Chapter 5
The dark tunnel we wandered through had an arched stone ceiling that seemed as high as the tower room I now shared with Vander.
LOA flags hung on the walls every twenty steps or so.
Placed in the small inlets were ornate silver candelabras with five lit black wax candles.
The sound of voices at the other end echoed around us, then we turned a corner and stepped into a huge open room.
I paused, taking in the grandeur of it; the ceiling’s sweeping arches and the gothic black chandeliers hanging from wood beams were unlike anything I’d seen before.
The stained-glass windows on both sides of the room let in enough light that there was no need for candles at this time of day.
The sound of chatter coming from the apprentices and trainers echoed off the peaked roof.
Though indoors, it smelled of the woods, of cedar and pine.
It reminded me of home, though it looked alien.
Since I’d set foot inside the walls of Nighthaven, I felt like I’d stepped through a portal into a different world.
At the head of the room was a raised dais with a long wood table. It had to be for leadership. I wondered if the royal family was permitted here, if no one outside of LOA was supposed to know where it was.
Behind that was a life-sized bronze statue of a man in assassin’s gear standing with a sword in hand, its tip pointed to the ground.
And beside him, a bronze woman crouched with one leg out to the side like she might sweep the legs of her opponent while reaching back to grip the handle of her blade.
“The founders of the League of Assassins,” Vander said, noticing my stare. “Emeriss and Aylia. Brother and sister.”
“How long ago was LOA founded?”
“One hundred and ninety-eight years.”
“Were they among the first ducai?”
“We can trace the first writings of vampires to two hundred and fifty-one years ago. Legend has it they came from across the Thundering Sea on the backs of great winged beasts—dragons. A generation later, humans with extraordinary abilities started to be born. Some say the first ducai were the offspring of vampires and human women and continued on through the bloodlines, while others—”
“How could that even be possible? Vampires only feed and kill.” The very idea of it made me want to wretch.
“It’s true, most of them are ruled by bloodlust, especially the vampires you have encountered, but not all of them are wildlings—the feral ones you see in the woods. There are vampires who are calculated, cunning, and live more lavishly than we do.”
My brows pinched together, trying to even imagine that.
In all my life, the ones I’d seen and heard acted like wild beasts only out for the hunt, for blood.
Yet there were vampires who lived more lavishly than those in Nighthaven?
I had vague memories of Grandma Thora telling me tales of a vampire city with a sparkling black castle, but to bed human women without killing them?
The impossibility of it hurt my head. “So, what do others say?”
“Others, which is what we are taught in the academy, that the ducai are born with a touch of the gods to save humanity from the vampires.”
That was the story my grandmother told. But the first one seemed more plausible given that ducai had many of the vampires’ traits, without the bloodlust or turning to stone in sunlight.
I’d never given much thought to the gods, though my mother had taught me of the goddess of all life over animals, humans, and ducai alike, and the god of nature for trees and rivers and mountains.
As far as I knew, they were just old tales to explain why things were the way they were, but I had hope at times.
I’d prayed for someone to save my grandmother.
.. No one came. “Was it also the gods who sent the vampires then?” Vander tilted his chin down.
His inquisitive stare made me smile. “What?”
“There are predators and there are prey. That is the way, whether or not the gods decreed it so. And right now, we are in a war to see who’s the apex predator and who will destroy the other.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice if they could just stay in their land and we stay in ours,” I muttered.
“Not when we are their source of food, and not when it’s human and ducai nature to secure our survival, and we do that by killing anything that could threaten that. It’s us or them. And if it’s them, they will kill the ducai and enslave the humans.”
I’d never thought about it that way. Maybe because I’d always seen myself as prey, and not an apex predator. Like my childhood rabbit, Edwyn, I’d found bloodied and torn apart by some vicious animal. It had broken my heart to bury him.
He waved for me to follow him. I finally looked at the apprentices sitting on stools with their trainer next to them. Falcon had a needle in hand and a black ink bottle on a small side table next to her.
“Initiation is a tattoo?” I stilled beside Celine and Falcon. I didn’t want something ugly permanently branded on my body.
Vander nodded toward the empty seat next to Celine. “LOA—your initiation tattoo. We all have one. Sit.” Taking my lip between my teeth, I sat and started bouncing my leg.
“It doesn’t hurt that bad, Aesira,” Celine explained.
“If you can take a knee to the face and get back up, you can handle this. You need to plan retaliation for that, by the way. He beat the shit out of you in front of everyone.” She glanced over her shoulder, and I followed her gaze to Morrow, who was currently walking around shirtless and flexing.
Somehow, he had a gaggle of admirers. Not everyone was seated for a tattoo yet.
Some were gathered in groups waiting for their turn.
“And he’d do it again if he had the chance,” I said quietly. “I don’t want to retaliate, and I don’t know how to fight like all of you.”
“Yet.” Vander sat on the stool in front of me and dragged the table with the tools closer to him.
It wasn’t the pain I worried about. I hadn’t even had a full day to acclimate to my new life, and I was already getting tattooed.
You are LOA until you die. There really was no going back home, no matter what Kace or his father did.
Not after I was tattooed as one of them.
I scooted forward to slide off my seat, and Vander pressed a hand to my chest, halting me.
Maybe it was the eldest daughter in me, but I quelled the urge to smack his hand away and tell him off.
“Everyone gets the tattoo, you aren’t the exception.”
“I thought that I should get it after I pass training, you know? After I become an assassin and not an apprentice. What if I fail? I might not be cut out for this.”
“You will pass, failure is not an option. It doesn’t matter if it takes you a year or five, you’ll graduate to assassin level one.
The only way out of the league now that you have been chosen is death.
Even when you are old and retired, which will be a long way off, as ducai live twice as long as humans, you are still one of us. You don’t want to die, do you?”
What kind of stupid question was that? No one wanted to die. “If I had a death wish, all I would have had to do was step out my door at night and wait for the vampires to get their supper.”
“It was a rhetorical question, Aesira. I know you don’t want to die.” He finally dropped his hand from my chest and tapped my left bicep.
“And mine was a rhetorical response.”
Falcon glanced at us, and Celine was quietly laughing, but Vander wasn’t as amused as they were. He shook his head and picked up the needle.
This was it then. My heart pounded and it wasn’t because that needle looked sharp. “You’ve done this before, right?”
“Nope. First time,” he deadpanned. “Everyone gets it in the same spot. It’s considered part of the uniform.”
“First time? And I’m your test dummy?”
Falcon tucked her short hair behind her ear and snickered. “He’s done it many times. Don’t worry, there is a stencil we follow so everyone’s LOA looks the same.”
I tugged off my long-sleeved black top, leaving me in a snug camisole. I was stuck in this until I died so what did a tattoo matter? I thought back on Vander’s and decided it was simple and appealing enough not to complain.
Vander dipped gauze into a clear liquid, then rubbed it across my skin a few inches down from my shoulder joint on the outside of my arm. It smelled like alcohol. Once the LOA was stenciled in with a rich black paste that felt a little sticky, he wrapped his cool hand around my elbow. “Hold still.”
It didn’t hurt like I thought. It was more irritating than anything. “So how long have you been in LOA?”
“Since I was nineteen.” He lifted his bright blue eyes with a bit of playfulness.
“Obviously.” I smirked.
“I’m twenty-six. Do the math... you do know basic math? Or do I need to teach you?”
That stung. Angry heat crept into my cheeks.
“You really think those of us outside the wall are just a bunch of incompetent fools, don’t you?
” I found my jaw started to ache with how hard I was clenching my teeth.
Everything my father had ever said about these people and what they thought of us was true.
He paused only a moment but didn’t take his eyes off his work. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
We didn’t speak again after that. I stared ahead, letting a stranger mark me with permanent ink, wishing that I could see my siblings.
I’d tell them that father was right all along.
That we didn’t belong here. That they thought of us as nothing but cattle left out for the vampires to eat.
But I was not cattle, and I would have to prove it.