22. Addie
ADDIE
GWENNO MORGAN – LLOERGAN
The rest of the week passed in bouts of bored silence, drinking games, and borderline stalking of Sebastos Varco.
Somehow, he was never alone. Never roaming empty, darkened hallways by himself.
Never wandering the woods after that red-cap incident, either.
He hadn’t returned to the dorm after Fleur…
well. In any case, I didn’t know where he was sleeping but it wasn’t within arm’s reach—and I had all but run out of days to reach him.
This morning we had all woken up to Beckett’s booming voice—thankfully sans one ice bucket—informing us that today was a Very Big Day.
“It’s Graduation Day, recruits!” His gaze wandered across the room, taking our bedraggled states into consideration and apparently finding us on-the-whole unimpressive.
“Shower. Put clean clothes on. The Commander and your assignments await. You have one hour to make yourselves at least look sober—after that, you’re on your own, kids.
“Assignments wait for no one. There will be no time for celebration, though by the looks of you, you didn’t waste this last week in sobriety.
Once everyone has been allocated their new rank, you’ll receive your rank IDs and a folder, a phone, a set of keys, and access to the armoury as an Assigned Assassin. ”
His jade green eyes landed on me before speaking the final two words of his less-than-enthusing speech—a flicker of something crossing his face before it returned to that familiar, flinty hardness.
“Good luck.”
I didn’t bother to interpret it. I didn’t want to understand Hunter Beckett. In just a few short hours, I’d be Assigned and on the road to wherever the Academy bade me go. I was giddy at the prospect of escape—even if me living meant someone else had to die.
Because that would be my role from here on out: assassin. Murderess. She who taketh the lives-eth.
I was little more than a gun for hire. Trained to take people out, not for dinner, but in the hundreds of ways I’d perfected in the last eighteen long months.
Even bearing all that knowledge, I was still reluctant to get my hands dirty—I was still gunning for Eagle, and as my eyes drifted over what remained of our cohort as they stumbled into relatively clean clothing, I knew I was a shoo-in.
None of them could shoot as accurately, from as far out as I could. None of them had put in the hours required to become a master at it like I had.
I allowed myself a small smile as I sat on the edge of Fleur’s bunk for the last time.
I laced these boring, uncomfortable boots for the last time, and wore this cheap cotton for the last time.
I’d had my eyes on a pair of Doc Martens the week I was captured, though was snatched before I could acquire them.
Who knew how fast the world of reliable footwear had travelled in this time?
I certainly didn’t, and I was excited to find out.
But even more than that, I was borderline crying at the thought of downloading a music app on my new phone and discovering all the new songs I’d missed stuck in this perpetual Victorian-era hellhole—albeit with guns and closed-network hacker laptops.
I wondered how many albums my favourite bands had managed to come out with, how many composers had recreated classical music for modern-day listeners, and how many new movie scores would become the soundtrack of my life.
My fingers tapped against my thigh, itching to get reacquainted with ebony and ivory keys. Instead, I plunged them through my hair, twisting them into a neat Dutch braid that would only remain neat for the next five minutes. After that, it was in fate’s hands.
“Are you as excited as I am to get outta here?” Eth grinned, his sharp, white teeth fully on show.
“Excited to get rid of you, sure.” I winked.
“Oh, you’re not getting rid of me that easy, Ads! We’ll be reunited before you know it.” He laughed, enveloping me in a gigantic bear hug and nuzzling the top of my head with his knuckles.
I guess the Fates didn’t want the neatness to last very long at all.
“Maybe we’ll end up in the same team or part of the same mission.
Maybe we’ll just be in the same cities at the same time and can hang out between jobs,” he dreamed aloud, eyes sparkling at the thought.
“Or maybe”—he smirked down at my scowling face—“you’ll change your mind and finally let me fill my full rotation of the recruit roster, if you know what I mean. ”
I shoved the laughing asshole backwards—distractedly noting how much more success I had in this instance than with Beckett—snickering as he stumbled and fell onto the bed.
“Woah, now!” He chuckled. “I didn’t mean now. There are people watching, Adelaide, my goodness.”
I scoffed, rolling my eyes, and wondered if this man was capable of refraining from innuendo for any given length of time—let alone however long it took to successfully undertake a job on the outside—simultaneously realising he wasn’t.
Searching instead for my sanity, I stared at the ceiling, muttering, “Didn’t stop you with Mercy.”
“That’s not jealousy I detect, now is it?” he purred.
My nose scrunched at the prospect. “Ugh, not even a little.”
Ethan chuckled again, seemingly content with making me uncomfortable for the sake of discomfort. “In Mercy’s case, she gets off on a little exhibitionism—”
“Ew, too much information.”
“—and I found I rather enjoy it, too.”
“Ethan,” I groaned.
“Especially when Ace got on board.”
My head snapped round to his. “You’re kidding.”
Eth responded by wagging his eyebrows. “Turns out I quite liked that, too.”
Mine rose almost to my hairline. “Huh.”
“Pick up your jaw, Adelaide. We’ve got a date with Commander Varco.” Ethan flashed that trademark grin and extended an elbow. “We owe it to Fleur to live, so let’s go find out what that looks like.”
I patted the pillow that still smelled faintly of her, homesick not for a place, but for a person.
Threading my arm through Eth’s, I shot him a small, grateful smile. “Let’s.”
The cathedral hall was filled with bodies.
More than I’d ever seen in one place at Blackwing Academy.
There were recruits lined up in neat rows, silent and lifeless; motionless, nameless witnesses in rows behind them; and the Commander presiding over all, his face impassive and unaffected by the many blank stares gazing back at him.
Ethan took his place among the T’s, and I moved into position beside him at the tail end of the S’s. Apprehension flooded me like wildfire. I felt sick. Dread burned the back of my throat as bile rose and lingered there, my skin prickling like I’d just stuck a finger in an electrical outlet.
Out of all the recruits alphabetically ahead of me, only Dakarai Abina gave me cause for concern in regards to the lone Eagle assignment on offer.
And as luck would have it, he would be the first to find out what his future held.
“It seems Graduation Day is upon us once again,” Commander Varco boomed from the podium upon the raised platform, giving pompous-pastor energy rather than the revered-reverend he was probably aiming for.
“As it was upon us last year and the year before that, and will come next year and the one after that, too.”
Yawn. So inspiring.
“Blackwing Academy is an ever-turning wheel and we will never stop rolling. Year after year we produce the world’s most elite assassins and influence all of the most world-changing decisions. We are catalysts of change, yes, but we are also advocates for stagnation.”
We—because it was we now; I was just as much a part of this wheel as any of the power-players in this room—were money-hungry zealots, sell-outs, and bigots.
We exchanged life for coin, no matter whose pocket it came from.
Hell, if the payout was worth it, we’d even take out the President of the United fucking States.
In fact, we’d probably done so once or twice already.
“You undoubtedly think of today as a celebration—an achievement—something to be proud of. A day of high emotions and gratitude that you’re finally done being a worm under somebody else’s boot.
Well, let me reassure you”—he stepped around the podium, toeing the edge of the platform—“you will always be somebody else’s worm. ”
I winced at the visual.
“You are not heroes. You are not patriots. You are not saviours of mankind. You are not even particularly remarkable.” He huffed a laugh. “All you have proven by standing before me today is that you are durable. Trainable. Malleable. And your survival depends on all three of these qualities.
“The sixteen of you who managed to make it here today—including my own son, Sebastos”—Seb straightened in my periphery as his father beamed at him—“are all that remains once we have removed all others who were not useful enough, durable enough, or smart enough to get here.”
I’d pay good money to turn around and witness Nadine’s silent wrath at that comment.
“In a moment, you will each receive your individual assignments. You will wonder how you can make a difference out there—make a name for yourself. But you would still be operating under the delusion that you mean something—that you can be the one to change the world.
“Let me rewrite that delusion for you, shall I? Making a name for yourself is the very opposite of what you should aspire to do. Your goal should not be to become the person everybody wants to hire. No. That would mean you’re actually very poor at your job, and it would be spitting in the face of all who’ve come before you; all who have trained you to be what you are today.
“The best assassins are the ones who never reach for notoriety. The ones who do what needs to be done without ever leaving a trace that they’ve done it at all.
“Take Beckett, for example.” Varco sneered at my almost-no-longer physical instructor. “Did any of you know that he was the one to take out that famous pop star? What was her name?” He clicked his fingers thrice, demanding an answer of Beckett—one he seemed reluctant to give.