Page 29 of A Monarch's Fall

I gingerly placed my feet on the ground. There was slight pain in my leg, but not enough to keep me from standing. I wobbled, my hand on the bed for support. The boot was clearly providingsupport, a brace, for my injured leg. How long had I been unconscious?

I remembered Ana’s face, the way her eyebrows rose and pulled together in a way that made her look like a sad kitten, her hand brushing against my cheek.

She had knocked me out.

I was surprised, though I really shouldn’t have been. I had witnessed her powers in full at the Academy. Still, part of me couldn’t believe she had used them against me.

I tried to stand without leaning against the bed and succeeded.

“Right,” I said, risking making a sound but wanting to try my voice.

My throat felt drier than anything I had experienced before. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and my voice came in a hoarse whisper. But I could speak, and I knew that all I needed was a drink and a little more practice, and my voice would return to me.

The nightgown I wore felt too revealing; it made me feel vulnerable and exposed, and even though wherever I was wasn't as cold, it wasn’t exactly warm either. I made my way to the wardrobe and hoped that it wouldn’t be empty.

It wasn’t, but the clothes were those of a stranger. A man's clothing. Someone much larger than me. I sighed. It would do.

There were a few selections of shirts and trousers, and men-sized dress shoes lined the bottom of the wardrobe. I pulled open one of two small drawers and found socks and men's underwear in one, and a couple of watches, cufflinks, and two pairs of leather belts in the other. At least I wouldn’t be entirely barefoot. Socks would have to do.

I took a cream-coloured shirt from the hanger; it felt heavy yet soft, like a wool mix material. I pulled the nightgown over my head quickly, then changed into the shirt and buttoned it. The shirt was like a nightgown itself, so overly large, but I rolledthe sleeves up past my elbows and grabbed a pair of brown cord trousers from the hanger. A colour theme was apparent—the beige walls, the tan bedding, the off-white shirts and brown trousers. The room felt like it belonged to someone.

The legs of the trousers were far too wide, which would be helpful for the boot if not at all fashionable. I smiled to myself. Selene would not approve of this outfit; she’d tut disapprovingly in a way that felt playfully like a challenge, before she masterfully undressed me simply to tease me, before redressing me to her liking.

I grabbed a pair of socks and a belt and hobbled back to the bed, sitting on the edge while I decided the best way to get my booted leg into the trousers. The boot was just that, a boot. It had straps, and I thought it was best to remove it, test what it was like to put pressure on my leg without the boot and put it back on if necessary.

The boot was easy enough to get off. There were external straps and an internal liner that fit snugly. The removal of the boot revealed my badly bruised leg, or at least that it was once badly bruised. The bruising was now yellowish and clearly healing, and a narrow, white scar ran vertically down half my shin. I pulled the oversized trousers halfway up my legs before carefully standing, and I realised why I had been placed in the brace of a boot. A sharp pain shot up my leg; it was bearable, but still, the boot would provide more support. I tucked the shirt into the trousers and threaded the belt through the belt loops, putting it to its tightest notch. They would stay up at least.

Sitting back on the bed, I pulled on the similarly oversized socks that reached my knees. The socks would provide some compression, which would be good for my injured leg. I rolled the trousers up, cuffing the bottom of the left leg and rolling the material all the way up to my knee on the right, before strapping the boot back in place.

I knew I must have looked a mess. I could feel how tangled my hair was. My breath was disgusting even to myself, and I felt like I hadn’t had a real wash in a week, which might have been true with the healing process of my bruised leg. I assumed that it had been broken and, at some stage, was a much worse sight than it currently was, though I had no memory of how I had injured my leg, only that when I had awoken in the maze to Dylan and the others, my leg had already been injured.

I stood and stared at the door to the room. I wasn’t sure I had been exactly quiet while getting dressed, and I didn’t know what was on the other side of the door, but I knew I couldn’t just stay in the room, paralysed with fear, with the unknown. I had to leave.

The door opened quietly, and the wooden flooring made no sound as I stepped forward into a wide corridor.

The corridor was lined with more doors. To my left was a dead end, a white wall with a large calendar pinned on a corkboard. To my right, the corridor met another; a row of large, bright windows lit the space.

I walked slowly towards the corkboard. Curiosity demanded that I investigate the calendar closest to me, which might tell me where I was.

It was a schedule colour-coded in green, red, and blue. It was like a class schedule, only it read more like Selene’s class schedules. First aid and battlefield medicine, communications and technology, reconnaissance and stealth, command and chain of authority, war ethics and rules of engagement, physical and mental conditioning, hand-to-hand combat, weapons proficiency, and tactical manoeuvres and strategy.

Was this a school? A war school? Was I in some sort of student accommodation? I looked down the corridor at the evenly spaced brown wooden doors. Was there another sparse bedroom behind each door?

Voices distracted my investigation of where I was.

They were near, but not moving closer. I walked to the opposite end of the corridor as quietly as I could, which meant moving more slowly than I would have preferred. The brace was large and added weight and height to my right leg, making my walk off-balance, and I limped, my foot and ankle locked in place, unable to bend naturally. My whole leg felt stiff and cumbersome to move.

Eventually, and with surprisingly no noise to my ears, I made it to the end of the hall and snuck a peek to my left.

The voices were still too muffled for me to make out, and there was no one down either side of the long corridor that joined the corridor of the room where I had awoken. I decided to get closer to hear the voices.

As I crept agonisingly slowly, taking the utmost care with each step to remain quiet, the voices became clearer.

There were two voices, and I recognised both, but I couldn’t place where from. They were familiar to me, but didn’t belong to anyone that I knew well.

“When are we going to wake her up?” a woman asked.

“We will allow her to wake of her own accord,” a man answered, his voice sounded almost jovial in a weird way, like he was laughing at the question, not quite condescending but like being amused by a child's question.