𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐈𝐀 | 𝐋. 𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐄𝐑𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐍

𝐈𝐈.𝐗.𝐢

❝𝑨𝒍𝒘𝒂𝒚𝒔 𝒅𝒐 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒂𝒇𝒓𝒂𝒊𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒅𝒐.❞
— 𝐑𝐀𝐋𝐏𝐇 𝐖𝐀𝐋𝐃𝐎 𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍

꧁꧂

SINCE HER VERY FIRST DAY AS A CADET, Valen had fantasized about enlisting in the Scout Regiment.

"Look who we have here!" the head commandant yelled, stalking her way. Spit flew from his thin, cracked lips, landing on her eyelashes and cheek. His breath—reeking of tobacco—nauseated her, challenged her self-possession. She resisted the urge to squirm under his scrutiny, finding his cold, steely eyes too invasive for her liking. "And what do they call you?!"

"Valen Ferreira, sir!" Her name—carefully articulated as to not betray her anxiety—flowed smoothly from her lips. She'd mentally rehearsed saying her name aloud since he'd picked apart the first recruit three rows north. The commandant had swept through the lines of straight-backed Cadets like a vicious storm, leaving in his wake a trial of humiliation and discouragement, but she'd made a promise to herself while she sulking in her cell back in Stohess: no one would humiliate or make a scandal of her again. She'd endured more than her fair share of shame.

"Repeat your last name for me!"

Anything but my last name. "Ferreira, sir!" Valen repeated.

The commandant made a face, schooling his sunburnt, wrinkled features into a frown. "Ferreira?!" Valen said nothing, too focused on concealing a frown of her own. "What kind of last name is that?!"

And what kind of last name is Schumacher? She couldn't pronounce half of the last names she'd heard in the past fifteen or so minutes if she tried—she'd nearly keeled over when she'd heard the last name Eierkuchen. "It's the one my parents gave me, sir!"

"I know that's the one your parents gave you!" The combination of his thundering voice and the August heat beat her head around like a ball, the sides of her skull throbbing dully in a painful rhythm. "I should have known the second I saw your dingy face come into my camp—you're from one of those minority groups that made it inside the Walls too."

The way he'd uttered "minority groups" pushed her closer to the edge of her patience. On the wagon to the camp, a group of young men had leered at her from the other side, keeping their arms crossed as they exchanged whispered words. The woman who'd handed her her uniform had practically tossed the jacket and boots at her. The commandant inched his sneering face closer to hers, his noxious breath becoming even ore unbearable. "And what do you plan on making of yourself?!" he asked.