Throne of Ice and Blood (Flame and Thorns, #2)

by Marion Blackwood

as much as I hate Bane and Jessina with all my heart and soul, I do understand how they have managed to keep this system running for so long. They set it up perfectly. They isolated us completely. Not only did they physically trap us in a city that we can’t leave, they also controlled the entire flow of information. They killed all the adults and burned all the history books. And then they taught us what they wanted us to know. They controlled our birthrates so that our population wouldn’t outgrow the city, and so that our magical bloodlines would be stronger and provide more magic for them to drain. And they taught us that only having one child was how our biology worked so that we wouldn’t riot. All the doctors are dragon shifters, so there was no way for us to know. And all the teachers were shifters too. Those teachers taught us about our history and our culture and race in the way that they wanted us to learn it. Taught us that we are inherently evil. That we are backstabbing deceivers who broke a peace treaty and enslaved all the dragon shifters. That we need to spend the rest of our life atoning for that. And because we had no one else to ask about our history, what they told us became the truth. They kept us weak and distracted by not allowing us enough food. And drunk and distracted by allowing us as much alcohol as we wanted. Who is going to worry about whether our schoolteachers are lying to us when our stomachs are constantly aching with hunger and our minds ar...