Hereditary Read Online Free Page B

from under Cale’s arm, before they could keep talking about me as though I didn’t possess the ability to speak for myself.
    “ She was just leaving,” I said softly, turning on my heel and quickly heading back to the shade of the nearest building.
    When I felt the hand on my shoulder a few moments later, I wasn’t as surprised as I had been the first time.
    “Hey, sorry about them, they aren’t all that friendly to most people anyway, let alone… well…”
    I rolled my eyes at Cale, and he fell into step beside me.
    “The notorious student-spawn of the most feared tainted creatures in our world?” I supplied.
    “Right,” his mouth quirked up a bit at the side. “I knew you had some charm hidden away in there somewhere.”
    “So who were those people?” I asked, as I found a new seat just outside one of the doors to what looked like a giant greenhouse.
    He sat next to me and pulled a bundle out of the pack slung over his shoulder. I eyed it enviously; I’d have to get one of those to carry all my books, and my lunch…
    “Dammit, I forgot,” I accidentally said aloud, as he unwrapped a baguette. Smiling a little at the direction of my gaze, he broke his sandwich in half and handed over the second half to me, which I accepted after only a moment’s hesitation and a mumbled thanks.
    “Well,” he said, leaning back against the wall, “those are the spoilt-rich spawn of the most important people in the kingdom, which—essentially—makes them the most important people here as well.”
    I thought about Cale’s own father, who was the commander of the King’s Guard, which was a position that constantly warred with my father’s own position as Commander of the Black Guard.
    “Do you usually sit with them?” I asked, when what I really meant was aren’t you one of them .
    “Usually, yes.”
    “Won’t they be angry at you, for… you know…”
    He laughed. “They don’t own me… although, technically, one day Hazen will, and even Rose can order me about. They generally don’t abuse that power though, not at the Academy anyway.”
    It took longer than it should have for me to process what he had just said, and then to recall up what I knew of the royal family.
    “The Prince and Princess…” I turned my eyes back to the bench beneath the cherry tree, where they had all gathered now, occasionally casting furtive glances to where Cale and I sat.
    All except for the dark-haired boy, who still exuded boredom.
    “Yes, Rose is the little girl with dark hair, she’s your age I think, nearing her last year here. Hazen is the one who looks like Rose, he’s my age, they kept us back for commissioned training because of our powers… and I suppose because of our families too. We grew up together inside the castle, he really isn’t so bad as he seems.”
    I squinted at the girl with dark hair, making sure that the faint shimmering of her skin which labeled her as a fae wasn’t just a trick of the sunlight that had initially fooled me, but once I was sure, I drew back, confused.
    “But Rose is fae, and Hazen isn’t?”
    Cale turned to me with raised brows. “The queen is a fae; you didn’t know that?”
    I blushed, and busied myself with my baguette half until I could think of a suitable answer without lying.
    “I didn’t really grow up around here, we only moved after my mother died a few years ago, so that I could start training. The tutors refused to travel far from the kingdom when they knew who they were going to be working with.”
    “So are they starting you in beginner classes then?”
    “I don’t think so,” I thought back to my last lesson, “they really should have, though. I guess they would only want me here for as short a time as possible.”
    Cale made a face, and rolled up his sandwich wrapping into a ball, throwing it back into his bag.
    “People can be so narrow-minded.”
    I thought that was as good a time as any to bring up the question I had been burning to ask.
    “How