Chapter 1
Am I a good person?
I don’t know the answer to that, and I doubt I ever will. Yet, I continue to ask that question daily. According to upper city, I am. But there is this nagging voice in the back of my mind saying that I have done awful things, that I’m the horrifying creature under the bed.
It sounds a lot like my old nursemaid, Maggie. The one my father had killed for teaching me kindness and love.
“Maeve, are you paying attention?” my father questions.
I sigh internally. I wish I was anywhere but here right now.
Training is fun, at least the physical part. But speech writing is decidedly not. However, my father thinks it is a good opportunity to practice for when I become second-in-command, replacing him.
“I apologize, Father. It won’t happen again.”
“See that it does not,” he responds.
He turns back to the journal open in front of us. It’s one of Nicholas Madden’s. He is the grandfather to our current Commander and founder of Atrox and our laws. We are pulling quotes from his passages to use in my father’s speech.
“Read this passage out loud for me,” my father commands. He never gives requests.
I want to bang my head against the desk. I’ve read these journals a thousand times at my father’s behest.
“’Love and kindness are the things people take advantage of. The things that make you weak. Therefore, I have eradicated them from our society No longer will war be a threat to our peace. The poor will never again be able to take advantage of our kindness and rebel.” I take a breath. “In a sacrifice to peace, we must give up love and the sanctimony of marriage. Children will be raised by a single parent, brought about by conception contracts. This is for the safety of us all.’”
This is my least favorite passage from Nicholas’s journals. Mainly, thanks to Maggie. She put it into my head that this wasn’t right. That I should have had two parents, instead of just my father.
I have met my mother a couple of times at high society events my father made me attend. She lives in a neighboring city, so it’s thankfully not often that I see her – getting the Commander’s permission to leave Atrox is rare.
Lorelei Elrod is beautiful and strikingly so. The very opposite of me and she never lets me forget it. Where she is petite, I’m lanky. Where she has wavy, red hair, mine is a dull, straight dirty blonde. The only thing we have in common is our green eyes and even then, she finds a way to criticize them.
She is only my mother in DNA.
“Good. Now, which part would you quote?” my father asks.
“The first sentence. It will flow seamlessly in your speech.”
“I concur. But how would I introduce it? How would I make it flow seamlessly?”
I hate that I am all too eager to show my father how smart I am. “You could say… The war that took place two centuries ago was caused because the old ruler was too lenient with the poor. They took advantage of this and rebelled, wanting more than we gave them. The soldiers did not want to harm the poor, thinking they were misguided, so they laid down their arms. Because of their compassion, we almost lost the war. But luckily our Commander’s great-grandfather rallied the loyal soldiers and stopped the rebellion because he knew ‘love and kindness are the things people take advantage of.’”
Nobody knows the name or the gender of the old ruler. It’s one of the many great secrets of Atrox, whispered in darkened alleys and skeevy establishments. Whoever they are, they were killed in the rebellion, leaving the city without an heir. So, Nicholas generously took up the mantle and created the laws of today to ensure no war would ever be brought to our city again.
Well, if you do not count the crusade against love and kindness.
“Mmm,” my father hums, making me squirm. “I can work with that. It needs to be tweaked a little, but it is an acceptable beginning.”
I let out the breath I was holding. Wrong answers are punishable actions. Though they are not as bad as indecisions.
“Thank you, Father.”
“One last thing. What is the only suitable way to end my speech?”
I sigh internally, knowing he is trying to overprepare me for my role as second. “Only in cruelty can peace be tamed.”
There was a time when I was young, under the care of Maggie, when I didn’t believe in those words. I believed in fairytales. But my father ripped that away from me when he killed her. Now, I’m left with the coldness of cruelty as my only comfort.
Cruelty means I will never lose anyone again.
“You have made me proud, Maeve.” My father places his hand on my shoulder, giving me a glimpse of a loving parent.
Sometimes I think my father is like me: not naturally malicious. I can see it in the rare moments when he looks at me with regret after a harsh punishment or when he looks at me with deep affection after I have made him proud. Those moments make me believe that he had to learn to be cruel like I did.
There have been small moments over the years when he resembled a father I read about in the pre-war books. Times when he brought home my favorite dessert or played card games with me. But more often than not, I feel the typical apathy of a parent in Atrox.
“I am glad, Father.”
He closes the journal, gently putting it back on the bookshelf.
“Go change, Maeve. We must leave for the Commander’s Tower soon.”
I look down at myself, wondering what is wrong with my training clothes. But it’s not my clothes, it’s my father. He believes that I should where dresses every day, outside of training, of course. I disagree, though. I think it’s impractical.
“Yes, Father.” There’s no point in arguing with him. He will always be right.
