Emily In The Selection (book 1)

Chapter 17

Up the stairs there was a door that could of easily blended in as just another closet, but Ryan took a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door. He motioned me to come in and then locked the door behind me.

I gasped in astonishment. The walls were so tall and filled with hundreds of books everywhere. Every wall was a bookcase. The room was dusty, suggesting that no one has been in here for a while. There were chairs in one corner and a tall ladder to reach the books high up in another corner.

"Do you like it?" He looked around and put his hands in his pockets.

"It's wonderful!" I breathed.

"Look, over here," he motioned to a few books in the corner, "I found some textbooks on Illèa and the rebels."

I followed him over and looked at the dusty books. There was a cobweb across a few of them, but I was too interested in the books to notice. I pulled a book out called "King and Queen history."

I opened the book to a random page and a picture of a girl was on one side. The girls hair was almost as red as Jane's and she smiled with perfect white teeth. Under the picture, a caption read:
"America Singer, Queen of Illèa."

On the other side of the page, a picture of a boy with blonde hair wearing a tuxedo appeared. Under his picture the caption wrote:
"Maxon Schreave, King of Illèa, married to Queen America."

"Do you know them?" I asked Ryan.

"Nope, but I'm assuming I'm related to them."

I flipped about fifty pages until I reached a girl named Alicia Schreave. It said she was married to a boy named Dustin Ashby and the rest of the pages from there were named as Ashby's.

"I guess this is where you get your name Ashby from," I pointed to the picture, "one of your ancestors had a selection with boys."

"Yeah," he looked at the picture.

I flipped through a few more pages and then put the book back. I brushed the dust off my hands an picked up another book entitled "Rebels".

Opening to the twenty-third page, I read the page about southern rebels.

"For years southern rebels have attacked the palace because of their hatred for the royals or laws. Most of the southern rebels seek out to use ferocity on the palace and the representatives of the royals. They use weapons such as: guns, knives, swords, or other forms of sharp objects. These rebels in particular seek trauma and are specifically catastrophic. The southern rebels are most commonly seeking revenge because of a law that was not in their favor, or because the royals are fulsome to their opinions."

I read through the information and looked at the picture next to it of men lined up with guns at their sides. If the palace were to get attacked during the selection, I would be terrified.

I skipped about one hundred more pages and began reading about the northern rebels.

"Unlike the southern rebels, the northern do not use violence as their force. The northern rebels want information on the palace for various reasons. Some northern rebels want the information from the palace to exploit their secrets and let the royals fall. Others, however, want the personal information to benefit the rest of the Illèan nation. Many of the rebels have different reasons for wanting this, but they all set out for one goal: to retrieve information."

I looked up at Ryan who was watching me read.

"Have the southern rebels actually attacked here?" I ask.

"Yes."

"Isn't it awful? I mean, isn't there something you can do? Why do you just let them attack the palace? This has been going on for decades."