Compassion (A Selection Story)

Book Two - Incarcerate - Lindsey

Here is Book Two of Compassion, my Selection fanfiction, Incarcerate. All that legal stuff was out of the way in the beginning if Book One, so no need to repeat it.

Only eight remain. The challenge is doing its job, quickly wheedling down through the failures as the choice draws nearer. The Selection has been a brutal game. Those who remain are the ones who play to win.

The game has changed. Instead of a pushy game of capture the prince's heart, it has become a game of hide yourself and seek your victory. The only thing standing in the way: the love he continues to give to someone who has lost the game. The losers, the cheaters, and the quitters never come back- it's in the rules.

The Selection is a game you cannot win. It is a game where the prize must pick you. It is built upon government, and government is built upon a system. If you no longer want to win, or you've already lost, but you would never quit, then maybe the system must crumble.

Crumbling a nation is hard to do behind bars.

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Oh dear God, how did it come to this?

You don't really need God to answer that. The question was rhetorical, for I know exactly what happened; how I came to be here.

I watched someone die, three months ago; I watched a life end right before my eyes. Her name was Fleur Dreaner, and she was simply an innocent girl- more innocent than me, if you want my opinion. She didn't deserve to die, but it was the only way.

Four months ago, I entered the Selection to be free of my father- and I haven't been sent home - not yet. At this point, though, going home isn't an option at all.

10 weeks ago.

The palace is supposed to be a safe place. It probably was, at one point, an unassailable fort. But, people get careless; guards slip up, or decide that they want nothing to do with being ruled by the king and queen. Violet once taught us that the original rebellion began five years ago, but was put under control two years later. The free, living rebels continued to stage attacks that always failed- or, so we thought.

It's not that hard to put two and two together, as I did so in about three days of nonstop dwelling. From my thoughts and deductions, I have determined three things.

1) The rebels are working together in a large rebellion again.

2) The first three attacks I experienced during my past time in the Selection were ruses designed to make us think the rebels were unorganized outside of their little groups.

3) The rebels want something so badly they're willing to ask for it directly, meaning they have a plan.

I mull over these thoughts as I walk to the garden for the funeral-the second to take place here within two weeks. Two weeks, I think, wrapping my arms around myself to fight off the chill of the cold December air. The funeral for Amilee seems like so long ago, back before the fourth attack; before the king died; before Fleur died, before I gained my scars, but it wasn't long ago at all.

Death; I never thought I'd see so much death, and yet here it is, splayed out before me. I close my eyes, blinking back tears. That was a lie; really, I never thought I'd see so much more death - not after what had happened when I was young.

The garden is in shambles; trampled roses, lilacs, and marigolds litter the flattened grass; the bricks that used to sit in neat little rows at the edges of the flowerbeds are strewn throughout the dirt. It's been seven days since the attack in which Fleur and King Nigel died, but it feels like lifetimes ago.