Page 85 of Deadly Alliances

Ashlyn

If I hadn’t been tired before the greenhouse, I was absolutely exhausted now. I wasn’t even hungry enough to eat, let alone with my dad, and I was tempted to cancel on him and just crash out early.

But then I entered the Grand Hall, and my heart plummeted through my stomach. Students were lined against one part of the wall, sitting as if on invisible chairs, some of them in tears from the pain in their legs. One student on the opposite wall was hunched over a trash bin, vomiting his brains out. What the hell was going on? What had these students done to deserve such treatment?

A group of students were precisely lined on their way into the Dining Hall, their hands raising in salute to the soldier guarding the entrance. I was suddenly glad I wouldn’t be eating in there tonight because I’d sooner kick that guy in the balls than salute him with anything but my middle finger.

Usually, the Grand Hall was a place of comradery and relaxation. Groups of friends would gather to talk, exchanging ideas, teasing and joking, and sometimes flirting.Thatwas normal. Now, everyone was synchronized and dull. Their footsteps marched, happy conversations replaced by silence or canned responses to orders. Everyone looked scared, broken. One wrong step could get anyone into serious trouble, and all the rules were nearly impossible to follow.

My heart broke to see what had become of the school I’d come to love. And that made up my mind. Talking to my dad couldn’twait, even if it came to nothing.

I spun on my heel toward the professors’ offices and began striding down the hall.

“Hey, you!” A bold male voice called, and I cringed with irritation as I came to a stop and turned around. “Where do you think you’re going?”

I fought the urge to tell him where he could shove his barked orders and on my best schoolgirl smile. “I’m Lieutenant General Summers’ daughter. He requested I dine with him tonight in his office. Would you like to escort me?” I held out a bent elbow like a fucking lady.

He looked down his long nose at me with narrowed eyes. “As a matter of fact, I would.” Rather than slide his arm through mine like a gentleman, he roughly gripped my upper arm and yanked me along with him down the hall.

Fire was scorching a path of destruction inside me, and I wanted so badly to unleash it on him until he was nothing but cinders. How dare he touch me like this! How dare he touchanyfemale student like this—or male, for that matter. But I reined in my fury, knowing I could use this treatment to my advantage, or at the very least, a test.

We stopped in front of the door to Dad’s office, and the soldier slammed his fist against it three times. A few seconds later, the door opened.

“Geeze, Ashlyn, do you have to knock so—” My dad broke off when he saw my arm clenched so aggressively in the soldier’s hand. “What is the meaning of this?” he barked at the soldier in his authoritative dad tone, and I had never been so satisfied to hear, especially when it wasn’t aimed at me.

The soldier stiffened, visibly losing his confidence. “This girlclaims she’s your daughter and has permission to dine with you.”

Ignaeus grilled him with a heated glare. “Then why are you holding her like she’s some kind of delinquent?”

I looked up at the soldier’s face with a smug smile, and he looked like he was about to piss himself.

“Well, I—uh—I just felt it was my duty to make sure she wasn’t lying, Sir,” he stammered, all the bark gone from his voice so that he now sounded like a frightened puppy.

Ignaeus eyes lit with a deadly orange glow, his outrage palpable in the suddenly humid air around him. “And your solution to that is to manhandle her like a common criminal? She’s a seventeen-year-old girl, and this is a school, not a prison.”

“It’s just—er—I mean, she—uh.”

It was all I could do not to fall to the floor laughing as he babbled like a brain-dead dickhead.

“Yes, sheismy daughter,” Ignaeus hissed, swatting the soldier’s hand off my arm with a loudsmack. “And even if she wasn’t, you have no right to treatanystudent with such disrespect. They are our future, and you would do well to remember that.”

The soldier stepped back, gave a frightened nod and a salute before scurrying back toward the Grand Hall.

I rubbed the skin of my arm where red finger marks were starting to appear. “Thanks.”

“Come on in, honey,” he urged, his tone now far gentler than only seconds ago. He ushered me inside and closed the door, leading me to his desk where two plates heaped with steaming food waited. “I’m so sorry about that, Ash. I will be having a talk with the soldiers on campus and make certain nothing like thatever happens again.”

I sat across from him and folded my arms. “To just me or all the other students?”

He looked down sadly at his food and sighed, but didn’t answer.

“Oh, come on, Dad. Have youseenwhat’s going on in the Grand Hall right now?” So much for subtlety, but I just couldn’t keep it in anymore. My temper had limits, and that asshole guard had bulldozed right through them.

“I know,” he said finally, not meeting my eyes. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We’re supposed to be nurturing students, fostering their abilities and gently encouraging them to join the military. Instead, we’ve become a concentration camp, and it sickens me that I contributed to this.”

My eyes widened in surprise as I stared at him. After our last encounter, this was the last thing I expected him to say, especially without me having to dig it out of him. Looking at him now, he looked so much older. The wrinkles in his forehead and the corners of his eyes were deeper and etched with shadows.

“I trusted the general would have the best interest of our students at heart,” he went on. “But beating them into submission couldn’t be farther from that.”

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