Morrigan - ACOTAR Fanfic

Chapter Seven - Cassian the General

I made a sound of amazement. The human girl stood in a carpeted room, wearing a patterned green and tan army uniform, her hair tied in a tight low bun. She held palm cards as she spoke to a group of boys and girls who sat in chairs in front, wearing the identical uniform.

The girl said, "Do you have any questions for me?"

The army students gave no response, but some of them did scribble in the notepads on their desks.

The girl nodded once. "Wonderful. We will now do an activity based on the information you have just been taught."

As if my body had floated closer, my eyes adjusted to see what the boys and girls were writing. At the top of most of their pages was the title: Cadets – The 5 Movements.

I rose my brows, now able to put a label to the army uniform and lesson the girl taught.

The girl—the corporal, according to her the rank slide on the front of her cadet shirt—gestured to the furniture in the room. "Before we begin, we must move all chairs to the side, then place the desks next to each other so that they form a tunnel." She let out a breath, as if preparing to use her command voice. "Is this understood?"

"Yes, ma'am!" The cadets chorused.

The girl smiled and launched into action alongside the cadets, helping them move the room into the arrangement she described. Once done, she asked the cadets to line up behind the desk, which they followed without question, although the line bunched towards the end in order to accommodate for the many cadets and smaller space.

I marveled at the fact that the girl not only did cadets, but also held rank, because she crawled underneath the straight tunnel of desks, demonstrating the movement of 'monkey run', I realised how wrong—and not to mention restrictive, Prythian's rules and expectations truly are.

As the corporal came out the other side and stood, brushing non-existent dust off her army uniform, I reached the understanding that she represented our entire gender. She was living proof that females have the capacity to be soldiers, warriors and all things considered inappropriate and unladylike, the same way men don't always have to hide everything they are as a means of maintaining authority and control.

Flabbergast, I gaped for longer than what is deemed socially acceptable, suddenly grateful to be alone in my dreams, away from watchful eyes.

As the cadets ran through the activity, laughter and banter followed. And even when they were all dismissed and the girl met up with her cadet friends, she maintained that same jubilance in every step she made, every word she spoke aloud, every thought she voiced.

Even when someone of higher rank scolded her for putting her hands in her pocket or running on her way out of the cadet grounds, she still didn't falter in her joy. As if nothing could repress the grin on her face and the easy, carefree nature she emitted.

I knew, then and there, that forcing women to be anything other than their dreams, passions, and what they aspire for, was and is immoral. In Prythian, many of us were sold to another family for our perceived beauty, cast away as nothing but un-opinionated objects without personal regard. In the Illyrian warbands, females who did not perform their chores are punished by camp-mothers or whatever males were in charge of them. Females were trained to lower their eyes in a male's presence, and in some camps, it was standard for their wings to be clipped after their first bleeding.

I gagged. Emerie, my friend, was a victim of it.

Even though Rhys continued to fight against the clipping of females' wings, Amarantha's reign had brought it back. And Kallon, the son of the warlord who runs a rivalling Illyrian camp, began spreading slander directed at Rhys and Cassian among other war-camps at an attempt to cause dissent.