VILLAIN

Chapter 5

Professor Fennel's lips quirked with his signature half-smile, his lime-colored eyes glinting in the dim torchlight as he stared straight at me. I couldn't speak, could barely even breathe – held frozen by my professor's stare. This was the second time Professor Fennel had discovered me somewhere we both knew I didn't belong, and it wasn't likely that I'd get lucky twice. I stood there, petrified, waiting for him to shout that he'd found me and drag me off to the dungeons.

"Find anyone?" his accomplice, Amber, asked from around the corner.

Professor Fennel's grin grew, and he let out an amused breath. "Nope," he said, turning back around and rounding the corner, leaving my line of sight. "Must've just been my imagination."

I stayed frozen for several more minutes, barely believing what had just happened. I listened carefully as their footsteps faded into the distance, waiting until I could hear nothing but the pounding of my own heart before forcing my frozen legs to move and stumbling out the door and into the night. I walked in a haze all the way to my tree, my shell-shocked brain struggling to process all that I had just witnessed. I found myself doubting that it had ever happened at all, unable to make myself believe it.

Had that all really happened? Had I truly just witnessed that? Had Professor Fennel really been out after curfew, having a whisper argument with some strange woman named Amber about ending the Division system? How was that even possible? His words from earlier that morning echoed back to me once more, sending a chill up my spine.

Even the High King makes mistakes sometimes.

It wasn't that unusual for a Villain to disapprove of the system – I knew I did – but it was different to resent the system than to plot to destroy it. Why, that was treasonous! Just speaking about it was enough to earn oneself a one-way ticket to the gallows. Everyone knew that. But to actually come up with a plan to break the Division system? It was unheard of, a suicide mission. Nobody – nobody – went against the system. And those that tried went straight to the noose. Surely Professor Fennel knew that. He couldn't take down the system – and definitely not by himself. It was impossible. Completely impossible.

The Division system had been around for as long as anyone could remember. Every year, every sixteen-year-old in the Fairfolke Kingdoms – except for the Noble Families, of course – journeyed to their Day of Division to be judged by the High King as either a Hero, a Peasant, or a Villain. There were no second-chances, no take-backs, and no ditching. No one dared defy the High King in such a way. The Kings had ruled since the beginning of Fairfolke. After the war they had won against the Primitives, they had divided all of the land into kingdoms, selecting a Noble Family to rule each province. There were five kingdoms total, and then there were the Central Woodlands and the land that belonged to the High King. There was Northland, ruled by the Windvale Family, Ridgeland, ruled by the Rosewood Family, Wonderland, ruled by the Woolgathering Family, Lakeland, ruled by the Wildfowl Family, and Neverland, ruled by the Seacrest Family. The Central Woodlands had no overseeing Noble Family, which was why they eventually became the resting place of the Evermore Villainous Instruction League.

Upon the death of the first High King, the Division system was put in place to maintain peace and establish order. They decided to divide the population into three classes – Heroes, who protected the land of the Noble Families, Peasants, who were given a small amount of land to live on and a Hero to watch over them, and Villains, who were tasked with providing the Heroes with someone to fight.

The Kings were of the mindset that by controlling the criminals and crime-fighters, they could prevent unexpected uprisings and rebellions. Ordered chaos, they called it. Rather than trying to eliminate crime, they manipulated it into a system that they had the power to control. At first, it seemed like the perfect solution – an equal amount of Heroes and Villains, and then everyone else was simply part of the Peasantry. What the Kings failed to account for – and quickly came to realize – was that Peasants weren't happy just being Peasants. Riots began to pop up by the time of the third High King's rule, and in an effort to suppress it and save the Division system, which was rapidly decaying without a fresh supply of Heroes and Villains, the High King made an amendment. It was called the Equal Opportunity Amendment, and it decreed that everyone born of either one or two human parents would be brought before the High King on the Summer Solstice following their sixteenth birthday. On that day, all of the sixteen-year-olds would stand before the King and be judged as either a Hero, a Peasant, or a Villain.