Vallen: The Marking (Vallen series #1)

Chapter 7

I did not sleep very well that night. I was constantly haunted knowing that I would have to endure a lot more shocked reactions tomorrow. When I did finally sleep I dreamed of a faceless man with pitch-black hair that kept asking me who my parents were. When I told him I didn't know he would yell and curse and ask it again and again. I woke up feeling like an absolute zombie, with the bags under my eyes to show for it.

The student's private rooms were small. There was a bed on each side with a wardrobe beside it and a nightstand separating the two. Most students had to share a room, but I got lucky. There was an uneven number, and I was the very last. I had the room all to myself.

I was happy about this. Right until Ms Penn, one of the caretakers that showed me to my room the night before told me that because of the high student death rate the kids often prefer to sleep in rooms together. The moment a girl in my year died I would offer to let her friend sleep in a room with me. No one should be alone after something like that. 

Ms Penn was a nice old lady who always smelled like she had just smoked a cigarette. She also loved talking. In fact, she only left after twenty minutes of chit-chatting. Even after I told her that my parents were humans she kept on talking with the same enthusiasm saying that all Vallens are born as a human before their marking.

There was an air of excitement in the, much fuller, cafeteria in the morning. Today was the start of the new school year. Teachers, who were all dressed in black, were going from table to table handing out the schedules to the students. Our table must have been the easiest for them. All of the people with white skirts and blazers sat together, even though most of the kids already had a family member at school.

I didn't really understand the uniforms that well. I had a white one because I was a first-year. Mrs Borm had told me that I would be here for six years, but there were ten colours. I wanted to ask someone, but I was afraid of letting everyone know how little of the Vallen world I knew. Besides, from all the questions I still had in my head the one about the school uniform was still ranked pretty low on the list.

I had been thinking about a way to find out about who my parents were. I figured that maybe the Vallens also keep birth records like humans do, so that I could find mine. There were two things I needed to know first: Where did my parents live when they adopted me and did I come with the name Eira, or did they give it to me? 

I figured that both questions could be easily answered by my parents. Mrs Borm had told me that there was a phone here in the school, so all I need to do if find out where it is.

Everyone ate their breakfast and happily chatted with each other. I talked mostly to Alaric. Who told me he had two older brothers here at school: Eldon and Darius. This year would be Darius' last year, while Eldon was starting his third. He even pointed them out to me. 

Both boys were even bigger than Alaric was. Eldon, who was standing much closer to our table than his older brother, had light brown hair, but the same messiness that Alaric had. All three of the boys looked nearly identical, but Alaric still had some softer features in his face, clearly making him the youngest one.

Our first-class ever was history. Like a school of fish, our class moved through the school together. While everywhere around us the uniform colours mixed we all stuck together as we walked, that was until we reached a cross-section where half the group realized they had a different class. They had Biology on the third floor, while we went to look for the History classroom.

The castle was huge, that much was clear. Even Alaric, who had heard all about the school from his brothers, got lost. Thankfully there were plenty of us, each time one of us got confused, the next one would just step in with the information they had received from a sibling or in one instance from a student that passed us.