Pennyroyal Academy Read Online Free Page A

adjusting a strap on his saddle, he swung back atop the horse and left her alone on the cobblestones. Alone in a crowd of hundreds.
    â€œRight. I’m off to knights’ enlistment.”
    â€œWait!” she said. “What do I do?”
    He pointed into the shade beneath the marquee, beyond all the colorful dresses, to several long wooden tables. “You march straight over there and enlist. You’ve as much right to be here as anyone.”
    She looked up at him with eyes full of fear.
Take me home! I don’t want to be here anymore!
she thought. But no words came.
    â€œâ€˜Bravely ventured is half won,’ as my father likes to say. The only way to find the girl on your parchment is through that lot.” He nodded to the crowd, not at all surprised by the attention coming his way. “Off,” he said, rearing the horse onto its hind legs with a dramatic whinny. Then he rode away across the courtyard, leaving a ripple of awed gasps in his wake.

B
RAVELY VENTURED
is half won.
    As she stepped forward, her head dizzy and her legs weak and trembling, Remington’s words rang hollow. Still, the girl’s bare feet moved ahead, one after the other, into the reluctantly parting crowd.
    â€œIs she wearing spiderwebs?”
    These girls were draped in linen and lace, silk and tulle. Adorned with straps and belts, crests and symbols of faraway families in faraway lands. Their hair was brushed and plaited and curled, none of it littered with sticks and leaves. They had smooth skin of every shade, clear of the dried mud that covered her body.
    â€œWhat do you expect when you open enlistment to girls who aren’t princesses of the blood?”
    As she shuffled through the marquee, the girl realized something else that separated her from the rest. Something much more painful.
They’ve all got their parents with them.
    â€œHow on earth does
she
know Remington?”
    She could feel the hot sting of tears forming in her eyes, but refused to let them fall.
Just get to the table . . .
    â€œHey!
Hey!
Over here!”
    A girl with curled hair the color of sunset motioned her to one of the queues leading to the enlistment tables. She wore a dark red riding hood over a black cloak, and the kindness of her smile was the most welcome sight the girl had seen since she’d left home.
    â€œHonestly, you’d think we were witches enlisting instead of lowborn girls,” she said. “You all right?”
    The girl nodded. Now that she had an ally, the others seemed to lose interest in her, and the excitement of enlistment day returned. But as she chanced a look around, something else became clear. The girls on this side of the marquee weren’t wearing silks and furs like the rest; theirs were handmade clothes, patched and repaired and altogether less lustrous. These were the lowborn girls.
    â€œNext!” shouted a rotund old woman sitting behind a stack of parchments, and the queue inched forward.
    â€œI mean no offense, but how is it that you came to ride with Remington?” said the red-haired girl with thinly disguised excitement. “He’s half the reason there are so many girls here, all pining to be his one true love—”
    â€œLeave her be, Magdalena, she’s covered in webs, for goodness’ sake,” said a scowling bald man picking his nose behind them. His fingernails were black and he seemed in a great hurry to be anywhere else.
    â€œMy father doesn’t understand why people like to gossip about royal families, but I can’t help it. I find them
fascinating.
Go on, then, you were saying how you know Remington?”
    The girl was about to answer, until the witch and the cottage and the candy-making machine flashed into her mind. “I don’t know, really. I only met him yesterday—”
    â€œNext!”
    â€œAll my friends were jealous when they heard I’d be in his year,” said Magdalena. “He comes