Cassie barely remembered Erudite. Didn’t want to. She did remember the feel of pages turning under her fingers in a room smelling of paper and ink; pale golden afternoon light peaking through curtains woven of azure, highlighting the pages and making the words glow like a heavenly aura, sinking into a myriad of coppers and gold and finally deep violets and deep, dark blues and mysterious purples with her only noticing when the black lettering turned into ebony blurs on a gray page, the magic of the letters being seared into her brain dying with the light.
But now those memories were replaced with those of her first tattoo; the sting of the needle and the smell of ink and blood and skin and metal and sweat; the recoil of the gun in her hands, the bang it made like a bong ringing through the initiation gun training room. The feeling of sweat dripping down her brow.
Cassie was happy in Dauntless. She had never once regretted her choice, never looked back on that brief moment of hesitation when she stared down at the bowl of water glistening and sparkling with the promise of knowledge, of Erudite before the sound of her blood sizzling on those lit coals echoed through the Choosing Ceremony room. She saw it in her mother’s eyes, the tears that shone like the water of Erudite and with the dancing flames of Cassie’s new faction, in her father’s frown and the groves of age’s wrinkled marks deepening. She saw it in the way her sister turned away to hide a sob. The way her brother held a hand to his mouth to hide his grin.
And now Cassie stood, facing the results that would change her life.
Cassie had never cheered so loud, so joyously, in her life, and, for the first time, every doubt in her mind about Dauntless fled, none daring to stay and darken her flames, as Damon swept her into a kiss and the small, eager Erudite girl was burned away by his Dauntless fire and from the ashes transformed into the daring, bold Dauntless girl she was made to be as she kissed him back and their flames merged into one, strong pyre.
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