Free The Choosing (The Arcadia Trilogy Book 1) by Rachel Hanna, Bella James Page A

holding the other person still against a current long enough to exchange information. Introductions stopped midsentence when a booming voice told them all to sit, finish their food, and enjoy the luxury of the longer meal periods they'd have today, because tomorrow work would begin in earnest.
    The two from Oceanus, tall Kara with her light brown hair and serious straight brows and Viola, medium height but standout with bright carrot-red hair, sank back in their seats, mouthing at Livy and Julia – "Does anyone know what's going on?"
    Olivia shook her head, and fell to finishing her breakfast even as Julia coaxed a sullen dark haired youth named Damien into their circle. After all the weeks on the road and all the time for silence in her own head as she'd let other people have conversations around her and, staying true to herself as her grandfather had asked, she'd tried to remember anything at all that sounded like what was happening. Now, in the midst of first morning confusion and all the conversations around her, she remembered two small things.
    She remembered her parents talking at dinner about the new tax, the collection of which was coming up, and that they'd said something about sixteen. That made sense now. A little too late to help.
    And the other thing, something Grandfather had told her maybe a year ago, his usually jovial voice hoarse and weak with sickness. Livy had feared they were going to lose him then, but the old man had pulled through and lived to tell her more tales, some true and some so invented even she laughed long before he admitted they were a farce.
    What he'd told her that day was sacrilege and hearsay, slander and treason, all rolled up into one story but she'd been old enough to know the value of discretion, and had always loved him deeply enough to keep any secrets.
    They'd been sitting in the sun, she remembered, and the scent of honeysuckle colored the day.
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    " T here's an old myth from Before Times, of a king who ruled a kingdom beset by a wild beast. It roamed the catacombs under his palace, and took servants, which the king didn't care about, and nobles, which he did. It had the head of a bull with razor sharp horns and the body of a man, a huge, strong, blue man."
    She'd laughed at blue and started making a daisy chain as she listened. In her mind she named the parts of the flower and the medicinal purposes her mother had taught her, and so the story was fragmented, but she remembered he'd said the king would take an even number of boys and girls from neighboring kingdoms and set them loose in the maze beneath the palace, sport for the creature to kill, to satisfy its blood lust and slake its hunger.
    "And the children?" she'd asked when his voice had faltered and run down.
    "If they survived, they would inherit his kingdom."
    She'd been a wise child. Looking up from the flower, she'd said, "But none ever did."
    Her grandfather had repeated it. "But none ever did."
    And then, in hushed tones, fast and with a feeling of apprehension, he told her about the Culling, about the times the Centurions came into villages, sent by the Plutarch himself with orders to bring every sixteen-year-old youth in the commonwealth, taking them to the domed city of Arcadia.
    She'd stopped fiddling with the flower then, her heart beating unaccountably quicker. They'd passed from myth to history and near history at that. She'd felt afraid.
    "Why? Why do they take them?"
    And in a rush, he'd told her. Once a generation, so far apart that people forgot or died without telling their descendants, the Plutarch and his government, sent for those children on the brink of adulthood and an entire year's worth of children went away. They learned, he told her, and for some life didn't turn out so poorly. They learned arts and government, and for those things were all right. Others were drafted into the service of the land by way of the ranks of Centurion and though life was bleak and dark for them, still they were