Damn the first of the month. And to hell with you, change. Andrea marched down the long hallway, her feet landing heavily with each step. Nothing's ever going to change.

She passed corridor after corridor in the maze of halls. The house was busier than ever; everything was the same.

Thirty days of hope, gone. Nothing had changed after all. Nothing was ever going to change or turn around and head in a different direction. No, she was on a set course, and Marian was at the wheel, driving her to hell with a smug grin on that thin face the entire time.

Andrea was so focused on the morning that when she turned the corner, she bumped straight into a wall. Something was strange about the surface—though it was solid, to say the least. When she steadied herself, she realized that instead of stone, she was in fact touching a man's chest. Andrea took a step back. The first thing she saw was a pair of curious brown eyes and full red lips. Her eyebrows rose when she got a view of the man's bald head. It appeared shaved clean, and Andrea tried not to stare.

"Pardon," Andrea said, bowing low.

Although their gazes met, and they were almost eye level, the stranger gave no response.

Silent, the man stepped past her, a diskette in hand, and he peered down one hallway and then another. Finally, he made his choice, and Andrea watched that broad, muscle-bound body until the servant was out of sight.

The servant had been quiet, keeping his head down, but the fact that he hadn't greeted Andrea, a member of the household, was staggering. My title. The would-be head of the household who even servants didn't care to acknowledge.... That thought left her with a pit in her stomach.

The gong prompting the new recruits to assemble in the courtyard sounded, and Andrea hurried to the area in question. Unlike the rest of the house which had numerous halls, the courtyard itself was just an open space; nearly all hallways emptied right into it. Andrea hurried along past pillar after pillar. She arrived before the gong had stopped.

Thirty men, lined up in rows of five, stood at attention. Close by, a group of young students fidgeted, pushing and shoving each other to a chorus of shushes by their chaperones.

Andrea hesitated to step into the courtyard. She half expected it to be a joke, that she'd join the new hires, but when she looked down at the diskette Marian had thrown at her earlier, she confirmed it.

Never had she felt so humiliated. This was a new low for her mother. There was no buffer now that her grandfather was gone, so she joined the line at the far back, trying to blend. The sight of the men in plain black Colony-issued clothes made her frown at her own picture-perfect high-priced appearance.

I should have gone to change first, or at least muss my hair a little, she lamented.

When the men in the front row sat, followed by the men in the second row, then the third and fourth, she realized that they were all sitting on stones that varied in height. Those stones had risen from the ground out of nowhere, and her heart skipped a beat because that could mean only one thing.

"There's an E here."

She said it to herself, but a voice in front of the crowd answered. "Yes, there is. There are three, actually."

"Kobal." As always, Andrea's heart melted at the sight of Kobal. For a brief moment she wondered if the source of her infatuation with E's had stemmed from this particular E alone. Kobal was one of, if not the most, well-dressed, well-educated, humble, and kind Elementals in the Colony. Andrea loved Kobal's majestic aura, his perfectly toned physique; she even loved the man's wine-red hair, regardless of the fact that it was a discoloration due to the E's abilities. Today it hung freely, reaching his mid-back. Kobal was perfect, simply perfect. Andrea focused on the one thing she loved the most about Kobal, the man's piercing, deep blue eyes. Even with the distance between them, those eyes made Andrea's heart skip a beat.

He's so damn perfect.

A loud belch and a yawn broke Andrea's daydream, and a gruff voice called out, "Gaw-ro hell, can we just get on with it? If I knew it would be this stuffy, I would have just taken some jail time."

The man who had spoken was similar to Kobal in build but seemed like an imposed image rather than a carbon copy. He walked up to stand beside Kobal, his scowling face making him seem ten feet tall even though he surpassed Kobal in height by a few inches. Andrea took all that in and focused on one important thing: the man had green hair.

A green-haired E? Andrea gaped, shocked. It wasn't a ruse. The resumes were real. Oh shit, Mother is actually serious. Andrea'd thought the entire thing was just a very well-orchestrated plan to humiliate and threaten her; Marian's preferred method of keeping Andrea in line.

Kobal leaned closer to the green-haired E, and whispered, "Be nice, Queenie, will ya?"

Queen. Andrea nodded. Not on the list, my ass.

Andrea figured that maybe being a man with a name like Queen was why the E was notorious for running around with a constant chip on his shoulder. Assuming the reports were right, she knew Queen was often too lazy to cause trouble unprovoked.

Andrea looked around for the remaining E. He said three. Where's the other one?

Kobal took the floor once more. "As an official of the Assembly, it is my duty to inform you that you will be working with two E's for this school term. Both are unmeasured in power level, and both are guarded and mentored by Met. They won't read your mind, and they won't use more of their abilities than required. Please follow the typical protocols with these E's, just as you would any other. Because they are natural-born E's, we ask that you be considerate. But please rest at ease that they are harmless."

Queen smiled, his grin wicked and wide. "Perfectly harmless."

Andrea still searched the crowd for the third E, but she tried to listen.

Kobal continued, "Let me emphasize just in case you are unaware of E's—"

"Yeah, like if you live under a gaw-ro rock."

Several men chuckled at Queen's comment but quieted when Kobal didn't seem amused by the joke. Kobal went on as if he hadn't been interrupted. "If you are not a Lowlander or a Colony Dweller—if you come from Topside, perhaps—let me give you a warm welcome to the Colony. For your own safety, if you live down here, remember rule number one: don't cross the Colony. Rule number two: do not touch E's—not their skin, not their hair. Rule number three: do not touch E's."

When Queen leaned in close and whispered something, Kobal wrinkled his brow. "But I just said that. Doesn't that fall under the same 'don't touch' umbrella?"

Queen gave Kobal an incredulous look and turned to the crowd. "Yeah, right. Put it this way, deadbeats. If you want to go home with every member intact, you'll keep your hands to yourselves. All right?"

The gears in Andrea's head turned as she analyzed those words. "Member? What idiot would risk trying to sleep with an E?"

She'd grumbled it to herself, but Queen raised an eyebrow at her and shook his head. "You'd be surprised."

The two E's stepped back, allowing someone else to take the floor.

The next voice jarred Andrea from her thoughts, and she focused on the young man at the front of the crowd. The voice was young, the face was young, hell, his hand gestures were tentative; he was unsure of himself. Despite outward appearances, however, Andrea saw her father. The patriarch of her family appeared to be not much older than Andrea. He had a similar face but a better build and a quiet and meek disposition.

Andrea hadn't seen her father in months. It should have come as no surprise that her mother didn't tell her that the man was back in their section of the Colony, but it still hurt to find out like this.

So Johann Andreas the Second, a man with little to no business knowledge, the man her grandfather had snubbed by selecting Andrea for the title instead, would be in control of things this term? The thought made Andrea shudder. And to make matters worse, her brother, Dominic, was by her father's side, a sure sign that they were both being trained to take over the family business.

How long has she been planning this? Andrea thought. She even has them ready to take over on the very first day.

The meeting ended, and Andrea hurried over to her father. The man turned to her before Andrea could call out. His blue eyes looked troubled, and they studied Andrea, appraising her. When her father turned away from her without a single word, Andrea's eagerness for a greeting faded.

Andrea wanted to shout out, something, but the fact that Marian's reach had extended all the way to having her own father keep clear of her made her give up.

It's done then. Mother, you're actually serious about trying to take the only silver lining I have in this pile of impmist you've given me called a life. She felt numb. One advantage came and she welcomed it. Fine then, Father can look after Dom instead. I'm through running after him like a detached conscience.

When a shorter man came around giving out diskettes, Andrea made a trade, handing over the one from Marian as she took one from the man. She tapped on the black screen and scrolled through the names until she found her own.

She sighed with relief.

"The office." She nodded, appreciative of her father's consideration of her in this regard at least. "Not cooking or cleaning, or even training the students." She glanced back to the path her father had taken and felt a slight hint of hope. "Guess it could be worse."

She called up the time on the diskette; nine o'clock. The entrance of the office where she'd been scheduled to work drew her focus. It was a good-sized room, big enough to hold at least fifty people. It had no windows to enable one to see out into the courtyard. The wide entrance reached all the way to the ceiling. The door, the only way in and out through the courtyard, was seldom closed. She peered inside to the eighteen desks arranged in rows of three. Chairs lined the walls and where occupied by the older men in charge.

In the center of the room a commotion was brewing. Marian yelled and scolded the tall bald man Andrea had bumped into earlier. The scene caught everyone's attention. Andrea was especially interested because she was accustomed to her mother's venom being channeled only at her.

The worker waited, his calm expression suggesting that he was not at all affected by Marian's bitter cursing. When Andrea's mother tired, her white face red as she huffed and puffed, the tall man raised a data diskette and pointed to it.

Andrea couldn't understand what was said; she couldn't even place the language, and neither could the flustered matriarch.

After a few minutes further of failing to communicate, Andrea's mother marched toward the door in a huff. Andrea was quick to step back to allow her to leave before they perhaps collided. As soon as Marian was gone, Queen hurried into the room.

"You all right?" Queen took the bald man by the arm and led him out into the courtyard. The E's bare skin touched the worker.

Andrea, knowing that E's could make skin-to-skin contact freely with one another, nodded in satisfaction. "The third E."

Andrea thought to snoop to make sure, but she didn't have much time to make herself presentable for Victor. She needed to make one good luck stop before that appointment.