Footsteps. Breathing. I whirled just in time to see Beast emerge from the shadows. His face was flat, but his furious eyes gave him away.
“Are you following me?” I accused.
He gave me a monstrous smile. “Do you have any idea what my father did when he found out that I was lashed in front of the entire League of Assassins?”
I gulped and put a few more feet between us. “Beast, I didn’t want you to be lashed, and I don’t want any trouble with you. Can we let this go? We’ll be fighting together once our apprenticeship is over.”
“No, we won’t. People like you don’t belong here. You soil what it is to be ducai. You tarnish LOA. Viper would have never challenged Dred if you weren’t weak. The black mark on my family name would have never happened.” He half-turned and jerked up the bottom hem of his shirt, revealing his bare back. Several long pink scars marred his beige skin. Part of me did feel sorry for him, even if I now had a long, jagged scar across my palm from his knife.
Once, I would have yelled that I didn’t want to be LOA, but that time had passed.
“I deserve to be here as much as you do.”
“I’ll give you one chance to leave and disappear. My father said I had to take care of the problem, make it look like an accident, make it look like a vampire, but even as much as I hate you and mutts like you, I don’t want to kill you. It could come back on me. I can’t touch Viper, he’s too precious to the League, but you, you’re a nobody.”
The glint of a blade at his side caught my eye. “I can’t leave, Beast. Viper told me when I first got here they would drag me back if I escaped. I am LOA until I die.” And I realized that left him with one choice, in his mind.
I didn’t want a fight to the death. What would happen if I killed him? So I turned and shoved through the library doors and flew through the dark aisles. Vander had to be in here somewhere. My pulse drummed with the speed of my quick steps. I stopped when I came to a high wall of books, forced to turn left or right. My chest heaved up and down. I didn’t know where he went.
“Vander!” I shouted.
Silence answered me.
Beast’s approach wasn’t subtle. His steps came hard and quick. I jerked my knife and dagger and faced him. He stilled halfway down the aisle, glancing around, waiting. “It doesn’t seem that your savior is here this time.”
He would kill me here and drag my body outside the wall where vampires would drink my corpse dry. An involuntary shudder rolled down my spine, and I ground my teeth. That wasn’t going to happen, whether or not Vander was here to save me.
“Last chance, Bonecarver. Leave or die.”
I spat at his feet and raised my blades. If I ever left, it would be on my own accord. My choice.
“Fine.” He came at me with a wild downward swing. I dodged and swiped at him. My blades moved so fast they whistled. I barely missed him several times, then spun into a kick impacting his wrist. His knife flew from his hand and got lost somewhere in the shadows. His eyes flashed wide, and he backed up a few steps.
The biggest mistake he made was underestimating who I’d become. There were countless nights that while everyone else slept, Vander and I sparred. I had years to make up for and a family that needed me. It pushed me harder than anyone here. I might have started out behind, but I’d caught up.
I went at him this time, slicing swift, calculated, cutting into his arm, and a brush across his chest. Thin red lines welled up. But deep down, I didn’twantto kill him, and that held me back. He punched me hard with a fist to the shoulder; the force of it made me drop my dagger. It clattered to the ground, then his boot smashed into my gut. Breath whooshing out, I stumbled back into the shelf. Several books crashed to the ground. I snatched a heavy tome from behind me and threw it at his face. It whirled end over end, slamming into his forearm, then I sprinted away. I had to get to the Commanders’ quarters or find someone on guard duty.
I went for a window and pushed upward but it didn’t budge.
“Bonecarver,” Beast crooned from a few rows over. “Where did you go? Fight me like you have honor, although I know that’s a foreign concept for a filthy loth.”
I was without honor? He was trying to murder me in a dark library! I spotted a door, and dashed for it, silently pushing through and closing it. It was another room of books and desks. I sprinted down the center to another door at the end and through another until I came to a room that smelled of dust, with sheetsover the shelves and tables. It must be under renovation, and one of the windows was cracked to let in fresh air. I scrambled toward it until warm light from the narrow opening in a door on the left caught my eye.
Low voices coming from within made me forget my plan to escape, and I crept toward it. It wasn’t just any voice, it wasVander’s. I let out a slow breath of relief and paused outside the doorway. A blonde woman in a dress was with him... Assassins didn’t wear dresses in Drakthar. She was young and lovely with a bright smile. The gold necklace around her throat was the most extravagant piece of jewelry I’d ever seen.
My heart squeezed in my chest. Vander leaned his hip against the desk she sat on and laughed about something. It felt like a serpent coiled around my heart, my throat. So this was truly where he’d been escaping to?
And here I was, the fool thinking he wanted more with me than friendship once my apprenticeship was over. I thought...
I stopped breathing.
She slid a knife across her wrist, crimson blood dripped freely from it into a glass on the desk beside her. What... what was she doing?
She set the knife down, and when the glass was full, a glow from the fingertip of her opposite hand ran across her cut, closing it and healing it completely.
My pounding, aching heart plummeted to my toes. Vander picked up the glass and brought it to his mouth—and drank it. His eyes rolled back, and he let out a low hum of pleasure.
My heart stopped.
