And the final test.

How good your marks are determines how close you’re placed to the queen. And… I know I got good marks.

I know I did, because I had to.

They separate us today, and I’m the only one lead away by myself. I walk ramrod straight, my issued boots clicking in time with the older officer leading me.

“Seana Taliani. As you may have guessed, you’ve made the elites. You must swear to protect the Queen, obey her orders at all costs, and bring honor to your family.” There it is. I’m going to say something that goes against everything I believe in… and bring ‘honor to my family’. My family… is already honorable enough.

“I swear to put the Queen’s welfare before my own, follow her every order, no matter the expense to myself, and bring honor to my family.” I keep my face level, letting some of my nervousness leak through. That’s believable…. Right?

The officer leading me smirks, and I resist the urge to slap him. Patronizing idiot. I wish I could kill them all… they’ve been brainwashed, conditioned to be exactly what the Kingdom “needs”. Nevermind that anyone thinking freely is disappearing or going off on long trips, the Kingdom needs a strong, unified, utterly brainwashed army!

I’m not bitter at all.

Have you ever seen how people treat faeries with no visible signs of power?

Those faeries whose hair covers their horns, whose wings aren’t immediately visible…

Those rare faeries who have no physical manifestations of power at all.

They’re treated like they’re nothing. Worse than humans. Sometimes they get sent to jail for nothing, simply because they’re ‘unnatural’ or ‘suspicious’. Yet they’re assumed to be easily manipulated and deceived, and too often, they end up believing it about themselves. And everyone knows once you start to believe something, it becomes true.

These faeries become the outcasts, or the slave-like servants of more powerful families… families like my own.

I harden my gaze and raise a single eyebrow. “Is there something else, officer?”

“No, Taliani. Go to your quarters, they’re on the second right. May you serve the Queen favorably.” And that’s another thing. Everything is separated by season, of course. Second right, starting from the start of the Spring season. I suppose I could have a roommate… I probably do. Good thing my spy work included how to hide things from nosy roommates.

“May you serve the Queen favorably.” I say, my voice flat. I click my heels, and go to my room. That’s how we say goodbye to each other. May you serve the Queen favorably, because if you don’t, she’ll rip your heart out. If you don’t, you’ll be ‘that one that died last week, you remember, don’t you?’

My footsteps echo down the hallways, these stupid issued ‘I can hear you from a mile away clickety clack’ boots giving me no chance to be stealthy. There’s too many of those… dead and disappeared. And nobody counts them, nobody remembers them all, they just… disappear. Their families discount the ones they send here as dead anyway, the only way they ever remember they exist and are alive is if they do some great service to the Queen. That doesn’t happen often.

Second right. Here it is.

The door is made of a thick wood, the handle is smooth under my hand, a couple of whorls of gold making the handle ‘special’. Only the best for our elite recruits! The ones who actually studied and care about/are good at this shit!

I’m not bitter.

The door opens soundlessly, and I wonder if my roommate oiled it. I wonder which I would rather have… a roommate who actively tries to make sure I’m following protocol, or one that seems disinterested so I have to spy on them too.

I survey the room and raise an eyebrow at the general interior. My roommate is messy. And by messy I mean… I can tell they were from a place where they had people to pick up after them. Every single thing that you can drop without breaking it, has been dropped. And occasionally things that can break, judging by the marks on the wood floor.

A single stocking, lace and frilly, not at all something suited for the army, lands at my feet. I hear someone curse and a whole pile of finely tailored clothing heaves, a person standing up from behind it all.

It’s not like the piles were so big that this person, a female, whose hair springs out in all directions like it’s possessed, or possibly electrically charged, would be hidden. They were just folded over, their head almost inside the pile… and now they’re standing. My roommate sees me and lets out a squeak.

“I’m so sorry!” She says, reaching up and pulling an ineffectual bobby pin out of her hair. She glances at it and tosses it across the room to another pile, this one full of… things that go in your hair. I begin to see order in her chaos, although there’s one pile I don’t know what to make of.

“I’m so sorry I don’t know how time got away from me I’m not usually this messy you see but exams and who am I kidding I am this messy I swear I do all my work though….” She says, barely pausing between her words, picking her way through the piles to stand in front of me. “Hi. I’m Kari… I’ve been here for…. Um…. I don’t remember anymore. But I’m here, and I’ll try my best to keep my… er… our… room cleaner… sorry.” She says, her voice withering under my unrelenting stare.

I don’t mean to come off all cold shoulder and mean hearted. I just… do. If someone’s talking, I have a tendency to look at them. It’s polite. But apparently something about the way I look is off-putting, because nobody ever says quite what they were going to say when they started. I clear my throat and try for a friendly tone.

“Hi. Don’t worry about it…” I say, hearing my voice slowly become monotone. I trail off… what am I supposed to say to her? What do you say to roommates? I think it’s really weird that you keep all your stuff in piles and I want to organize your whole life and COULD YOU FIX YOUR HAIR…. Is not something you say.

Her eyes flicker to my shoes, and she notices the sock. “Oh shoot, that’s where that went. Did I hit you with it?” she asks, her eyes wincing slightly, although her body stays stable.

“No.” I answer, but no more than that. It landed by my feet… but why is that important? It isn’t. So… No should be fine, right?

“A-alright then… I’ll just…” She creeps forward and picks up the sock, placing it delicately on the clothing pile. “Do you have any bags?” she says, craning her neck around me. Yeah, I have bags, cause this is some posh boarding school and I brought all of mummy’s favorite dresses for the ball on Saturday, how would you like a cup of tea?

“No.” Damnit… I must sound like one of those dumb military types. I’m so bad at conversation…. If I have no motive in a conversation, why am I in it? Because sometimes you have to talk to roommates. I’m horrible at small talk… but…. Is it better for her to see me that way? Maybe if she sees me as boring she’ll leave me alone…

“Oh. Well…. Your bed’s over there, I’ll clean up.” She says, smiling softly at me. Is that pity? I don’t need pity, I’m fine! If not a boring military type, maybe she sees me as a homesick recruit…. Forced here like everyone else.

Whichever of these ‘me’s she sees, I hope it’ll make her leave me alone. I’m no good at talking without a purpose, and I don’t think I could get information from her, she forgot I was arriving today for goodness sakes!

Or maybe she’s been conditioned to act like that, maybe she’s a spy as well, and they know I’m a spy so they put me with her to test me…

Wow. Just... calm down. If I can get through a week, I’ll know a whole lot more, I know I will. Have I just been standing here like an idiot this whole time? The floor’s clear to the bed now, and I see her hair across the room, near a wall with a door (closet, you slow idiot) that I didn’t notice before. I make my way to the bed, sitting down heavily.

The bed’s well made, slightly fancier than the ones they had in training. The frame is that dumb bronze everyone associates with spring, the sheets are the most generic blue they can muster, and the headboard is blank as a slate. Reaching down to brush my fingers against where the headboard and frame meet, of course the headboard can be removed. It could be used as a weapon, a shield… or maybe it was just added later, and that’s why they’re separate parts.

I feel so suspicious… I suppose that’s what I get, my first mission out and I’m in the Queen’s castle. I mean, it’s not like I’m freshly spied up… wow that sounded dumb. I mean, it’s not like this was my first mission ever, but everything I did before was more along the lines of… find out where this person is heading. Keep tabs on these people. Not, Find out what the Queen is doing by infiltrating her castle and being undercover for months, oh and keep tabs on everyone around you because they could turn you in if your cover’s blown.

I can’t tell if I feel reassured by that or if I’m terrified. Wow, I can’t even keep tabs on myself.