Vallen: The Marking (Vallen series #1)

Chapter 9

"Baby brother!" I recognised him as Darius, the eldest of the three. Darius looked nearly identical to Alaric. There were some differences, Alaric still looked younger and Darius had a faint scar over his right eyebrow that made it tug up a bit. Still, the family resemblance was uncanny. "How is your first day in the real world?"

"The real world is being stuck at school for six years?" Alaric answered, his face still a bit red from the sandwich he almost choked on.

"I meant the first time away from home." Darius answered. "How are you?" He added, this time showing a bit more concern for his brother.

"I'm fine," Alaric answered curtly. He looked over at me. "Darius, this is Eira. We're friends."

Darius looked at me and gave me a kind smile.

"It's nice to meet you Eira. Thank you for giving my idiotic brother a chance." He smiled.

"Oh yeah, he's basically forcing me into this friendship," I answered. "Really didn't have a choice." Darius laughed while Alaric only seemed to become even redder in the face.

"Ha ha, very funny you two." He said sarcastically.

Darius wore a light blue blazer, which made one of my questions pop up in my head again.

"What do the colours of the uniforms mean?" I asked, totally not considering that Darius probably didn't know about my humanness.

"The level of your gift." He answered, looking a bit dumbfounded by my stupid question. I suppose that made more sense than what year someone was in. It's probably easier for the teachers to know if you have someone that can accidentally torch the place in your classroom rather than just know what year you are supposed to be teaching. Alaric stepped in and started talking to Darius about the German lessons while my thoughts drifted off.

I hadn't even thought about what my gift might be yet, it had slipped my mind in the storm of thoughts that happened the moment I saw my tattoo edged into my skin. I didn't know anything about the gifts, only the few things that I had heard like how one teacher can control fire and I heard a rumour from Alaric that professor Dehaven had the gift of extra strength. I knew that there were things like bad gifts, but I had no idea what qualified under that.

 I personally thought that the gift of fire, or any of the other elements for that matter, was absolutely badass. Alaric laughed when I told him that, he said that those are qualified as weak and common, that the higher the gift the better chance of a good life you will have. I suppose having a high gift will be determining for me. I have no good family name that will take me places, only what I have to offer myself.

Still, I wouldn't mind controlling one of the elements. It seemed like a pretty easy gift to control, so I could still live amongst humans if I wanted to.

I hadn't figured out who I would ask about the phone yet. A part of me also didn't want to call. I wanted to know who my real parents were, but at the same time, I wasn't ready to face my parents just yet. I needed a little bit more time. My dead biological parents would just have to wait a little longer.

After lunch, we had social studies and much to my sadness, PE. I had really hoped that the Vallens had no need for it, but I was sadly mistaken. The stronger we trained ourselves to be the less likely we were to succumb to sickness.

Our second to last class would always be training, whether that was in the form of PE, archery or sword fighting. The teacher that taught us, who still insisted we called him a professor, was an absolute hurricane after our sweet social studies teacher, Professor Adesso.

She spoke with a soft voice the entire time, spending the entire period on making sure we knew the ' guidelines to an educational year'. Professor Lamphere, the PE coach, was very different. He had to shout over the strong October winds. The moment someone started talking when they shouldn't have he barked insults at them, saying things that would get a normal high school teacher fired for sure.

"My brothers said he was a prick." Alaric panted, having just ran another lap for 'stupid behaviour' after he had tripped over a rock. "I didn't realise he would be this bad."

"We should just do what he said, five minutes before he said it." I answered. Professor Lamphere stood in the middle of the training field, with the class all over the field doing mundane work out exercises. 

I hated working out in high school, but knowing that if you're stronger you might not die really lit a fire under my ass. The other students already knew this, they didn't eat a bag of nachos the night before they came here. Especially Alaric, who didn't even know what nachos were.

"I prefer Chocolate." He told me when he held my feet down so I could do a sit-up. "My grandmother always brings them along on her visits. I got extra because she said they'd help me grow." I stifled a laugh.

"Right, because you're so tiny." I said. "Maybe you should check if the chocolate wasn't laced with growth hormones."

"Lauwers! Another lap if you keep talking!" The teacher shouted, and our conspiracy theories stopped.