Hey all! So I've chosen the six girls, and they are finally included in a chapter. This chapter! I hope the readers of this story that are not involved enjoy it as much as we all do, those that are involved. It's gonna go places, I hope! I have some crazy plans for this story, and I know they will impress! Or at least… I hope they'll impress you guys.

So yeah, so far I'm just getting to know these characters as much as you readers are, but for the creators of these characters, please tell me if you have any ideas, concerns, or positive feedback when it comes to your characters! I'd love to know how everything I'm doing looks in the eyes of my readers and fellow creators!

Please follow the story so you know when it is coming out, and give me lots of reviews about what I'm doing right/wrong. I love feedback, but please don't be upset if I don't take it into the story. I'll consider it, think about it, but it is my story, after all.

Anyways, thanks for following, and enjoy this next chapter!

Here are the girls…


Chapter 3: A farmer, a bastard, a rebel, a soldier, a daughter, and a pilot

A farmer with a fear of fire.

Sometimes, in the burning light of the dusk sun, if the wind is strong enough and the fog has rolled back over the grassy hills, the horizon is indiscernible from the lavender. The blues and pinks and oranges of the sky melt into the violet and purple of the fields like a chocolate dropped into a hot cup of tea.

Though no one in their right mind would put chocolate into tea, Sage thought, kneeling between two rows of fluttering amethyst swells and picking some fallen branches from the upturned soil. Standing, she realized that her shoes had been muddied, probably from the splash of rain her little town of Jalonnet has been hit with not hours earlier. Perhaps it wasn't the brightest idea to come into the wet fields before the party she was to attend this evening, but Sage couldn't resist tonight's sunset. The way the sky turned almost instantly from fire to candy—it made her feel like a child again, like a young girl with both her hands entwined within her parents'.

Letting the dead branches of the lavender plant fall into the pocket on the front of her skirts, Sage lifted the front of them and moved quickly across wet soil to return home. As she went, she looked beyond the lavender fields to a sea of yellow, now washed over by a rosy dust from the sky reflecting off the wet petals of the sunflowers. Finally in the mess of green and yellow rising above her head and making her feel like a little bug manoeuvring her way through weeds and dandelions, she looked down at her skirts and, without a moment's hesitation, gave up. She dropped the back of her skirts, letting the bottom hem fall into the dirt and mud, vowing to, in a few moments once she was safe inside, remove all her clothing and throw everything directly into the tub. She'd scrub them later, she promised herself. After the party. After she saw Lilly.

Petals and broken limbs of the stems smacked her as she ran, soaking her clothing right down to the bones of her corset. Surely Lilly wouldn't be happy, but since when did Sage care for making others satisfied with her decisions? She had moved all the way out here, to the middle of nowhere, on a whim. Well, no so much a whim, but a calculated decision—like two plus two: simple, as if you thought nothing of it, but somewhere deep inside there is something you learned to help you make this decision. Whether it's a teacher telling you something over and over or the memory of flames licking your leg and searing your flesh, the scent still lingering in your nose as a reminder of what you've lost… You just know.

Along the way, Sage had picked up a few broken branches of sunflowers, and her pockets were swelling with dead or dried lavender, now wet from today's rain. The sunflower field ended, and she emerged with leaves in her hair, her skirt now faded to brown at the ends, and a torso soaked straight through, sticking to her skin like cheap tape.

On the edge of the forest was her home: a cabin she had devoted her very own time to building. It was a single room, aside from the bathroom connected to the back and the stall for Bluebell. Her bedroom was her kitchen and her sitting room and her dining room, and that was fine because she had no need for privacy when she lived all alone. The house was enough for her (and Bluebell). The sun was her company and the flowers her friends—this was all she had, but she didn't need much more.

"Hello, lovely," she cooed, marching with a squelch in her step up to the stall next to her little cabin home. Bluebell bleated, clopping over to the edge of the stall where Sage cracked off the stems of the sunflowers and dropped them where the little goat could reach them. "You have those now and I'll bake up some seeds for us tomorrow; with all those vitamins, zinc iron… Your milk will make the finest cheese to go with this season's lavender." Bluebell bleated once again, nipping at the bottom of Sage's skirts as she leaned against the fencing. She was unbothered, and didn't even pull away. "Pfft, I know, Blue. Your cheese is already the best." A scratch to the goat's forehead, just above the spot between her eyes, and she was baa-ing happily once again. Sage went inside and put the sunflowers head in the basket by the door, the lavender on the drying rack jutting out from the window where the sun hits at its hottest mid-day, and her shoes… well, she left them outside. As for her clothing, once she had them off after a few minutes of struggle and peeling them off her body like she was shedding a second layer of skin, she stood before the trash bin and the wash bin, both sitting next to each other beside the kitchen table against the west wall. She chewed on her lip, but eventually decided that if she didn't at least keep the clothes that Lilly had made Old Jenny buy Sage, there might be an issue between the two friends, more than just six months of not seeing each other.

She tossed her clothes into the wash bin and went straight to the shower, which was actually outside just next to the edge of the woods. She washed herself in the sun-warmed water now chilly after noon had passed, finally free of the dirt that caked her legs and fingernails. Coming out from the shower, she caught sight of herself in the mirror as she passed, but quickly averted her eyes and pulled her robe off from the hanger. Tying the towel round her head, Sage found herself suddenly very tired, the drifting of the dying sun across the room making her feel warm, exhausted. Granted, she had done quite a lot of work today, picking the dead lavender from half the field to dry and sell in tea-bags as scented trinkets to put in shoes, or closets, or pillow cases for a more restful sleep.

But most of all, above being tired and feeling her bones creak with every movement, she saw a fired behind her eyelids when they shut. The sight of her scar in the mirror had brought a flash of history from the depths of her mind, where she stowed it away and never looked at it. Flowers and Bluebell and Jenny… These things distracted her, but when she was alone and had nothing to do but look at herself and think, it was as if the sun had never been there in the first place, as if everything had always been dark. And when it did come it only burned and destroyed, boiling your skin and making it angry. But it hadn't always been dark, no… Once it had been brilliantly bright and every motion had seemed weightless and lovely. But that time had gone so long ago, had left her with only memories of when things weren't, well, filled with nothing. A single look in the mirror and she was flown back to the time when stopping to smell the flowers was like putting a pause on life, taking a break from everything that was going on. The time when everything that was going on was breakfast in bed at ten, lunch with Mother when the sun began to lower, and when Father came home with his fingers full of splinters she'd have dinner after the sun was long gone and the stars had come out to shine in its place.

Her leg burned, a phantom memory of what had taken all of those things away from her.

A knock came fast at the door, then the sound of churning soil and a bike chain rushing away. Sage quickly donned her undergarments, picking her favourite pair of over-washed dungarees and a white shirt much in need of a bleaching. She left it unbuttoned as she answered the door, but there was no one there, but the tire marks from the mailboy's mode of transportation.

And on the porch, a letter.

From Lilly? Sage thought. It must be a late one; she's only now arriving across town and finishing the set-up for her self-thrown Welcome Home! party.

Sage picked up the letter and placed it between her teeth, buttoning her shirt and putting on her shoes with haste. She was out the door and rolling her bike up the big hill next to the forest before even giving a thought to what the letter may be. But when she settled on the hard seat of her old bike, and began rolling down the hill into town, she remembered that she'd better look at who sent it, first.

She plucked it from between her teeth with one hand, the other studying the handlebars of the bike as it rumbling and rattling down the hill. A single glance, and she almost launched herself from the bike herself.

Pale, pristine paper, folded nicely and with her name scrawled in black ink on one side, with the type of penmanship she'd never be able to learn. And on the other side, the letter sealed shut with a wax imprint of the royal emblem. It was a mark she'd seen in history books and on old banners torn and limp on flag poles that no one had bothered to replace for forty years. it was a mark she never thought she'd see renewed, but there it was. It hadn't even been this nice on the first letter, the one with the form for the selection, the impromptu search for a queen. And Sage remembered sitting for a long time, alone, rubbing the rough but fully-healed patch of skin on her calf, wondering if she'd ever amount to anything. The letter was in the garbage for days, but when it finally came time for her to bring the trash into town to throw it out, she fished the letter out at the last moment, filled it out with a pen from the library, and sent it in from there. For a moment Sage had wondered if the latter was her last chance, if this form was her last hurrah! and she'd be a flower girl the rest of her life should she leave it be and let it pass. She had filled it out with hope seeping from her heart into the tips of her fingers, into the tears that stained and crusted on the table, the paper, her hand.

And now, she held it in her hand, rolling to a stop at the bottom of the hill and tearing it open with not a moment of hesitation.

"Oh my," she exclaimed, but through a whisper of wide eyes, "God."

And she kept on biking, with purpose this time, not with the dull desire to attend a party seeping weekly from her toes into the pedals of the rickety bike, but with something… fearful. On the other side of town from where the party was to be held was a very small home, built by one Francis Walton, and where his widow now lived, old and grey at eighty-five, miss Oljen Jonsdottir, or Old Jenny as the rest of Jalonnet called her.

Sage burst through the door, frighted ing the poor lady sitting with her knitting by the fire that was warming her while the sun slept. "Lil' girl," Old Jenny scolded, setting her work aside as Sage sat across from her on the front windowsill facing the street. "I swear one day you'll give me a heart-attack, and then you'll learn to knock."

Usually quick to respond with a chuckle or a smile tacked onto the end of a quick remark, Sage was now quiet. Old Jenny looked her up and down, eyeing the letter in her hand. "Now what have you got—" She saw the emblem hanging off the torn paper. "Quinns?"

Sage looked at jenny, brow furrowed, eyes green and blue and glowing both colours in the flicker of the fire. "Quinn?" Jenny cocked her head.

"Yes, Quinn. The big Q you see on the wax? The emblem? Royal family, my dear. You being drafted, or something?" Jenny shrugged her shoulders. "Only used to be the boys in my time, but seems like they need the firepower now that no worthy King sits—"

"No." Sage was quick to interrupt, shaking her head of dark, straw-coloured hair and shuffling it all over like a twist of twine. "The Selection, Ol' Jenny. They sent out application forms a few weeks ago—I didn't think they'd decide this quickly."

"Well, don't take the rejection too hard, love. Most none of us down here by the sea get as much of a native from those runnin' the show in Wequlon, let alone do we get attention from the bat-shits who sit around on chairs more expensive than our hats wearing hats more expensive than our chairs."

Sage was silent for a moment, staring at the paper. "Jenny," she said, almost accusingly. jenny raised her bushy, white brows at the girl, milky eyes looking her over once again. She shook a bit from the chill coming under the door. "I've been summoned to the palace, to Thera. I've been chosen."

Jenny almost laughed, thinking it to be a joke. No one from around Jalonnet won anything, not ever. This was… "A miracle," Jenny gasped. "My girl! Going to see Royalty—you better kick their dumb asses when you get there, tell the kid sitting on his grand-daddy's throne to get his shit together and forget about getting a wife. Focus on making things better over here!"

As Jenny rambled, Sage spoke to herself, almost as a reassurance. "Nono, that's not what—he's not trying to find a wife, he's trying to find a Queen. He wants to have each girl come, try to mend the bond with the countries by being inclusive to all. That's his plan."

"And now you're a part of it."

Sage was caught off guard. "What?"

"You." Jenny pointed at her with a wrinkled, thick-knuckled finger. "You're a part of the kid's plan to save the world. Watcha gonna do about it, huh?"

"Well," Sage began, unsure of what was going to come out of her own mouth. "I guess I'm gonna go." Her mind buzzed. "Wait! But I've got Bluebell, the fields… I can't miss the harvest and the market. It's all the income I have—"

Jenny put a hand on Sage's, closing the letter and taking her attention off of the words and to her shivering eyes. "I'll take care of that, love. My boys, they know what to do, they've helped you before. Just… focus on how you're going to make me proud, huh?" She flashes her crooked teeth and Sage smiled, warmth flooding her insides. "We're all messed up here in Jalonnet, mostly on the outside. We've got crooked teeth or crooked bones, a wonky eye or two, and most of us have more family members than we can count." She kissed Sage's hand. "But you're different. You've got yourself, and your soft skin, straight teeth, straight eyes of two different colours—you're the beauty of all the ugly we have down here by the sea. Show that kid how beautiful we are, because we may not look it, but we got good hearts, girl."

Sage was smiling, thankful in silence and covering Old Jenny's hand atop her own. She was about to speak, when Jenny spoke again.

"So you know his plan—to unite the world." A pause, a curious and mischievous smile. "What's yours?"

Sage thought for a moment, and was suddenly overcome with the idea of love. She had only ever seen it with her parents, the true, raw form of love that lasts even long after the bodies are burned. In the back of her mind she wondered if love was possible for her: a girl who had spent most of her life picking flowers to fill the hole her parents' love left behind. Could she really find a way to change things, to help this King, to be loved and to love?

And just then, she found the words. the answer to Old Jenny's question. "With matters of the heart," Sage started, pausing for a moment with the image of her parents flashing across her eyes and sprouting a tear, "you cannot plan."

And she was packed the next day.

Didn't even attend the party.

Sorry, Lil.


A bastard who feels like an orphan.

Noriko had forgotten to close her blinds before she went to sleep last night, so when morning came and the birds began their lovely sunrise song, the sun beat hot through the little window at the very top of the wall above her head. In the basement, not much sun really got through, but when it did, too early in the morning when her body wasn't even ready for another day…

Some days she wished she'd been put in the other room, the one with the extra fridge and the bread and milk in case of a big storm, where there were no windows and a cool breeze from the pipes running through. It was a perfect room, at least for when the sun was being frustrating.

Noriko groaned loudly, feeling her stomach aching for food as she rolled over on her pink-sheeted (but frustratingly small) bed and onto the cold, hard floor. Here, the sun couldn't reach her, and fell back into an uncomfortable sleep for a few minutes, that was until a loud crash and a yell came from upstairs, waking her and causing her her hit her head hard un the underside of her bed. She must have shifted in the two minutes of extra rest, and now she was rubbing a sore bump on the back of her skull as she walked up the steep stairs to the main floor, checking the tips of her fingers for blood. If she cracked her head open, maybe she'd be able to blame it on the conditions of her living and get out of the damn house, but no. She was stuck working in that God-forsaken factory because her "family" needed the money.

God, sometimes she wonders if they only kept her around because she was an extra set of legs to do errands and an extra mode of income.

She laughed out loud, opening the door from the basement to the main front hall of her home.

Of course that's the only reason. Otherwise, they'd have kicked her bastard ass out on the curb a long time ago. Her father had no problem making her know all about how she was unwanted and unnecessary, her step-mother basically ignoring her all the time, but when it came time to pay the taxes and bills, she was dragged into the picture and treated like a couch, lifting up all the cushions just to find the cash. Not that she hid the cash in her bra, though that might be a good idea for next time since no one would dare to look and she might be able to get a few decent meals rather than one-minute rice and noodles from the corner store the also has an illegal ear-piercing station in the back if you tugged your ear when you paid for a stick of gum.

Tugging your ear? Noriko thought angrily to herself as she walked down the hall to the kitchen, ignoring the ruckus she was hearing in the next room. What a stupidly obvious way to signal someone!

She entered the kitchen and walked like a zombie to the cabinet on the end of the row of six. She dragged her feet, slumped her shoulders, stretching and cracking her back only to reach up and grab the stale cereal she'd bought with her five-five-dollar share of her earnings from last week. And someone had used it and left the plastic seal open.

How wonderful.

"Nori!"

She tried to ignore the cry for attention, leaning against the counter and shoving her hand into the box, shovelling dry cereal into her mouth. She struggled to swallow, so she ran she sink for a moment and drank from it.

"Nori, look!" For a moment, Noriko felt bad. She had thought the voice calling to her was Mateo being an ass, but it was actually Angel genuinely trying to tell her something. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and zombied over to him sitting on the couch. The rest of her "family" stumbled into the kitchen from the other room, her father red in the face, probably having been arguing with Selena, his sea-witch of a wife and the mother of the rest of the kids in the house, about something money-related.

"What's up, Ang?" Noriko dropped herself over the edge of the couch, crumbling into the comfy cushions like it was the deep-end of a pool. She sighed, getting comfortable with her feet up by Angel's head. He gave her a look and she stuck her tongue out, eyeing the paper in his hands. "C'mon, tell me. I gotta work today and I wanna eat before I leave, for once. Gonna try and get through this whole box." She shoved a handful (much too big for her mouth) past her lips, struggling to get it all in and dropping a few wheat pieces o the couch and floor.

She'd surely get yelled at for that later.

Angel held the paper before her face, upside down, might she add, and smiled bigger than he'd smiled on his last birthday when Selena had bought him an angel pendant. Even if his name wasn't Angel, he'd still have a thing about guardian angels. It was a quirk of his. Noriko loved that. His little quirks… Including the way he loved her more than anyone had ever loved her before. She wasn't afraid to call Angel her brother, but with Mateo and the rest of her family, they were half-bloods to her. She was even less to them.

"I tossed the envelope already, but the letter is still in tact. the emblem was from the Royal Famil—"

And sudden the whole house was listening. Her father rushed over and plucked it from Angel's hands, his face becoming even more red than it was. Noriko quickly shifted herself round, sitting normally and staring at her father, waiting for a reaction.

"The Royal Family?" Noriko asked desperately. "You mean… they replied? They don't reply! Not unless you get accepted!" She was itching to get that letter from her father's grimy paws.

"You submitted for the Selection?" Her father's voice did that thing—the way it tensed before he was going to yell. Noriko flinched, readying herself for the downpour of bullet-like words. "How could you?" But there was no longer a surplus of anger. No. Her father was disappointed. How could he be disappointed?

Noriko was unsure of what to say, everyone staring at her, including Angel. "I… I'm sorry." No she wasn't. She wanted nothing more to leave, but her heart was throbbing for Angel. How could she? How could she leave him?

Angel snatched the letter from her father's hands and thrust it into Norkio's. "Read it!"

But she couldn't, and he knew that. She looked at him, desperate to cover her ass. She could try, she really could, but she'd mix up the words, it would take her too long, and her father would accuse her of being dumb, of being slow, of being all the things she was afraid to be.

Angel snatched it back, claiming, "You're too slow!" With a nervous laugh, and Noriko shoved her hands beneath her thighs, chewing on her lower lip. Angel began to read. "Miss Noriko Ren Phan, it is a pleasure to inform you that you have been chosen to attend the Selection of our great King, Nicodemus Quinn. Please be prepared to be picked up from your home on the eighteenth of this month… That's tomorrow!"

And suddenly, Noriko was terrified. She knew for a fact that she had never been good enough here, but she wasn't an actress, not a model or a dancer, nor did she come from money or have any experience in being polite or being a Queen, for God's sake! He mind began to flood with thoughts of inadequacy, but Angel's hand on hers brought her out of the waves of fear that were launched her about in the current.

But the fear was still there, catching in her throat, telling herself this was all a trick, all untrue, that she didn't deserve this and would never find happiness.

The voices of her family were drowned out by her own thoughts. As the rest of them rambled on about how she'd betrayed them and how they'd die without her to bring in money for food and living, she was too busy wondering how frightening freedom would feel.

Noriko never thought something so liberating could be so insanely terrifying.

In that moment, she'd forgotten how to breathe.


A rebel in the mountains.

Her knuckles connected with the stiff leather of the sand-filled bag, and the old thing finally split. Sand poured from the three-inch slash, forming a pile on the cold concrete floor and covering her bear feet. She shook the sand from her hand, wiping the blood from her busted and calloused knuckles. The bones in her hand ached, but she liked it. She liked the way it made her feel, made her skin tingle and her spine shake, made her muscles pulse and her joints loose. The adrenaline of the pain gave her a renewed feeling of self-importance. She could knock a rhino on its back with the punches she's learned to deliver, and thanks to Jade she could take a horse's hind legs to her chest and live to tell the tale, live to rip the horse's heart right out of its ribcage.

Once the bag was done deflating itself of dusty sand, she kicked it, sending the pile flying all over.

"That's the third one this month, Lex." There was a hand on her shoulder, and while instinct told her to grab it, bend herself at the hips and launch the perp to the floor, the voice made her shoulders relax, her attention flip from her bleeding hands and the sand on the floor to the person standing directly behind her. She turned on her bare heel.

"Ro!" Her arms went around Rohan's neck and his round her little waist. She stayed crushed against him for as long as she could, even as she continued on. "I thought you were coming back next week. Jade said there'd been a setback, that the pick-up hadn't happened." She pulled away and gently punched his shoulder. He laughed, stumbling back a foot with feigned hurt. "I thought you were dead."

For most, they'd think Alexia was angry, that she was about to shout and throw another punch, one that would break his ribs or maybe his nose. But Rohan knew better, knew that Alex Maia Chen was more than just an impenetrable shell with tough and bloodied knuckles. "No you didn't," he laughed. She joined him.

"Nah, you're right." A moment of silence.

"Lex…" He sounded disappointed. Alexia suddenly felt the urge to be defensive. She turned away, began walking towards the showers and stalls in the far corner of the gym. Rohan was quick to follow her. "Lex, you gotta stop busting your hands for a rush. You're gonna do permanent damage."

She pulled off her top, down to little shorts and a sporting bra. She was comfortable around Rohan, being best friends and all. She'd never really thought twice about being embarrassed, until she saw the look on his face. He was red, scratching the back of his neck and turning away—he was the one who was embarrassed.

She let out an uncomfortable chuckle. "Alright, now I know you didn't come here to reprimand me for busting my knuckles, nor did you show ups just to ogle me while I shower." She waited a moment, hoping he'd get the idea. "So? What'd ya come here to tell me." She turned the knob of the shower and let the cold water run over her boiling skin. Distracted by the feeling of being fresher than a mint leaf, Alexia didn't even notice that Rohan had pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket. When she finally moved her head from the stream splashing in her face, she wiped her eyes and blinked at him. "Ro, what the hell—"

"Were you ever gonna tell me?"

Alexia flicked through countless files in her brain, trying to figure out which lie she had told this time that had affected Rohan. She couldn't remember, couldn't think of anything she would have said to him that would have been a lie. But when her eyes twitched down to the paper in his hand, he flipped it over and flashed the wax emblem like an accusation.

She froze, shivering from the sudden realization of how cold the water was on her skin. "Oh—Rohan, c'mon. It's a mission, something Lyra sent out, offered to like, ten of us? Top girls on the roster, all ten of us submitted. I filled it out , you can toss it if you want—"

"You got in, Lex."

She scoffed, grabbing a towel from the rack of clean ones by the stalls. She dried her face, hair, then wrapped it around her shoulders. "That's impossible. There were ten of us, and Katelia's got legs longer than the list of guys waiting at her door every night, so if anything that letter should be addressed to her. Or Jodi, that bitch has bigger lips than her ass, though it's all bought with the money she makes from her assignments, so it's probably not her…"

She dried off, her jaw-length hair falling straight back into place even without the weight of the water. "Lex," Rohan said, flicking at the already-opened envelop. "You got chosen. You're being shipped out to the pick-up address tomorrow."

After a moment, she snatched the letter from his hand and unfolded it frantically. She stared at the words on the paper. "What the fuck?" She raked her fingers through her black hair, stalking with wet feet back to where she had left her bag near the door. "This is crazy. How could I have been chosen for this shit?"

Rohan sucked on his lip, biting back a response. But when she looked at him, desperation in her eyes, and perhaps a hint of fear? He breathed, "Because you're beautiful."

She blinked at him, trying to process his words and those in her hands. Then she grabbed a sweater from her bag and threw it over her still wet body. "I've gotta talk to Lyra. I've gotta figure out what the hell I'm supposed to do."

She darted out the door, bag on her shoulder, and rushed down the hall. Rohan followed her. "You're supposed to pack the essentials, but other than that, wear something to make a good first impression and get yourself to the pick-up house off the old Aidre stream."

Her brow was furrowed. "What, the one at the base of mountain? Why the hell didn't they use the one on Oslan? It's more realistic to have an Asilyran living up the mountain, not at the bottom, eh?"

"True, but it's better for access, and it's a nicer place than the rickety shacks most Asilyrans live in, anyways."

"That's a shit move," Alexia said angrily. "If Lyra wants me to be realistic, a real, what was it, aero-mechanic? from the East Mountains, she should have used the safe-house in Kaidra, where that old plateau is, and all the poor kids just build shitty planes for fun."

Rohan's shuffle turned into a light jog, struggling to keep up with his friend's quick pace. "The Kaidra house is called a safe-house for a reason. It's a safe place, where we put our essentials after they've—"

"After they screwed up and a mission went rotten, yeah I learned all this crap same as you, Ro. Don't need to remind me." She pushed through a massive set of steel doors with the words Essentials Only in yellow painted neatly across both sides. "So I've gotta go to the Aidre house, wearing, what? A little pink dress to make me look like a, god forbid… lady?"

Rohan smiled. "You've gotta look the part, Lex. Maybe pop a few flowers behind your ears, pierce them, even!" He came behind her, rushing to her side and grabbing her by the waist. He was much bigger than she was, having been building on muscle since he was a kid around these parts. He lifted her up, though she kicked and laughed at him, and carried her right into Lyra's office.

Typically, Lyra would turn a blind eye to the two recruits' shenanigans, say nothing when they came into her office tackling each other and getting in kidney jabs just for laughs. But this time, when they came through the clean wood doors to her office, Rohan got spooked, and dropped Alexia as the doors shut behind him. She landed on her feet, barely off balance, like a cat, and immediately flushed red. The entire board was just inside, sitting around the desk where Lyra sat with a single cocked eyebrow. Her gorgeous red curls flooded her shoulders, pouring over her collar bones and slim shoulders as she stood to greet the two with a stern eye.

"Reynolds, thank you for bringing Chen our way," she addressed Rohan with a nod. "We can take it from here. You are excused." Lex looked at him before he left, and he shrugged apologetically. She'd get him for this later, embarrassing her in front of the board. "Chen." She turned back to Lyra, shifting to stand at attention when her name was called.

"Lyra. Forgive me for the informality of my entrance."

"You are forgiven, child," Lyra said, coming around the desk under the eyes of the other six board members. Alexia hadn't noticed before, but Jade was standing next to her, smiling at her. Lex returned the smile, nodding in her adoptive mother's direction. "Jade, good to see you. Welcome back." She'd been away, off on a burning assignment in the cold North. Alexia never asked about those assignments. She never wanted to know.

"As you can see," Lyra said, standing immediately in front of Alexia and gesturing to the letter in the young adult's hand, "you've been Selected, just as I had hoped. I believe Reynolds was to explain your duties on your way to see me, so I am going to assume he has caught you up."

"The Aidre house, ma'am." Alexia stiffened, restraining herself, stopping herself from expressing her concern. "Tomorrow at…" She froze. She didn't know the time.

"An hour past noon, Chen. You'll get yourself and Jade there with vehicle number eight, which will be left unlocked for your access. be there in advance to prepare, and be sure to pack the essentials, and wear something respectable."

Alexia nodded, eyes straight forward even as Lyra circled her.

"Chen, do you accept your assignment?"

She nodded once again. "Assignment accepted."

"Then so be it. Your mission will begin tomorrow at noon." Lyra waved a hand, and the rest of the board members began to slowly trickle out of the room, Jade slipping past Alexia as the last out the door, brushing her hand against her daughter's affectionately. Once the rest of the board was gone and Alexia was alone in the room with Lyra, she relaxed, slouching and setting her hands in the pocket of her sweater. Lyra moved back towards her desk. "You're not exactly in uniform."

Alexia went red. "Oh, shit Ly, I'm so sorry. I was in the training room and Ro caught me just before the shower."

"No worries. Just… Be careful, okay?" Alexia raised her eyebrows at the sincerity of Lyra's tone. "This is the most important mission we've had since the fall of the Quinn family. With the rise of the new King, we have no clue what's going on inside the palace walls, aside from our one bug—whose identity we won't be giving to you, in order to keep things along the lines of your presence as an aero-mechanic being a reality." Lyra sighed, dusting her hair off her shoulder. She was tired, the bags under her eyes suggesting fewer than three hours. Alexia refrained from asking. "You know exactly what you need to do, right? You remember the briefing with the other girls when you submitted." Lex nodded. "Good. Then you don't need to know anything else, really. I just… You need to be careful. Really careful, when it comes to this boy. He's handsome, you know; we've both seen him on the screen and felt something we shouldn't feel for a two-dimensional image. I get it, it's temptation and its tough to handle—"

"I can handle it, Lyra. I'm the best you got, and you know that."

Lyra was quiet, lowering her head into her hands. "We need this," she mumbled, and lifted her head. "Make us proud. Give us something to celebrate so we can stop being proud of finding traitors in the North. I'm tired of burning houses." Her eyes suddenly darkened, and Alexia stiffened. "I want to start burning castles. Islands, even."

The room was silent for a few seconds, and they ticked by like drips of water from a leaky shower head—slowly, with no purpose other than to be a nuisance. Finally, Lyra placed her right fist over her heart, then raised it next to her head. "May the East sun rise and burn the West."

Alexia forced a smile, mirroring the motion. "May the East sun rise again."


A soldier who fears her homeland.

For someone like Victoria Hanlon, she didn't have much freedom when it came to what she wore. Full grey uniform, washed with cold water and ironed every night, laid out on the chair before light's out, and un-wrinkled by the time you make it to breakfast. She'd much rather be wearing something with colour, maybe a fuchsia, a flamingo, a rosewood or strawberry pink. Any colour would look better on a pair of shorts, maybe a jacket made from something other than wool and polyester that made her skin itch.

Her only real freedom came with sleep, where she could dream up any combination of clothes, a flowing skirt, maybe a pair of nice pumps that lifted her ass, made her legs look longer. The little blonde girl, with her icy blue eyes, deserved to use her looks for something better than distracting the enemy terrorists of the icy far South.

But most of the time she just slept naked.

The light hadn't even begun to come through the window of her cold, grey room when she rose from her restless sleep to turn the shower as hot as it could go. The bathroom mirror was already steamy by the time she had wet her hair, and she couldn't help but release a heavy moan of relief from the cold of her bedroom to the feeling of (what would be searing to anyone else) heat on her frozen skin. She hated the cold. It was a reminiscent sensation trigger for something she'd rather not think about, ever. Cold, dark, being crushed for two hours under the rubble that had killed her mother.

And after all that, after the loss of twelve strong soldiers, she had been promoted. A promotion in the wake of mass death, and all as a result of a fellow soldier's recklessness. A shot fired after a weapon lowering had been requested. Victoria didn't even have someone to blame, not physically, not someone alive and here to beat on. That soldier was dead, too, and she hadn't even known his name.

A newbie on her mother's squad, not accustomed to the ways of negotiation. And Victoria was quite good at that, manipulation and interrogation, but mostly negotiation, an ability necessary in crowd control, country control, and criminal control. Her mother had taught her the ways since her brother had been lost that one day when Victoria was five. Since then, since her brother died and her General mother has lost her favoured soldier, her best human weapon… Victoria had been the replacement. Everything she had loved, gone out the window. And although her father had tried to protest, tried to keep some dolls, some colour, some joy in his daughter's life, Victoria's mother, General Annona Hanlon of the Ivaires Department of National Defense, wanted nothing more than a high-ranking position for her little girl. She didn't want ponies or colouring books or sparkling dresses made for little girls who wished to be a Princess, Annona wanted success, she wanted control, she wanted a title for her little Victoria.

And all this had been the source of Victoria's nightmares.

The crumbling of the cave hide-out of those terrorists, those pro-Quinn activists. It came falling down around her, she remembered the way the rest of the squad screamed, could hear her own bones crunching under the fallout from the ceiling of the terrorists' squat place. In her dreams, when it's dark outside and the cold winds blow in through the cracks in the roof, she can still hear her mother calling for her, crying out that she needed to tell her father that his wife loved him, and always would. But Victoria couldn't respond, not even when her mother called out, struggling through coughs and presumably a puddle of blood forming in her lungs, drowning her from the inside out. Her mother said she loved her, something Victoria had always wanted to hear. But the shock took over and all she could focus on was a single bead of sweat running from her forehead, and to the side of her neck, beneath her ear. It tickled.

It fucking tickled.

The spray of shower water somehow began to drown out her thoughts, flushing them from her mind as she opened her eyes and stared at the bland tile wall of the shower. Victoria turned the handle and the water dripped to a stop. She stood there, staring at the wall for a good handful of minutes before finally stepping out and wrapping her wet body in a towel.

She walked out of the bathroom and back into her bedroom, uncomforted by the grey walls that made the room seem even colder. The clothing in the top drawer was filed like one of the cabinets in her dad's office, her mono-coloured shirts and undergarments folded neatly, just as she had learned. She plucked an outfit from the smooth wood drawer and pulled the shirt over her head. It was then that she noticed the envelop on her desk.

She didn't remember it being there when she had hopped in the shower. Or maybe … Had she missed it? A quick glance towards the door—it was open just a crack, left like that by someone who must have come in and left the letter there. It was turned on its back, her name written beautiful on the starch-white parchment. She picked it up, and turned it over.

A sudden dizziness overcomes her, and she flails her free hand around for the edge of the desk. Catching it, she falls sideways, leaning for support on the open drawer. Her eyes, typically searching and scanning for threats around the room, have grown blurry, black spots forming at the edge of her vision. She couldn't focus on anything specific, tearing open the letter, the sight of the emblem in wax on the front making her feel sick to her stomach. The words on the page washed together, almost illegible in her shaking hands.

Accepted.

She clasped her hand over her mouth, feeling it shake against her jaw as she shut away a cry. This was too much, too much. Her life here was organized and straightforward, but… She thought back to her nightmares, looked up to the flickering light in her room that made the room no warmer in colour or temperature, and it always gave her a headache. And all the gunshots in the distance, the sounds of younger-year cadet trainees getting their stomachs punched in by an upper-year cadet to get some extra credit and a place among the food chain. And somewhere in this godforsaken place her father was sulking over a photo of her dead mother.

Victoria needed to get away, but she'd never been away. And at the same time she needed to get away, needed to flee the cold and the dark that reminded her of being covered in the stone that killed her mother and sixteen other people—all the people on her squad. They were all dead, and she was here, a reminder of the most fatal mission in IDND history. And to her father? A reminder of the absence of the woman who had been his whole life since he had entered the academy, a reminder of the woman he'd loved.

Tears fell onto the nicer paper, and she quickly wiped them away. If she went through with this, which now she was required to by word of Thera and the agreement of her own government, she'd never make it. She'd be nothing against the other women chosen, over every one else. She'd amount to nothing, and be sent back here to continue acting like everything was okay. Meanwhile, as she even entertained the idea of being sent away and having to come back, disappointed, she was throwing the letter to the ground and dragging herself as fast as she could to the edge of the toilet. In went last night's dinner, and everything else that was inside her stomach. Victoria's eyes were red after a while, her whole face throbbing and her head aching more than it had in the past few days of stressful work.

How would she break the news to her Dad? Tell him that she needed this, tell him that he couldn't say anything? She was eighteen, an adult now, could make her own decisions. But this one was scaring the shit out of her, having to choose between comfort and freedom.

Yes. Victoria needed to go, needed to get out of this place. She was nothing but a… a reminder here. Nothing but a frozen memory of what everyone else had known to be her mother.

If she couldn't do this… What could she do, other than command, give orders, protect?

If she couldn't love, then what was she good for?


A daughter who is tired of being a child.

"For heaven's sake, take the stairs, child." Luana handed Kaia a small sack of dried herbs for her parents, the compensation she received after every apprenticeship session. Kaia took the bag from Luana, her hands stained with the black Ta Moko ink. Under Luana's guide as the tohunga ta moko, Kaia was able to have upwards of three customers a day, but this day had been slow, mostly because Luana had gone into the main village yesterday for easy access to the practice. Today, there had been only two people willing to have Kaia, who was only an apprentice as of now, act as their ta moko artist. So Kaia had brought her own albatross uhi for today, just to feel some semblance of professionalism.

"Thanks Lu!" Kaia slammed the door behind her and began running down the stones that Luana's late husband had laid out to make the climb and descent of the mountain upon which their house lay much more accessible. Even when Kaia had been young and the stairs had not been placed yet, she had loved the climb. Her fingers were filled with splinters from grabbing onto the branches of low-hanging trees that dangled over the steep drop off the edge of the hill, and her feet, when they weren't calloused from experience and she had no tolerance, would ache for days after she went to Luana's. And she had never stopped going, returning every other week for the story-time with the other children. But Kaia was always the first one there, the fastest up the hill and the quickest through the door. She knew the easy ways, could remember where she had put her foot and felt steady ground over a week before, saw the worn-out bark on the little trees she used for balance and to swing herself over uneven ground that was bound to fall. Eventually, the children stopped coming to see Luana. And Kaia was left alone on the hill. When she had made a false inference and stepped on a chunk of loose soil, tumbling all the way back down the hill on the north side of her island and right into the water like a stone, that's when the stairs went in. The children had returned the next week, but Kaia couldn't be convinced to use them.

So even now, as she descended the hill from Luana's house, she stepped off the specified path and leapt towards a thick, dangling tree branch that looked fairly sturdy. Her feet left the ground, her back swinging around her body, but she kept a good hold on it, shifting it back into place with a twitch of her shoulder. She caught the branch just above her head and used it to swing herself down onto another massive branch, her nimble feet moving her quickly from one end of the branch to the other. Her arms weren't long enough to wrap fully around the main trunk of the massive tree, but she did her best to hold on as she swivelled around it, her feet gently touching the branches surrounding the trunk to give her placement, balance. Once on the other side, Kaia looked down and almost felt dizzy, the ground a hundred feet below. This was where the hill dropped off, where the mountain had decided one day a few years ago that it would join the ocean. If she were to drop even a leaf way down there, the ground would be set off balance once again and the landslide would take out the reef in the water that lay not too far away.

She breathed, and closed her eyes for only a few moments, allowing her body to relax. When she opened her eyes she continued on forward, following the lead of a branch that stuck out to the next tree over, and slid down the side of that one until she met the ground again. Kaia followed her typical path through the forest and went on her way home, the grass of the fields tickling her feet at she started into a sprint. The island wind swept her salt-washed hair over her shoulder and whipped it backwards as she ran, her bag hanging loosely at her side and hitting her hip with every few steps.

Bursting through her front door atop the grassy hill, she was surprised to see her parents sitting peacefully at the dinner table. Across her face was plastered a smile as wide as the crescent moon hanging like a cat's grin in the dark sky tonight. They were not pleased about her coming home late, and they were even less pleased that she was smiling, barefoot, and dirty.

Her father began to rise from the table but her mother was quick to interject. "Kai, let me."

"Hahana—" He protested, but he was interrupted.

"Dad, I'm sorry"—she wasn't—"but I need this."

Her father's chestnut skin turned red in his cheeks. "You need not ignore your duties as a woman for a trade—"

"It's not just a trade. It's a tradition; you know this." She pointed a slim finger at his tattooed chin. "You of all people know the importance of Ta Moko."

He slammed a hand on the table, shaking their meal and toppling his drink. "Let me speak!"

Kaia froze, biting her tongue. Her father never yelled. He was strict, and never backed down from an argument, but he never rose his voice. A flush of embarrassment came over Kaia. He was, after all, her namesake—perhaps she should start listening to him.

"I know the importance of Ta Moko, yes. Do not question what I know. But you, my child, my daughter, are a woman of Ness, a daughter of the Archipelago—you must tend to your duties." He paused, Hahana having placed her hand on his shoulder to calm him, to tell him that he mustn't overstep his boundaries. Kaia was, as it was, a woman, she was eighteen. She needed the freedom of being an adult, of making her own decisions and dealing with the consequences. "You must focus on bringing joy to this family, making us proud."

Kaia knew where this was headed. After months of hiding away at Luana's instead of being courted by the multiple highborn men her parents had brought in from off her own island, from other parts of the archipelago, she knew her father would put his foot down at some point.

"Kai, please. Let the girl eat. We can talk about this after we're good and full." Hahana put her little hand over that of her husband, and he visibly calmed down, his shoulders lowering and his chest slowing its movement as his breathing slowed. His face was no longer red as he looked into the eyes of his dear wife.

Love, Kaia thought. What a wonderful thing.

It wasn't as if she didn't want it, she just wasn't ready to settle down. She'd never even been off her own island, seen the other parts of the archipelago let alone the rest of the world. She tapped her finger on her leg, sitting as her mother beckoned for her to do. She was nervous.

"So," she began, trying to start the conversation lightly as her mother cleaned the mess her father had made with his fist and the table. "Where are both of our Iri's?" Her brother and her grandmother were both not present for supper this evening. They usually were, so she, being curious, had to ask.

Her parents looked at each other. "Kai, please."

"Hahana, it is the right time, I will not wait—"

"Guys, what's going on?"

They returned their gaze to her, and her mother spoke first. "We have some good news." Kaia relaxed, having thought it was something terrible, perhaps her grandmother had been in the hospital. But no, it was good. Perhaps she had gone with her brother to find him a wife? Now that would be a sight to see. Who in the world would marry her pompous ass of a brother?

"You will no longer be courted by men of our choosing."

Good news? More like fantastic news. "What?" Kaia exclaimed. "That's amazing! Wow! Thank you, guys! But… Wasn't Dad just about to—"

"I was." Kai stiffened his shoulders once again, but this time and if he was proud. Kaia thought perhaps she saw him smile. "But there is another part to this… news." Kaia raised her eyebrows in anticipation. "You've been Selected."

She couldn't even move, didn't even understand at first, blurting a "What?" initially but eventually finding her way to the solid conclusion. Her parents had gone behind her back, probably forged her signature in doing so, and signed her up for the Selection. And now she had been chosen to go through with it, when she didn't even want to. She grew furious, having not touched a sliver of her food, and stood from the table.

She said nothing, and left the house.

That night, Kaia thought it over. She dug her feet into the sand on the beach and ran along the lines of the water coming up over the swells it left behind. And she wondered what it would be like. She'd have control over her own life, be able to free herself from the constraints of her parents, but in doing so she would leave behind a practice she had trained half her life to complete. She wanted this, wanted so badly to be free, but did she want it more than being able to do something she loved? Would she even be able to continue her work over there?

And if she came back, would Luana accept her after all her time gone? Would her parents? If she failed, they might hate her, might banish her, might cast her away to another island. After all, she was a woman in a man's world, or… archipelago. Things were different out there, more liberating.

So Kaia Taumata decided that night that she would go, that she would use her freedom well, and she would be an adult and deal with the consequences of her own decisions. She comforted herself with the idea that while her parents had decided to submit her name and her identity to a game for a stranger's heart, it was Kaia's decision as to whether or not she would go, even though she was required to.

So she slept on the beach that night, and woke the next morning to a boat at her island she had never seen before.


A pilot who can't get off the ground.

Ntuthuko screamed, slamming her hand down on the End Simulation button on the console pad before her. This was bullshit, absolute insanity. Had they made the simulations even more difficult than the day before? For the past week, they had been progressively more difficult. Or perhaps she had been getting progressively worse. No, that wasn't the case. She couldn't be getting worse.

But then she thought, sitting there in the darkness of the simulating pod with the flashing Try Again in yellow across the screen making her feel uneasy, she hadn't slept recently, had been having weird dreams, waking up, been unable to fall asleep. Perhaps there was something wrong, something itching at the back of her mind telling her that she needed, what? A break?

She unbuckled her seat, took off the headset and stormed out of the pod. The simulation room was empty, because it was much too early in the morning for anyone to actually want to do any decent work, let alone be able to. But Ntuthuko hadn't slept last night, there had been too much noise in the Academy last night. Or something like that…

She was restless, lately. And she wasn't sure why.

"Fuck." She walked straight towards the doors, not even slowing to wait for them to open, but they did at the right time and they slid shut on her when she exited.

"Lose another simulation?" Mtendere's voice caught up to her, the sound of his jog behind her irrelevant to her pace. She kept going. She was hungry.

"No losing," she reminded him, slipping past people standing right in the middle of the hallway. Idiots. "Only winning, or learning. I am learning."

Mtendere looked down at a tablet in his hands, swiping up and down, furrowing his brow. Ntuthuko spared him a glance, but continued on her way. She wondered if the cafeteria in the Academy still had Bota after twelve o'clock. "Ntu, you've failed seventeen simulations in the past two days. How did you even manage that?"

"Haven't been sleeping," she admitted, pulling her braids out of the elastic she had tied them with earlier.

"You haven't been sleeping? The finals are in a few months, you can't let yourself down now."

Ntuthuko's mind stirred, feeling the frustration with herself bubbling up to her lips, about to be channelled to Mtendere. He was her closest friend, her best confident. or was it the other way around? She couldn't yell at him. He was sensitive for a second-placer.

Then again, being a third-placer, Ntuthuko wasn't very modest.

"Let it go, Mten." She walked into the cafeteria and went straight for the Bota bar, drooling over the porridge and peanut butter. She watched the chef behind the bar put in a new batch of fresh jelly into the next pot, and she swallowed.

"I just need a few more rounds to get back into the groove." She took a bowl and went to sit down at one of the pilot tables in the far corner of the balcony. Mtendere followed, but so did someone else.

"You need more sleep, is what you need. If you don't sleep you'll just end up flunking out, making some stupid mistake you could've done in your sleep."

Ntuthuko eyed him. "You trying to be ironic, or what?"

He shrugged, pursing his lips and looking to the person who slid into the booth next to him. "Thandie? Aren't you supposed to be in Botswana?" Mtendere eyed her swollen, very pregnant belly. Thandie sighed loudly.

As Ntuthuko's brother's wife, and mother to her nephew (soon to be mother to another niece or nephew), Thandie and Ntuthuko were quite close. Thandie had taken time off from her acting to settle down and have a family with Meshindi, but she was still quite famous. Ntuthuko tried to avoid being around her brother when the paparazzi came around, she never liked to be the centre of attention, unless she was being praised for something she did well or won.

"You okay, Than?" she asked.

"Yes!" Thandie breathed, slightly out of breath. She put a hand to her stomach. "We got in an hour ago, at seven, myself and Meshindi. Your father asked us to come here, to see you, with this…" She pulled an envelope from her pocket, Ntuthuko's name written neatly across the front.

"For me?" Ntuthuko was surprised, pleasantly, though, because she rarely got mail, aside from the letters from Philile. But Philile's letter had come just the other day, and why would Thandie and Meshindi be coming all the way from their home to the Academy just to drop off a silly letter? She reached out to take it from her pregnant sister-in-law's hand and slapped it down onto the table. "Whoever wrote this has better handwriting than Meshindi," she joked, looking Thandie's way for a reaction. But she didn't so much as grin, not even a comment about how Meshindi has better handwriting than a computer. No, the woman had her lip between her teeth and she was staring anxiously at the pristine white envelope in front of Ntuthuko.

So she flipped it over, and stared blankly at the wax emblem. It was messy, had dripped off-centre when they'd melted the candle to make it. But it was unmistakably Royal. Quinn, the be exact. The same type of emblem sent on the envelopes with the Selection forms months ago. But now… What was this?

"An acception." It was Thandie talking, but Ntuthuko couldn't believe what she was hearing. Her eyes darted to Thandie, then to Mtendere. And she laughed anxiously.

"Wha—How is that possible?" She touched at the emblem and the envelope flipped open, having already been looked at, presumably by Meshindi or Thandie. "I didn't even fill out the form, let alone send it back. I just left it with—"

"Meshindi?" Thandie raised her brows, understanding the situation. "Well, he told me you'd given him the form, I didn't even look at it. I glanced for a moment… The handwriting was so good, I just thought maybe because you were siblings—"

Ntuthuko suddenly grew restless, unwilling to hold back the pit of anger in her stomach. She stood up, slamming the acceptance paper on the table. Eyes all around the cafeteria turned their way. "You thought we had the same handwriting? God, I should have know. He was so damn interested, and for no damn reason." She ran a hand over her braids, but took it away and let them fall into her face.

"Ntu, calm down. It's fixable; just say no!" Mtendere shrugged.

Ntuthuko almost growled, rubbing her forehead. "No, you can't. It's not that simple. It said it in the letter, the first one?" She lifted her eyes, and found Meshindi across the room, holding a plate and staring at her, wide-eyed.

Mtendere saw the look in her eyes, how it changed from anger to unbounded determination, to a mix of both—rage. "Ntu, don't!" But it was too late, Ntuthuko was shoving herself out of the booth, knocking over her food and barreling down the lane towards her brother. he was smart to back up, set his food aside before she decked him, sending them both into the ground, hard.

"You asshole!" she cried, rearing a fist, but he caught it, and some other cadets came behind her to pull her off of him. She went, kicking and flailing until she was free from the grasps of her peers, at which point she felt it necessary to calm down, let her brother recover. He was a dick for doing this, for ruining her chances at becoming a pilot, but he was her brother. She knew that. "You know I didn't want this. How could you?"

She had once thought it was an interesting concept, and she would have submitted had she finished her last 2 years of piloting. But her brother told her that this opportunity would never present itself again, and that, if she was selected, it could be some sort of break from her studies, and she could come back stronger, and ready to tackle the last two years of her training.

"Don't you remember what I told you?" Meshindi rubbed his head, taking another cadet's hand and getting to his feet. "A break, come back stronger, huh?"

"But what if I don't come back? What if I win?"

Her brother just laughed. "Not a chance. You're not Princess material, let alone Queen. Just take it as a new experience."

Her heart was still racing, and she grabbed a handful of Bota from some poor guy's bowl next to her. She threw it at her brother, screaming, "New experience, my ass. This is—"

Something inside of her clicked. He didn't believe in her, didn't believe she could do this, succeed at being a woman and not a student, or a pilot. So she smiled, and relished in her brother's look of utter confusion as she composed herself and walked away, continuing her meal with Mtendere staring at her in utter shock.

"Wha—"

She pointed a finger at her friend, watching Thandie rush down to her husband. "He doesn't think I can do it," she said with a grin. "So I am going to prove him wrong."


So there you have it! Meet the six girls. Next chapter will be a little more about the in-palace life with Nicodemus, his mother, and the essential personnel for the story. I hope you guys enjoyed the first look at our lovely, lucky ladies.

'Til next time, which'll hopefully be soon (busy week),

Elle.