“Yes, the Morroks were an ailing people, but I, Jamie, was the remedy.”
It is the eve of Jamie’s serum tournament—the event that will transform her into a formidable, seven-foot-tall, super-Human Morrok. Jamie and her brother have been raised and trained since infancy to lead the Morroks, and they have the fighting skills, practice in deception, and capacity for malice to do it.
The only problem? Jamie doesn’t want to take the serum.
Although Jamie is resigned to her fate, the sudden appearance of someone from her past opens up a world of possibilities Jamie never would’ve dreamed existed. Jamie knows that choosing anything outside the Morroks will mean death or a life on the run, leaving her brother to fend for himself among jealous Morrok leaders who would sooner cut his throat than follow him.
As pressure ramps up from all sides, Jamie must choose: Leave the only life she’s known for the possibility of love, friendship, and even budding romance? Or save her brother and become perhaps the most powerful Morrok the world has ever seen?
Chapter One: The Stolen Recruit
“Hey, wake up. Lernuc wants us.”
I opened my eyes to see my brother’s sooty face hovering inches from mine. His wide eyes shone bright against the night sky. He hadn’t bathed since it was his turn to cook a week ago, and the smell of smoke from the fire and of ashes from errant sparks still clung to his ratty clothes.
I pushed his face out of my range of bleary vision. “The tournament doesn’t start until dawn. I need my sleep.”
“The tournament’s off. The Humans have my mom, and we’re the only ones who can get her back.”
I jerked upright and stared at Xerxes as he remained squatted next to me, his eyes wide with excitement. His shaggy, light-brown hair was still plastered to his face from sleeping, but he already had a sheathed dirk clutched in both hands. Of course he wouldn’t see the dangers of the Humans capturing his mother; all he heard was Lernuc asking him to go on an adventure to Settlement Ten.
I rose from my sleep mat and groped for my worn sandals. “How long have they had her?”
None of the other children stirred, but even if our conversation had woken them, I doubted they would react. Xerxes and I slept among the trainees, but everyone in the camp knew we were not like them. The other children had decided long ago it was safest not to speak to us at all.
“Only a couple of hours,” Xerxes said. He stood up and rocked from one foot to the other as I kicked my sleep mat to its proper place along the canyon wall. “Alitis was supposed to meet her where the trees go into the mountains, but when she didn’t come, he noticed the Humans had stopped their search, and he figured out that they had her.”
“So she’s what the Humans have been looking for the past couple of weeks?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I think she took something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. It was something important, I guess, because Lernuc wants it really bad, and Alitis won’t say what it is, and apparently all the Humans in the whole forest have been looking for it. I don’t know how they found out my mom had it.”
I paused and met Xerxes’s gaze to see if he was withholding anything from me. He was a terrible liar, but he knew how to keep silent about things I didn’t like or secrets that made him feel important. But all I saw in his face was the excitement, and it made me want to slap him.
Without another word, I strode across the canyon and let Xerxes trail behind me. Like the children, the Morroks were still asleep. Rows of their feet stuck out of their too-small tents on the other side of the canyon. The middle of the canyon was left bare for dueling practice, and piles of weapons lay under tarps next to our small supply of food. Our camp had only one entrance: a narrow gorge that led straight into the forest of Serenity Valley. And in the canyon there was only one cave, which naturally belonged to Lernuc.
Before we reached the cave, perhaps my least favorite person (besides maybe Xerxes’s mother) emerged from its entrance. Like all Morroks, Alitis was around seven and a half feet tall, and although he was strong, his bones jutted out more prominently than his muscles, giving him an angular, skeletal appearance. His body had grown so large so fast that his pale pink skin had become blotched and stretched like old leather. His dark hair was dry and limp, like bunched-up straw, and his eyes were permanently bloodshot, making them look red and crazed.
But what separated Alitis from other Morroks were the two jet-black wings that sprouted from between his shoulder blades. Although they were folded now, I had seen those wings expand even wider than their owner was tall, and I had felt the gale they stirred whenever he rose into the air.
When Alitis spotted us, Xerxes stopped dead in his tracks, but I lengthened my stride to meet him before he could make one of his vainglorious takeoffs from the middle of the canyon. Alitis was four years older than I was and had begun drinking the serum at thirteen years old like we were supposed to, but Lernuc had given him smaller doses over the last four years to make his growth more gradual than most Morroks’. Serenial Morroks were rare because Serenial bones were so weak that the rapid growth that the serum caused literally shattered them. Lernuc had bred Alitis carefully, however, and after years of his wings being disproportionate to his giant form, he had finally balanced out enough to fly again—a fact he would let none of us forget.
“What’s going on?” I called.
Alitis smirked. “Lernuc will tell you what you need to know.” His voice was high-pitched but still full of power, like the ring of a steel blade when struck against a stone.
“Don’t be coy. Xerxes said Cassandra’s been gone this whole time because she took something and now the Humans have her. Do they know who she is? Is she in danger?”
“Since when do you care about Cassandra’s life?”
I scoffed. “You don’t care either, but Lernuc wants her alive, and she’s got something Lernuc wants, so what are we going to do?”
“You and the boy are going to find where she’s being held and rescue her. Or if you cannot manage that, at least obtain what she stole and let Xerxes decide if he wants to abandon his mother for execution—because she will be executed if she’s taken to Warrior Peak before we get to her. I will be waiting in the forest to escort you back to camp in case you draw more attention than you ought.”
“You’re going to risk exposing yourself?” I asked. The Humans knew that Morroks were scattered throughout the forest, but they had no idea that Alitis existed to terrorize them both by ground and by air.
Alitis waved one of his clawed hands. “I know Lernuc seems to value your and Cassandra’s delicate Human subterfuge, but it is time to display some power so the Humans will know we still live.”
“My delicate Human subterfuge is the only way we’ll get Cassandra out of there without attacking Settlement Ten and advertising to Warrior Peak exactly where our camp is. Your new flying muscles can’t solve all our difficulties, O Winged One.”
Alitis leaned down so that his face was inches from mine. “Mock me all you want, girl, but Lernuc won’t be in this camp forever. When you become a Morrok, he will make you commander, but do you really think that you and your brothers will be a match for me? I don’t care what superstitions Lernuc has about the Eight; I am the pinnacle of his creation, and I will not bow to you.”
With that, he started to beat his wings and rose slowly, jerkily into the air. He usually looked for a high takeoff point to help him gain flight, but I must have irritated him enough that he wanted to show off. I considered giving him one good punch to the stomach before he got really airborne, but I knew one kick from his boot could break my ribs if he wanted. I already had a scar under my chin from him, so I knew he wouldn’t hesitate. My hair whipped around me and dust tickled my throat as his black wings hauled his bulk over the tip of the canyon.
“Why did he say ‘brothers’?” Xerxes asked from behind me.
“Who knows?” I turned around and grabbed his thin arm. “Listen, you’re not coming to Settlement Ten unless Lernuc directly orders it, so just keep quiet while we’re in there.”
Xerxes jerked out of my grip. “I am too coming. Lernuc said we both are.”
“Just keep quiet.”
The entrance to Lernuc’s cave was small, just barely tall enough for a Morrok to enter, but once inside, the cavern widened for several yards, almost like a foyer before the deeper tunnels that were set too far back in the mountain for the early-morning sun to reach.
To the right, just inside the mouth of the cave, was a tent, though tent seemed hardly the right word for it compared to the frayed pieces of canvas that made up the tents outside. This tent—Lernuc’s tent—was the one spot of color and extravagance in the dilapidated camp. It stood nine feet tall and had a flat roof since rain wasn’t a concern inside the cave. The walls were double-layered and dyed crimson with large gold spirals stitched in every couple of feet. The light from the lanterns inside the tent could not pierce through the red, but the lighter-colored spirals glowed in the dim cave.
“Come in, children,” Lernuc called when we hesitated at the tent flaps.
The carpeted interior made it easy to forget that we were inside a mountain. The metal supports were concealed within the walls of the tent, and Morrok-sized wooden furniture, upholstered with cushions and pads, filled the space in between. The red exterior darkened the glow of the many lamps.
Lernuc himself stood in the middle of the room, not far from a small table at which he and Alitis must have been sitting. Lernuc, to my eyes at least, looked more like a Human than a Morrok. Although he stood taller than most Morroks, his skin was uniformly pale rather than stretched and patched, and his short, dark hair was alive and healthy. Lernuc shared the Morroks’ pointed facial features, but his were natural, not as if his skull were pushing out against his skin.
Lernuc resumed his seat at the table and gestured for us to sit as well. I would rather have stood because Morrok furniture made me feel smaller and weaker than I actually was, but no one said no to Lernuc. I just had to remember not to swing my legs as they dangled in the air and hope Xerxes would do the same.
“Did you talk to Alitis?” Lernuc asked. Unlike Alitis with his high voice and the other Morroks with their grunts, Lernuc’s voice was remarkably even, not betraying anything about his race or build.
“He harangued me, if that’s what you mean,” I said.
Lernuc grinned. “Then you know your task. Go to Settlement Ten and learn as much as you can before you act. Cassandra might not even be prisoner there; the Humans may have merely found her alone in the forest and thought she was heading to Settlement Ten and she hasn’t found a reason to leave yet.”
“What if she is a prisoner? Alitis said our ultimate priority was getting whatever she stole. What should we be looking for?”
“A recruit.”
I had to stop myself from glancing over to Xerxes. We should have guessed. But since when did Cassandra disappear for weeks at a time to retrieve a single new trainee? Usually the occasional baby from Settlement Ten was sufficient. Lernuc liked to recruit Humans when they were young enough that they wouldn’t remember their parents but old enough that they could survive apart from their mothers. That left a narrow time frame for recruiting because Humans trainees were always stronger when they had their mother’s milk rather than the animal milk we stored here; but then again, nature’s processes had a way of conforming to Lernuc’s will rather than the other way around, and we would be the last to disrupt this pattern.
“I want to go,” Xerxes blurted.
Lernuc’s lip curled as he turned to him. “And why wouldn’t you go?”
“Jamie doesn’t want me to.”
Lernuc glanced back at me, and I had to stop myself from kicking Xerxes under the table.
“You will go,” Lernuc said, “and if you do well, you may participate in the tournament when this issue is resolved.”
Xerxes leaned forward so that his chest bumped the edge of the table. “You mean become a Morrok with Jamie? A year early?”
“Absolutely not,” I snapped.
“Why are you so concerned?” Lernuc asked. His sneer relaxed into a wry smile now that he was no longer talking to Xerxes. “He will be doing this in a year anyway. The two of you will win over the others, of course, but you need not harm each other unless you wish to establish a chain of command. I am content to make you co-commanders, but I understand if you need to establish dominance one way or the other.”
“He’s not ready.” I wanted to go on, but my chest tightened and I couldn’t draw breath for another protest. Xerxes was only twelve. It was too soon . . . far too soon for him to start taking the serum—to start down that road from which there was no return.
“Well, this mission will allow him to prove himself.” Lernuc turned to Xerxes again. “Boy, go gather what you and your sister will need.”
Xerxes cast me a bewildered glance and teetered on the edge of his seat as if hesitant to leave without my direction.
I sighed. “Get us some new clothes, but nothing too clean. We’ll have to play forester children, and they’re never too well kept. We won’t need food.”
Xerxes nodded, the excitement back in his face, and scurried out of the tent.
Before I could say anything, Lernuc leaned toward me, and I had to remind myself not to flinch.
“I apologize that your tournament has been delayed because of this. I know you have been looking forward to this day.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. Was I looking forward to being the same size as Alitis again? Yes. Was I looking forward to being able to put Cassandra in her place for once? Yes. But was I looking forward to being a Morrok for myself?
I had watched many children go through the transformation. Within three years of taking the serum, Humans my age grew about three feet until they stood at seven, maybe eight feet tall. Their skin wouldn’t be able to keep up with the rapid growth in bones and muscles, so it would stretch and discolor, often beyond repair. The growth was painful too, I supposed, because I often heard them whimper in their throats (Morroks weren’t allowed to cry), and some days they couldn’t stand up straight. For some reason, many of them had their hair fall out or become dry and dead, and the pain and stress and lack of sleep caused their eyes to become red and bloodshot for weeks at a time.
I had watched it happen many times, but I always held out hope that the transformation wouldn’t be like that for me or, even if it were, that I would be able to hold onto my mind through it. Because there was something about the way the children’s bodies changed that seemed to destroy their capacity to look others in the eye or carry on a conversation beyond giving and receiving orders. I knew part of it was due to how they were raised before they became Morroks. Most Human trainees learned submission and silence under the threat of an older Morrok’s blade, so they didn’t have much self-awareness to cling to even before their bodies became hideous and foreign to them.
But Lernuc had never treated me like that. Where the other children were trained in groups, Lernuc always had Morroks teach swordplay to me and my brother one-on-one, and they were never to hurt us seriously or purposely, as often happened to my peers. Lernuc also personally taught us math, history, writing, and military strategy—things my peers were never even exposed to. He even had Cassandra teach me how to disguise myself and act like a normal Human. Cassandra’s skills, however, would be useless to me after I transformed because after that day, no disguise would convince the Humans that I had been one of them.
No, I had not been looking forward to this day, but Lernuc had been counting down to it for many years—thirteen, to be exact. A serum tournament had not taken place for thirteen years simply because there hadn’t been enough children to participate in all that time. Normally when Lernuc decided it was time for some trainees to become Morroks, all the thirteen-year-olds in the camp would duel each other so that he could see which ones were tough enough to be officers and which ones were too weak to waste the serum on at all.
But there had been no tournament in all these years because we could not risk the trainees killing one another when so few Morroks were left on this side of the mountain. For the Morroks were an ailing people in the year 340, though it was difficult to imagine that anything about the Morroks could be ailing. But the strength of the Morroks as a people depended not on their individual sizes but on the number of their children—rather, the children we stole from the Humans. And ever since the year 327, the year I was born, the Morroks in Serenity Valley had been scattered—our camp in the Gravel Lands destroyed, the Morroks who fled to the forest picked off by the bird people called Serenial, and any resurgence held at bay by the mere existence of a Human named Orestes.
Yes, the Morroks were an ailing people, but I, Jamie, was the remedy.
Lernuc had never explained what exactly I was going to do after I took the serum and became a Morrok. He always just told me that I was special, that I could make a difference, that I was one of the Eight whom the Morroks fear, whatever that meant. Xerxes was supposed to be one of the Eight too, but Lernuc treated him only marginally better than the rest of the children at the camp.
The silence had lingered for so long that I forgot what Lernuc had said to me.
“Are you afraid of the pain of the transformation?” Lernuc prompted. “Nothing of importance is ever accomplished without some sacrifice, my dear.”
As if that would be any comfort when I was writhing on the floor feeling like my bones were going to shoot out of my skin.
“I just don’t want to go dumb like the rest of them,” I said.
“Go dumb?”
“Yes—you know, I want to be able to string a sentence together and think about something other than how to spread my misery to pathetic Human children. I want to be like you.”
As soon as the last sentence came out of my mouth, I had to keep my face from twisting in disgust. All I had meant was that if I was going to be Morrok-sized, I wanted to be intelligent like Lernuc. But the gratified smile that stretched across Lernuc’s face made me realize he thought more of my comment, and as long as he was happy, I would keep my mouth shut.
“You won’t go dumb, my child,” he said. “As long as you remember who you are and as long as you ignore your body—this tool that we use to carry out our purposes—you will be as remarkable and intelligent as you are now.”
“What do you mean by remember who I am?”
Lernuc’s eyes widened, as if he were surprised I had to ask. “One of the Eight, dear one. You and Xerxes will take this side of the mountain from Orestes, and after that, Acules and his brood will be no trouble for you.”
The Eight. It always came back to that. Acules and his three children. Orestes and his children—Xerxes and I. And then the eighth one who we either didn’t know about or didn’t exist yet. Lernuc always said we would decide the fate of this war, but I never understood why Lernuc himself wasn’t included in the number—why all the responsibility fell back on Xerxes and me when we weren’t even Morroks yet.
“This is also why I want you to lead my new project,” Lernuc continued. “After your serum tournament, I have work I must do far away from here, so I need someone I can trust while I’m gone.”
“What’s the project?”
“Recruiting more Serenial,” he replied. “I am close to perfecting the formula that created Alitis, but I captured him years ago, before the alliance between Humans and Serenial had cemented. Getting to the Serenial will be much more difficult now. Thus I need one of the Eight—rather, two of the Eight, as long as Xerxes isn’t too foolish—to accomplish this task.”
So I would be recruiting children immediately after taking the serum. My stomach churned. This had always been Cassandra’s job.
“Wouldn’t Alitis and Cassandra be better for that project?” I hedged. “You know, with him being Serenial and her being Human?”
“You may use them if you wish, but it is time you start being the commander you were born to be.” He let this last statement hang in the air for a moment before he said, “Now go. You have another task at hand.”
“Thank you, sir.” I hopped off my chair and hurried to the tent flaps.
“And Jamie,” he called. I turned to see that the smile was gone from his face. “Some strange things may be happening at Settlement Ten—things that may tempt you to linger longer than your job requires. But remember that if for any reason you do not return, I will never stop looking for you. It doesn’t matter how old you are or what form you assume; I will always bring you back, whatever the cost to you or to myself.”
I jerked my head once and left the tent. Lernuc had said things like that to me since I was small, and before today, such promises had made me feel good—like Lernuc loved me (if Lernuc loved at all) because he was ready to do anything to protect me and keep me near. But today—maybe it was because I should have been becoming a Morrok, maybe because the whole forest was in arms over whomever Cassandra had kidnapped, or maybe simply because of the low purr in his voice—today, his words sounded like a threat.