Ashes of the Elite-Chapter 55: King Augustus Malik Last Part

It's been nearly six weeks since I was forced into the castle, cut off from Lont and any scrap of my old life. True to the King's word, he has not permitted me to leave. Cain and Cecilia even Howard are gone, unreachable, their voices replaced by the constant hum of intrusive thoughts and the half-remembered pressure of the King's hand on my shoulder. That touch has become a ghost, lingering even as the days freeze around me. No visits to Lont. No letters, no messages. Nothing and the ache of that absence gnaws at me more than I'd ever admit.

I sit now in the outside training yard, cross-legged on the stone. The cold bites into me, the wind cutting across the stone courtyard. Snow clings to the edges of the yard, piled up against the walls and gathering in dirty drifts. A week. Only a week now until the Academy. I sit cross-legged in the frozen yard, breathing slow, deliberate, trying and failing to lose myself in meditation. My hands rest on my knees, fingers numb from the cold. The voices in my head whisper and hiss, impatient, but I ignore them. Mostly.

The morning after, he sent them. My trainers.

Amos was the first an older man, mid-forties maybe, with sharp yellow eyes that miss nothing and a wiry frame built more for speed than strength. His face is rough, marked by old scars, but he carries himself like a coiled spring, always ready to strike. Amos treats me with a measured respect, never mocking or threatening, but makes it clear that failure is not an option. His mark, the power of electricity, dances across his knuckles as he corrects my stance or shocks a lesson into raw nerves. Every instruction is delivered with flat, clinical calculation, each session leaving me a little meaner, a little more precise.

Jasper is younger, stylish everything about him is sharp: raven-black hair slicked back, skin clean and pale, mouth always set in a smirk that doesn't reach his blood-red eyes. Where Amos is steady and detached, Jasper is predatory, treating me like both student and rival. His Mark lets him manipulate blood itself, and he uses it with a surgeon's precision and a monster's ruthlessness. He smiles often, but it never reaches his eyes. He never holds back, and his drills leave me breathless tests focused always, relentlessly, on how to kill and how to kill quickly.

And then there's Edith. Mid-thirties, with hair like spun silver and skin so pale she almost looks carved from ice. Her eyes are pure white, pupil-less, and somehow even more piercing because of it. Edith is the quietest but the hardest to impress. Her mark lets her turn intangible, immune to blades, bullets, or the cold itself. She flows through walls and my defenses with equal ease, and her lessons are maddeningly subtle focused on anticipation, adapting split-second, learning how and where to strike when an opponent is nearly untouchable.

She's never unkind, but there's a ruthlessness in her approval, as if weakness is a stain to be burned away rather than pitied.

All three treat me with a kind of distant, soldierly respect no cruelty, no warmth. I'm worth something to them only in how quickly I master control, how effectively I learn to become a living weapon. Their praise is rare, but genuine when it comes. Their expectations are plain. Each day, I grow less sure of what lines are left between who I am and what they are forging me to be. With the Academy just ahead, the only certainty I have is that whatever waits there will be colder still.

I stand, brushing snow and grit from my clothes, exhaling a misty breath as I glance back at the desolate training yard. My boots crunch across the thin layer of snow that's settled on the ground, and I head towards the Castle, shoulders hunched against the wind. The cold isn't what's making me irritable it's how I haven't seen the King or Queen even once since that day in the throne room. Weeks have passed, but their absence still grates at me, prickling up my spine. To be used and then discarded, like a blade set aside until needed again, leaves a sour taste I can't shake.

And Prince Adrian, apparently returned to the Academy early. At least that's what Princess Julia told me. That had been a surprise. A week after my "performance," I found her waiting for me outside my chambers, her green eyes wide and unsure. She apologized actually apologized for the little insults she'd thrown at me during my first arrival. I almost laughed in her face, I was so shocked. A royal child of those two monsters having the humility to know what apologizing even meant.

Stranger still, we've become friends. Not the kind that trust easily, but real enough: sharing spare, stolen hours, slipping away from watchful eyes to talk in the library, or sneaking food from the kitchens late at night. The more I learned, the more the differences between the siblings became obvious deep, ugly chasms beneath their polished facades. Julia hated admitting it at first, as if even voicing the truth was dangerous, but it soon became clear: she despises her parents. Especially her mother, whose disappointment is a constant shadow. Julia isn't an Elite, doesn't possess a single mark and her parents make sure she feels the lack, every day. Adrian, on the other hand, has two marks but refuses to use them to the standards their parents demand, earning only contempt in return. No wonder there's so much bitterness behind Julia's laugh, so much distance in Adrian's eyes.

Then I think back to three nights ago in the library. Julia sitting next to me in the flickering candlelight, her expression more serious than I'd ever seen. Don't let them make you into what they want, she had said, her voice barely above a whisper. If you do, you'll never come back.

Before I could answer, she reached out and touched my face a fleeting, trembling caress and then fled from the room like the walls were about to collapse in on her.

I haven't seen her since. The loneliness gnaws at me. And every hour brings me closer to leaving the castle, to facing the Academy with new scars and fewer allies than ever.

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It's the morning I'm due at the Academy. Snow clings stubbornly to the eaves and the courtyard is silent except for the ever-present wind. Brutal training and isolation have worn at me like acid over stone. Whatever softness or hope I held onto when I arrived here is long gone.

I haven't seen Julia again. Not once since the library. That more than anything else burns. I didn't realize how much I was counting on her presence until it vanished. I shouldn't care. I shouldn't have let her get close. But still... part of me aches.

Normally, I would've taken the train like every other Academy-bound student, packed onto those iron beasts like cattle, but not me. Not for me however, I'm the Kings now so I get special treatment. I walk into a huge, empty hall, cold light pouring through the frosted windows. Awakened Kennet is already there, waiting with her red hair falling loose around her shoulders Last time I saw her was the day she brought me here leaving me to wait for hours.

Hatred gnaws at my gut, hot and vicious. The voices tug at the edges of my mind, soothing, promising. You could kill her, they croon. After she takes you there. Slit her throat. Crush her bones. It would be so easy...

I catch myself sneering before I even think about it. "you" I say, the word flat, unwelcoming. Kennet just laughs, the sound light and mean. There's something smug about the way she gathers up her hair, twisting it into a bun with practiced hands. For a second, I consider dredging up Estee's name asking her why she did that but the urge immediately curdles into disgust. Estee doesn't matter. None of it matters.

Instead, I just stare at her, cold and empty, and say, "Take me."

She grins, walking over without hesitation, all confidence and lazy grace. "Whatever you say, darling." she purrs.

She grabs my hand without ceremony, and before I can retort, the world disappears in a blinding flash of white.

End Volume One

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