Total pages in book: 214
Estimated words: 195876 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 979(@200wpm)___ 784(@250wpm)___ 653(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 195876 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 979(@200wpm)___ 784(@250wpm)___ 653(@300wpm)
"He didn’t say much," I say finally, staring at the ceiling where water-light dances in rippling patterns. "But I think he's trouble."
Mireen sighs as she adjusts herself in the small bed, wincing as she finds a particularly tender spot. "I saw the way he was… mounting you. Maybe he just wanted an excuse to put his hands on you."
I can still feel the places where he touched me, like burning shadows branded into my skin. I know I'll bear marks from that touch tomorrow once the bruises form fully. "Somehow, I doubt that," I say.
The vision of his face hovering over mine fills my mind as I clench my fist, feeling phantom flames lick across my knuckles. I've survived the offering ceremony, the elemental trial, and my first day at Confluence Academy.
But surviving isn't enough. I need to find out what the hell it means to be unbound—why I was able to call fire while touching Raith, and whether the strangeness of my abilities stop there.
This morning, part of me was ready to give up and die. Part of me still is, maybe.
But I want to see this thing through. I want to show all the assholes running this place that we're not fodder to discard. They expect us to die in droves before Confluence Day?
I'd love nothing more than to thrive. To shove their dismissal down their damn throats, if that's what it takes.
And not just them. There are the people like Serena and Raith who are stronger than me, and they think they can wield that power like clubs to keep me down.
Fuck that.
I'll make it to Confluence Day—whatever that is—and I'll even earn myself an elemental if that’s the goal. And if, by some miracle, I survive to make it out of this place, I'll find a way to use my power to make it up to Brissa and my mother.
But for now, my reality revolves around one brutally simple truth.
This place and these people see me as expendable, and I intend to prove them wrong.
I'm going to live.
5
There might only be one good thing about life at Confluence Academy, and it's a wonderful invention known as a "shower."
My body is a map of pain from my first two weeks at Confluence Academy. Every muscle screams in protest as I sink deeper into the steaming pool, hoping the hot water might erase the memory of Serena slamming me into a wall so hard this morning that I tasted blood. My tongue probes the inside of my cheek, still tender. I'm lucky I didn't chip a tooth.
All I did was look at her when I was leaving the dining room after breakfast. She's apparently still pissed she didn't get a chance to challenge me herself and beat me senseless that first day. Thankfully, Raith Hollow has kept his distance from me. He's apparently too busy excelling in every single subject and attracting followers like some kind of budding commander of the fire affinities.
I close my eyes and try to let these thoughts dissolve in the heat. It has become a daily ritual for me. I sink into the waters that remind me of home—of when home still felt like home—and I try to forget about the dangers and politics of this place for just a few moments.
The floating clouds overhead shift and churn with magic, releasing a gentle rainfall that patters against the surface of the pool. Steam rises in thick clouds around me, giving the illusion of privacy as other first-year waters strip off bloodied training clothes and descend into the communal bath. I got over undressing in front of other guys pretty quickly, because these showers feel like the only thing keeping me standing most days.
That, and it already seems like nearly everybody is sleeping around as much and as often as they can here. Prudishness is for those who don't face death every day, I guess.
We spar every morning, physically beating one another into submission after drilling forms with the instructors. On good days, nobody even ends up dead when the matches are over. After sparring, it's straight to weight training and endurance. Endless lifting, pulling, jumping, running, and sweating. There's a brief break to stuff food in our faces for breakfast in the grand dining hall, then it's on to academics.
We're taught field medicine, survival skills, battlefield tactics, history, and, most of all, information about the elemental plane and the magical creatures we're going to risk our lives to tether. I already know things like how to stint a broken bone with nothing but branches and weeds, edible and poisonous plants, and historical facts that never would’ve mattered to a girl like me from a fishing town—things like how the empire is ruled by three, two women and one man, based on a tradition that started with a pair of triplets eight hundred years ago.