Chapter 19
Four minutes later, Audra stood shoulder to shoulder with Wilder, their boots just kissing the doorway of a classroom.
Huffing a nervous sigh, Audra rolled and stuffed the map beneath the flap of the brass-buckled leather case hanging from her shoulder.
Smoothed the pleats of her calf-length plaid skirt with sweaty palms. Wilder tugged at a loose thread on her plaid trousers.
Audra wasn’t sure what to expect within any classroom, let alone a fae classroom, and thus, was unable to make her feet move inside the door.
She cursed Salt Hollow for not having a proper school.
Was Wilder paralyzed from nerves as well, or was she simply waiting until Audra collected herself and figured out how to walk through a doorway?
A quick peek. Wilder’s face was devoid of emotion—the soldier gave nothing away when she didn’t wish to. But then Wilder must have felt Audra’s gaze on her, she turned from her study of the classroom to meet Audra’s eyes, her face breaking into a reassuring smile.
Somehow, Audra smiled back. Because she wasn’t doing this alone, she had Wilder.
The timepiece on their wrists chimed in tandem; the metal began to heat.
Together they entered the dusty classroom. Their timepieces quieted mid-chirp the moment they were inside, and the metal cooled.
Audra doubted she and Lottie were the only two to have never been in a formal class setting before. Most initiates sat still as prey—clinging to their course textbooks like a life rope. The only sounds in the room were the crackle and pop of torches lining the walls.
Rows of single-occupancy desks filled the room—enough for, Audra counted quickly, all forty-eight initiates in Arcane Guild. Audra and Wilder chose the last two open seats, blessedly side by side, in the middle of the room.
A fae female with shoulder-length silver curls, proud chin, and ink-stained fingers stood behind a podium at the front of the classroom.
“I expect you to be ready to learn, initiates. Pull out your materials.” Mouth downturned, she surveyed the nervous initiates as they pulled out quills, stacks of bound parchment, and popped the corks in their inkpots for the first time.
The scholar watched them all like she was a queen and they her peasant subjects.
Determined to appear confident, Audra raised her chin as the scholar’s domineering gaze met hers. When she continued on to the next initiate and Audra hadn’t faltered, she sighed internally with relief.
“I am called Scholar Haile. I’ll be your guide for both Introduction to Zenaidan Lore and Culture and your next course, immediately following this one, Introduction to Zenaidan Geography.
I am a tenured scholar at Terah University in Plumwealth, our capital.
At Terah University, I hone the brightest minds in Zenaida and shepherd them on their way to greatness.
I am only here”—her lip curled up as she surveyed the initiates spread out before her—“as a favor to Queen Weshya. It is only because she personally sent me a letter requesting my help that I have agreed to come to Holyvere Academy to instruct you all on the history of our great empire. My hope is that this course will inspire loyalty to your true nation—or at the very least, my syllabus will invoke, if not love, but the respect Zenaida deserves.”
Audra suppressed a snort. She doubted the scholar would have her way; she couldn’t imagine anyone graduating from this course with great love for the nation that had abducted them.
“To those bright few who will excel in my courses and are granted the honor of assimilation within our great nation, welcome. The majority of you, though …” She shrugged her shoulders, silken, black robes rippling.
“Instructing you is a waste of my time, as your life will soon be cut short, if not by the trials, then by demons during your first battle.”
Uneasy glances passed among the initiates. This was anything but a welcome speech. Audra decided she already despised this instructor.
“Let’s begin, first, with keeping time.” Scholar Haile began to mark on the slate with chalk, listing the ten months and in a separate column the five days of the week.
“As you can see, this all looks familiar to you. The weekly and monthly calendars the Vacant Realm uses are named after our core deities.”
They used the same names as the fae deities?
But surely the fae did not worship the same gods as the ancient human civilizations?
Audra need not look around the room to know that all present would be discovering this with her.
According to legend, massive monuments were once constructed to appease and worship the gods.
Elaborate temples and monasteries guarded every human city, and shrines could be found in or on every great wood, mountain peak, mesa, ice plain, and the most humble kitchen.
But the gods’ names had all since been lost to time …
At first through disuse, but more effectively, because of the Truthers.
The anti-religious order that spent the first few decades following the thousand-year war razing the continent, toppling ancient temples, burning religious texts, desecrating all art, purging all such religious relics.
Once the various kings and emperors of old Khaveah sanctioned the Truthers’ beliefs, elevated them to cabinet members, they systematically put any remaining believers to death.
Out of a pantheon, not a single deity was still revered—save Xoese, the deity of Death. The only goddess all humans remembered by name because all knew—human lives were short things that burned hot and fast.
The revelation that the fae and human realms shared the same calendar, despite their disparate existences, struck Audra as bizarre.
Upward of fifteen hundred languages flourished on the Khaveahan continent (she refused to think of Khaveah with the Zenaidans’ moniker, the Vacant Realm), yet everyone, regardless of language, accent, or dialect, called the months by the original fae nomenclature.
Scholar Haile continued, “I’ve decided to begin with the calendar as it’s paramount you realize that this shared calendar is but one stitch in a long history that bound our two realms together, before we were ever separate.”
Indoctrination, Audra thought, her mouth twisting in a cynical grimace.
It was an undeniable link between the two realms that, until now, Audra had thought separated by an unbridgeable chasm.
Scholar Haile may have her way after all—it was a smart and manipulative move to establish common ground before delving into the unfamiliar.
We are alike; therefore, you should fight to assimilate into our society or die fighting for us.
The logic was insidious and effective. Many of her fellow initiates hmmed and ahhed their way through the lesson, raising their hands and asking questions excitedly, trying to please Scholar Haile, despite her arrogant, condescending demeanor.
Audra watched in awe as the concept took root in their minds right before her eyes.
Lottie, for one, practically vibrated with eagerness, her eyes shining with newfound purpose.
Audra couldn’t blame her. So far, Holyvere Academy was a sanctuary compared to Lottie’s former situation, a life that had offered her nothing but anguish and sorrow.
And the others … Audra didn’t know their past or what horrors they may be escaping just by being here—if they soaked up Zenaidan lore like nectar and they hummingbirds, she wouldn’t judge them.
Yet it worried her … how quickly this knowledge of Zenaida, this promise of assimilation, might turn into devotion.
Audra could only imagine that temple, their first class of the day tomorrow, would be even more persuasive …
It was part of the human condition to hunger for faith, to seek out something greater, higher, than oneself to believe in; that was why, in the absence of religion, so many worshiped coin.
For many of them, they would latch hold of this faith thrust upon them with arms open, minds ready, fingers eager to cling to this new religion.
Audra could already envision them becoming devout acolytes, willingly sacrificing everything for these foreign gods.
She, however, remained unimpressed and was beginning to feel peculiarly singular as the lecture continued, and Scholar Haile moved on to Zenaida’s convoluted politics and endless line of monarchs.
None of it held her interest, and Audra’s mind inevitably wandered.
As the lecture faded into the background, she became conscious of something odd.
A presence … The fine hairs on the back of her neck raised as she became acutely aware that someone, no, something, was watching her.
A quick glance around the classroom revealed no students paying her any mind. Some scrawled notes furiously, Wilder being one of them; others dozed off, two were undressing each other with their eyes, but most gazed upon Scholar Haile with rapt attention, drinking in her every word.
Then why did she feel eyes on her? She wasn’t used to being trapped in a classroom; maybe she wasn’t made for such a dull way to acquire knowledge that she’d never requested.
She closed her eyes, intending to meditate for a few moments, to reinvigorate her focus (if she fell asleep and caught up on her rest … so be it).
But that feeling persisted, distracting her. It was as if someone was studying her every move, categorizing her very being like she were a research specimen in a university laboratory.
Audra shifted, rubbing the back of her neck, hoping to brush away this unsettling feeling when a sharp, strong something tugged behind her sternum, accompanied by a wave of heat rushing across her body.
She blinked rapidly, as suddenly, the room lurched sideways.
Abruptly, Scholar Haile’s voice cut off, as if snapped away by a gust of wind, and the classroom faded away—or more accurately, Audra was transported.
To a dark space.
And forgotten gods of old, there was a pair of eyes glowing bronze in the darkness. Fear ricocheted through her body at the sight of the glowing embers, and she flinched away.
Her eyes flew wide.
She was back in the classroom, clenching the desk before her.
She closed her eyes and once again felt a sharp tug behind the sternum, the world flipped sideways, and there—once more—those glowing eyes, no face, no body, nothing but darkness and piercing eyes and heavy brows—the gaze so intense it flayed her clothes and skin and bones until her very soul was laid bare before them.
She opened her eyes once more and glanced around.
Everything was as it had been moments before. Scholar Haile annotated a diagram on the slate board; initiates took notes. They were all of them calm, collected, nothing at all amiss.
Mist take her, was she losing her faculties like Margaryte?
A nudge against her boot. Wilder, watching her, a worried frown tugging full lips downward. Are you well? she mouthed.
Audra nodded, prying her fingers from the rim of her desk and splaying them flat, focusing on Scholar Haile.
She was suddenly afraid to blink.
But eventually, her eyes began to burn and water, and she was forced to close them.
A sigh of relief.
No rush of heat, no tug behind her sternum. And thankfully, no disembodied, glowing eyes.
She focused once more upon the lesson, trying to ignore the … episode she’d just experienced, but she couldn’t parse any of the remaining lecture, nor even the next, over the rush of blood in her ears, the lingering feel of that gaze upon her very soul.