Highlander Enchanted(84)
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that, either. The priests didn’t consider me disciplined or selfless or motivated enough to refer me for a position in the elite initiate corps. Half of the nymphs were headed to temples of the Greek gods. The others were being sent to the households of influential politicians and nobles around the world. I could speak English, Greek and French like they did – a requirement to become an initiate – but my grades were sorry and my temperament deemed too unsuitable to be placed in a position where diplomacy and manipulation was required.
“You have more freedom here than the average person living beneath the thumb of the Supreme Magistrate will ever know,” he said. “Why do you wish to leave?”
“Because that’s what kids who graduate high school do. They get a life. Join the real world.”
“Where did you learn this? Television?” He was genuinely confused. He rarely spoke of his childhood, but I’d assessed over the years that his own upbringing had been very different. “I must talk to the priests about censoring the programs they let you girls watch.”
“They already monitor everything we watch. I guess I just want to know … where do we go next? Because we are leaving, right?” I asked, sensing I was doomed to work at a fast food joint the rest of my life, if he let me leave at all.
“We are. But I’m not yet certain where.”
“You’ve only had twelve years to figure it out,” I shot back with some exasperation. “I want to see the world, Herakles, or at least somewhere beyond this forest.”
“Until I know for sure –”
“– stay inside the boundaries.” I wasn’t allowed to travel beyond the red cord lining the perimeter of the priests’ quiet property. Since arriving when I was six, I had never left. The nymphs went to town every weekend to shop or watch movies or eat food and whatever else they did that Herakles didn’t approve of. It had to be more fun than navigating the forest in the rain with nothing more than a poncho and a knife. Meanwhile Herakles timed how long it took me to get home to make sure I wasn’t slacking before the inevitable end of the world.
We reached the edge of the greens where the compound proper started. Daydreaming about what was to come when I finally graduated, I missed Herakles stiffening.
“This isn’t good,” he said.
Blinking out of my thoughts, I stopped to see him staring at the long driveway leading from the road to the massive manor house that acted as our home and school. The priests had erected two small temples, one for a Titan god named Lelantos and another for the Olympic goddess Artemis, behind the school, beside the stables.
An extra car was parked in front of the school, a black sedan with darkened windows. “We’ve had a lot of visitors lately,” I said, unconcerned. “I imagine the employers of the nymphs are coming to interview them.”
“It’s not an employer.”
The car wasn’t there to take me away to the real world, and I doubted it was the first zombie from the apocalypse we were preparing for. Therefore, the vehicle’s appearance meant nothing to me. “Okay. I’m going to my room.”
Herakles paid me no heed and jogged towards the car.
I circled the house to the back entrance where the stairwell leading directly to our rooms were located. I took the stairs two at a time and strode down the landing of the girls’ wing towards my room.
“Lyssa!” someone called as I passed.
“What?” I paused and stepped back, peering into the room of one of the nymphs, a willowy blonde named Leandra. She was finishing her makeup and wore a sparkly party dress.
“Wanna go to town with us tonight?” Leandra asked innocently.
“I hate my life,” I muttered.
She laughed.
But I didn’t leave. Playing on her television were news clips of the footage I’d missed two weeks ago when I spent my eighteenth birthday in the middle of the forest, shivering and buried beneath leaves in the final cold snap of spring, during one of Herakles weekend tests. The priests censored everything that reached us from the outside world, including the news. They removed what they didn’t want us to see before letting us watch what was left.
“Hey, is that …” I asked and walked into her room.
“Yeah.” A wistful note was in Leandra’s voice.
It took a lot to make the perfect, beautiful nymphs envy someone else. For once, I understood where she was coming from.
“The Silent Queen,” I said in awe, gazing at the television. The Queen of Greece, known as the Silent Queen because she hadn’t been seen or heard from until this month, was plastered everywhere on the news. A girl my age, she was stunning with white-blonde hair, pale blue eyes and a jawline sharp enough to cut ice. “Wow.”
“She’s just a symbol of the unity of gods and mankind. No real power.” But even Leandra sounded enthralled by the woman on the television. “She can’t speak. She gave her first address in sign language.”
“Wow,” I murmured again. In a sparkling diamond tiara and radiant silk dress, the teen looked more godlike than human. She was flanked by the Supreme Magistrate – the powerful political representative of humanity – and the hooded and masked Supreme Priest – the gods’ advocate on Earth. The three most powerful figures in the world were known as the Sacred Triumvirate, and each had his or her own private security force, according to the priests, which was how they balanced their power.