Commander Locke grinned, then motioned with his hands for everyone to quiet. “Your official initiation begins in fifteen minutes. Once you’re LOA, you are LOA until you die.”
Biting my lower lip nervously, I turned to Taewyn. “Initiation? What does that mean?”
He smiled. “I don’t know, but I’m excited to find out.”
Vander made his way over to my table a few minutes later with Falcon at his side. “Let’s go,” Falcon said, and motioned for Celine to follow her. I slipped off the bench and stood next to Vander, waiting to follow his lead. Taewyn’s trainer was a broad-shouldered man with a walk that reminded me of a cat. His sleek dark-blond hair was tied back at the nape of his neck. If I had to guess, he was at least thirty. He tilted his head and Taewyn followed.
Vander waited with his hands behind his back, watching everyone file around us until most of the assassins and apprentices had gone through a door on the south end. My stomach began to knot. There was a reason we were waiting here.
He finally turned to me. “Next time Morrow harasses you, you’d better be the one to stand up, not one of your friends.”
I gritted my teeth and mirrored his stance. Once again, I was a disappointment to him. I wasn’t used to their world. People in my village were friendly and helped each other. Our survival depended on it. I had carved bones most days and wandered the wilderness, daydreaming about boys, and what life was like in the city. It wasn’t all I dreamed it would be. “Sir, can I say something?”
“Go ahead.”
“Commander Locke spoke about honor and loyalty. You told my father that assassins protect their own. Why is he even allowed to harass me? Or anyone? He’s just as much of an asshole to Taewyn and Celine. He’s not honorable.”
His lips pursed, and if I had to guess by the look on his face, it pissed him off that Morrow was harassing his apprentice. “Just because we fight on the same side doesn’t mean we all get along. There are no specific rules against being an asshole, so there’s no point in going to the Commander about it. If I step in, he’ll see you as more of a target. Any vampire you face will be much worse than Morrow, trust me.”
With sweat dampening under my arms, I nodded. “I’ll handle it.”
“Good. You’re ducai and you’remyapprentice. I have a reputation. You don’t take shit from tormentors.” He gestured for me to walk. “We’re heading to the grand hall.”
“For what?”
He half smiled, and that made me nervous. “You’ll see.”
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.”
