.
Our crowd of Sisypheans turned left down the wall where it split around the reflection room. Light spilled through a rare window, casting a warm gift on my cheeks as I passed through. I stopped for a breath, just soaking it in.
I wasn’t afraid of the dark. Eight years in a cave rid me of such childish things, and instead gave me an appreciation for the light. If life awaited me after the coming battle with the goddess, I’d build a home that was all windows, even the ceiling. All day the sun would shine on me. All night the stars would watch me sleep.
“Aella?” Daciana snapped me out of my daydream. “I said she’s less horrible than the rest, but that doesn’t mean she’s cool with latecomers.”
“Coming.”
I left the sunlight behind, trailing my friends into the history hall. My lips parted but nothing came out.
Books. Books as far and wide as I could see. We came out on the second-floor loft—students breaking up to make for the two spiral staircases leading down to the lecture floor with its desks, and those desks piled with more books.
“Wow,” I breathed, moving to the gold-and-iron railing to look up, not down. Another loft of bookshelves going all the way around promised the knowledge of fifty lifetimes. The true name of the goddess was here. It had to be. I couldn’t believe there was a secret that escaped this temple of knowledge.
“Down in front. Down in front.”
I snapped around as my instructor exited a side door hidden behind the shelves.
“Fill in the front rows first,” said Madame Remis. “Come now, novices. The rumors that I bite are greatly exaggerated.”
I watched Sirena lace her fingers through Alexander’s and tow him to the front row. A band of gorgeous, strutting Titans packed in around them. I watched two of the girls who said they’d back Sirena up if she mauled Nitsa, set her books in front of her and fuss with her hair—making it more perfect than it already was.
What are they? Handmaidens?
I was not looking to make more trouble for my friends, so if Sirena and her group were front row, it was the back row for me.
My friends and I settled on the Sisyphean side, far enough back that Sirena would have to crane her neck tossing smirks my way.
“Good morning, everyone. I trust you all have scrolls for me,” Remis began.
I studied her as she moved a pile of books off her desk, then perched against it. She was quite pretty. Thick, dark hair cut short above her shoulders in a cut as severe as her sharp cheekbones. Should’ve made her seem severe, but she was softened by large, fawn-brown eyes and a tiny little coin of a mouth. I put her in her early thirties. Twenty years younger than Vasili at the very least.
Mixed feelings swirled in my chest. I wasn’t sure what to make of her. She led me like prey into a trap, misleading me about the Tantalean bread and standing silently by while her boyfriend rendered me unconscious and locked me in a torture device. But the fact remained they were following the orders of the pompous, soft-bottomed schoolteacher who now hates me. If they didn’t do it, Drakos would’ve done it himself.
“Pass them up.”
There was shuffling and murmuring as everyone passed up their summary of the first chapter in our textbook, History of Olympia. I took out mine.
“Madame.” I raised a hand. “It’s not a full scroll, but I wrote down everything I know about the founding of Olympia.”
She waved me down. “There’s no hand-raising in my class, Aella. We’re all adults. We know when to speak and when to listen. As for the assignment, of course I don’t expect that today. Review the chapter first and hand it in to me next week.”
Daciana shot me a look. See? Not so horrible.
“For the rest of us,” she continued. “Did you learn anything that surprised you?”
“I learned my village teacher lied to us,” said Nile Aetos, a Titan. “She said Olympia was formed because monsters were attracted to the divine in our blood. We came here to fight and defend each other.”
“She was right and wrong,” Remis replied. “Some monsters can sense the god or goddess within our souls because they’re descendants of gods themselves. But as for the rest—the cursed—they see a human and only a human. No, the creatures that sensed the divinity in our blood and made life impossible for us... were the vampires.”
A sharp crack turned my head. A snarl peeled back Daciana’s lips as she tossed away her now broken writing reed.