The Twist | ✓

ten.

I thought that one of my black suits would take attention away from the black smudges beneath my eyes, but I was wrong. When I meet Cassiana outside, she smiles at me but immediately looks concerned. "Are you all right?" She quickly stands up, hurrying over to check me. "You look exhausted. You should go get some sleep."

"I'm fine," I insist. "I couldn't sleep." I seat her on the bench once more and sit beside her, still holding the hand that had reached out as if she wanted to touch my face to make sure that I'm truly okay. "I need to ask you something that may be a sensitive topic to you.."

"Go on." She smooths out her skirts. "I can assure you, Prince Alexander, that it takes a lot to shake me."

"Call me Alexander, please." I say. "If you speak to my siblings without any formalities, then you don't need them with me."

She smiles. "Okay, Alexander. What is your question?"

"I heard something awful about being an Eight." I tell her. "Is it...is it true that you're constantly fearing for your life and safety? That if someone grabs you off of the street, the least of your worries is being killed?"

She looks startled and hesitates for a moment. "Yes," she says at last. "That's...that's exactly how it is."

My hand reaches out and I run my fingers over a scar on her neck. It stretches from her collar bone up to her jaw and spills onto her cheek a little, and it shimmers silvery-white in the sunlight. It was a deep, messy cut. "How did you get this?"

"I can't remember." She sounds breathless. "I got it the night before I was given the papers to fill out for the Selection. I...I think I got thrown through a window. I woke up lying on glass and asphalt, and my mother had to fix me up. It was messy."

"I would assume so." I trace the line of the cut down to where it ends, and she shivers a little despite the warm day. "You nearly died."

"Nearly," she says, "isn't as good as did."

"You wanted to die?"

"I would have rather died than continued living like that." She says. "This saved me." She looks down. "It's awful, Alexander. Living like that. There was a group of us teenagers and young adults not much older than you and Mason--mostly Eights, but a few Sixes and Sevens--that would watch out for each other. Two other girls and I were kidnapped when I was fifteen and nearly sold off or used, and that's how it started. I remember it clearly. One moment I was kneeling in this dirty, abandoned warehouse on my knees with my hands and feet tied, and the next the windows above us exploded inwards and a group of boys dropped in. They killed every single one of those men and freed us, and we joined them.  Groups like that are uncommon, but we have to watch out for each other out there."

My chest aches a little. "What about the guards?"

"The guards." She snorts. "The guards in this palace are so different from the ones out there, Alexander. Out there, they're cruel and unforgiving. They don't care about some pretty girls that got snatched off the streets. One of them was an Eight like me and the other was a Seven. Who cares about them? I would have been better off dead, but then I wouldn't have met Mason and you." She smiles at me.

I reach over and take her hand. "I want to fix it."

"I know you can," she says. "You'll be an amazing king, Alexander, and I know you'll do everything within your power to fix this country."

"Will you help me?"

"Of course," she shakes her head at me, as if she can't believe I thought she'd let me do it alone. "Someone has to direct you, don't they? How else will you know what you're doing?"

Perhaps America will not be better for my people. Perhaps Illéa, with a little fixing, will be.