Chapter 14 #3
Part of me did. I missed my family, my home, and Kace.
I wished to see him and ask him how the summer had been.
The fall festival would be soon. Summer was at an end.
I’d missed the Midsummer celebration where we’d sing and dance until darkness threatened.
Kace would have danced with me. We might even be engaged to be married if I hadn’t left.
They didn’t celebrate Midsummer here. At least, Vander hadn’t taken me to a party if there was one.
But what Vander said was only half true.
The thought of never seeing Vander again made me feel slightly ill.
Even if we hadn’t spent all this time together, I’d think about him.
Probably for the rest of my life, the beautiful, mysterious assassin who often entered my dreams. I was scared to even admit to myself the feelings he brought up in me. They were forbidden.
“I know that’s not an option.”
“But you would, if you could.”
I shrugged, not sure where he was going with this. It hadn’t mattered what I wanted from the moment the Avakki declared me ducai. “I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter, does it, so I don’t think about it.”
“If you do well enough here, you’ll be able to bring your family inside.”
I blinked at him. A whirl of anticipation and surprise overcame me. “How?”
“There will be opportunities, once you’re a fully fledged assassin.”
That changed everything. I was only here because I had to be.
I trained because they told me to. I wanted to beat Beast and these other highbrow ducai from inside the wall out of spite, but if I could save my family from a life of torment, of hiding and living scared of the dark, I’d do anything.
And Kace... Could Kace come here too? Would he?
Would my father? I worried my father would rather risk the dangers of Lothleton than live in Nighthaven because of his hatred for the ducai.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“You don’t like us, you don’t want to be here, and you think that ducai are wicked for leaving the humans outside to fend for themselves against the vampires.
You’re angry about the wealth here, and the way most ducai think they are superior to humans.
Even if you are one of us, you still think of yourself as one of them.
You need more of a reason to want to be here.
I can tell you that you’ll die out there if you don’t give this your all, but you already know that.
You already fear vampires. I can’t force you to be elite.
Sometimes even survival isn’t enough to drive you to be the best. You’ve been going through the motions, and you have improved, don’t get me wrong.
I can see you have fire, but everyone fights to survive.
Assassins are more than that. Assassins don’t simply fight, golden warriors fight, humans fight.
We don’t use weapons, we are weapons. You see Beast as an asshole, and he is, but he is aggressive by nature.
So are you, deep down. Ducai are born as dangerous and lethal as vampires, with good and bad human traits.
Sometimes those dark urges are hard to quell. ”
I’d never considered it that way. He compared ducai more to vampires than humans. I’d always thought of ducai—myself—as human, just... faster and stronger.
“If you think I hate you and this place, why did you challenge Dred for me?”
Everything he’d said was true, but I didn’t hate everyone here simply because my father did. I didn’t want to hate anyone. I was just trying to survive like everyone else in this unfair world.
“It wouldn’t matter what I thought of you, his apprentice openly attacked you with a knife, and that cannot be pushed aside.
It’s a matter of honor for me, and for you.
It is LOA rules that a trainer may fight in place of his apprentice.
” He spilled a cold clear liquid over the gash on my palm, and it numbed the pain within seconds.
“You’ll feel the pinch, but it won’t hurt much.
Hold still.” He was surprisingly gentle when he took my wrist to support my injured hand.
“And in part Beast’s aggressiveness toward you is probably because of Dred. Because of me.”
I hadn’t thought of that. “Why do you and Dred hate each other?” The first pinch came, and he began to sew up my wound with a careful hand. He’d done this before, many times.
“Remember when I told you I lost only one fight? It was to him. He beat me so badly, I couldn’t walk and pissed blood for two days. I told my father I fell off a horse and was trampled. Dred bragged about it for months at school. He’d always been a cocky prick, but he became unbearable after that.”
“Ouch.” Pissing blood sounded particularly unpleasant. “And you haven’t fought since?”
“No. People wanted us to. A rematch was arranged once, but the warriors must have been tipped off and broke up the gathering before we could. We fought dirty, at night away from school. It wasn’t sanctioned.”
“So he continued to pick on you here?”
He smiled as he threaded the needle through my torn flesh. “No one picks on me, Bonecarver. Dred is dangerous. But Dred also knows I had an off night, and that if we fought again, I might beat him, especially now. I wasn’t in the right head going into that fight. I went in angry and unfocused.”
“What happened before the fight?”
His throat bobbed. He went quiet. The silence became thick.
He paused with the needle just above my palm, and his fingers tightened on my wrist. The air between us changed.
With his head bent down, our faces almost touched.
I knew he had secrets. As someone with my own, I could see it in others.
His frequent disappearances at night came to mind.
“Forget I asked.”
“My father liked whisky too much then.” His grip on my wrist loosened some, as if telling me relaxed him. He finished the last stitch, tossed the needle into the sink, and started wrapping my hand in a bandage.
“The whisky made him cross?” I’d seen it at the longhouse many times. Some drunk would get rowdy, yell and scream and hurt others.
He nodded. “He took his anger out on me and my mum sometimes. Luckily not my sisters. He smacked mum across the face that night, and I put him through the window. The neighbors came out and saw him lying drunk in the broken glass. He’s one of the top scholars at the institution and very concerned with his reputation, and we were an extension of him.
I always had to get good marks in school, and if he’d ever found out about my underground fighting, he’d have lashed me.
Anyway, he told me to get out after that.
I’d embarrassed him. I came here to live with my uncle.
It was a couple months until The Rite anyway.
I’d already made up my mind to be an assassin, and I knew from my previous tests I could be. ”
“But your father wanted you to be a scholar.”
He half smiled. “Of course.”
“It must have upset him that you had the choice and became an assassin anyway.”
“You have no idea.”
Maybe life in the city wasn’t so perfect after all. I might have been scared of what was outside my home but never of what was in it.
His dark hair clung to his forehead, falling into his eyes.
I wasn’t sure what possessed me to do so, but I gently brushed it aside.
He froze at my touch, then lifted his chin, gaze level with mine.
His lips and mouth and tongue were a breath away.
He hungered for me, in what way, I wasn’t sure.
I could feel him fighting against himself.
I didn’t know how I knew that. But I did.
My heart started to pound. I became more aware of the weight of his hips pushing against the inside of my thighs. My core ached in an unfamiliar pleasant way. “Is that why you don’t drink whisky?” I breathed. The bottle he had up in his closet had been dusty and filled to the brim.
“I’ve never touched it.” He sounded different, throaty and tense. “I have enough demons as it is.”
Tonight, when Beast had cut me, it was the first time I’d even glimpsed his wrath.
Even fighting vampires, he was a master of control.
I didn’t understand why he thought of himself as having demons.
I pressed my back against the wall. He slowly leaned in.
I wasn’t even sure if he knew he mirrored me.
My pulse thrummed beneath my skin. The desire for him to lean in more, more until his lips pressed to mine gripped me.
His eyes held mine, his breaths came faster and uneven, so did mine.
I wanted to push forward, let my lips brush his.
I shouldn’t want that. It was forbidden.
It was a line we couldn’t cross, and even if I was tempted, I didn’t want the fallout.
“Is that why your parents don’t visit you? ” I asked softly.
He shook his head. “No.”
I didn’t dare ask why. There was something else. Something darker. I could feel it.
A knock on the bedroom door broke the intensity burning between us. He blinked, jerking away as if he hadn’t realized how close we were. Then he was gone, and I was left panting on the bathroom counter. I closed my eyes and pressed the back of my head into the wall. What was I doing?
“Commander Locke and Commander Ace have agreed to oversee the challenge.” It was Falcon. “But Commander Ace wishes to speak to you. Alone.”
“Will you wait here until I return?” he asked.
“I will.”
I scooted off the counter and found Falcon standing near the foot of my bed. She smiled at me as Vander strolled out the door. “Have a seat, Bonecarver.”
My brows creased. “Is there a reason he asked you to stay?” Dred or Beast wouldn’t come attack me in my own room, would they?
“I don’t believe it’s safe for you to be alone right now, and neither does Viper.
I hope you thank him after this. You don’t know our ways yet, but this is not common.
A challenge between assassins is rare, and to stand in for an apprentice is rarer still.
Most trainers wouldn’t do this for their apprentice.
They would leave it to the higher-ups to dole out the punishment or make their apprentice fight their own challenge. ”
“But isn’t this really about their rivalry, not me? He wants to fight Dred.”
Falcon shook her head. “No, if Viper wanted to simply fight Dred, he’d have done it a long time ago. This is for you.”