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

between them.
    "I heard some talk today," Livy said. She swung her legs, lightly tapping the edge of the stage with her heels. "It's amazing how they don't pay attention if you're a student. It's like we're part of the furniture."
    Simon gave her a lazy grin. "Teachers?"
    Livy nodded, her dark auburn hair falling into her eyes. Carelessly she pushed it out again. "The math witch kept me to clean up the room. I should have been done for the day."
    "Let me guess. You fell asleep." But he wasn't smiling and he sounded concerned.
    "It's not because of what we're doing," Livy said hastily. "She's just boring ."
    "Yes, but you can tolerate boring better when you've slept all the way through the night."
    "Simon, I – "
    "No, we'll talk about it later. For now, tell me."
    So she did. About the teacher and the Centurion in the hallway, about their clear attraction for each other despite Livy's feeling that no one could like the woman.
    "They said there's talk in the villages that rebels are recruiting." Her heart pounded just at the thought. "That the Plutarch will crack down on them and take action if it's not stopped. And if they identify specific villages, they're going to make an example."
    She didn't want to tell Simon about her father and the bullets. She trusted Simon. That wasn't the problem. But she'd heard of what happened to traitors and anyone even accused of treason. No one was ever executed before it was proved they'd committed treason, but the tortures that came before that meant anyone accused was found guilty.
    Her heart shifted again. Every day she struggled to feel one way or the other about her situation. Sometimes she gloried in the freedoms of an incipient Blue – she was going to test into Alpha, and already her scores were so high, even in physical abilities now she that was working with Simon every night – that she loved being in Arcadia with the beautiful domed city, the trees reaching up to the glass and the flawless blue sky beyond. She loved the technology and the ease of living and she loved not grubbing in the earth for a subsistence living.
    Other days her beliefs were tested. She heard rumors of horrors being perpetrated in the villages or someone accused, tried and executed for treason and her blood ran cold. She didn't know whether to believe the worst of the society that held her or hope that the treatment she received, the food, shelter, clothing and only the occasional painful reprimand from a dried up shrew of a math teacher was really the government of the land.
    Today, tonight, her emotions were only fear for her family and the need to run.
    She couldn't run. Running was treason.
    "Did you hear anything?" she asked Simon, shivering with her thoughts.
    Simon, distracted, didn't put his arm around her like he usually did. "Just some talk about the Chosen One." He seemed ready to jump down from the stage and walk her back to her room. Maybe get some extra sleep tonight so she wouldn't fall asleep in her math class.
    But Livy had fastened onto his last words. "The Chosen One? What's that?"
    Simon looked surprised. "You don't know? It's a legend. I thought it was throughout all the world but maybe not." Now he did help her down, but then didn't make any move to the doors. "It's said there will be a youth, someone our age, who rises from the provinces and leads the – villagers – " He stumbled on his terms.
    "Serfs," Livy said comfortably. Simon's people had been ice fishers. They'd dabbled in the frozen oceans of Tundrus, not in the dirt.
    "Anyway, the Chosen One will guide the serfs to freedom, leading a rebellion. A revolution. Against the government. The Chosen One will topple Arcadia and lead the people to freedom."
    Livy shivered, thinking of holding the forms while her father poured the liquid metal to create the bullets he said were the essence of freedom.
    Simon had started for the door. Livy panicked, grabbing at him, caught his sleeve and demanded, "Who is it? Who is the Chosen