Page 94 of House of Crimson Cloak and Silver Teeth

The other children are future assassins, most from old elven bloodlines prized for stealth and precision, though the guild sometimes takes gifted Dunethar, fae and children from Wolven clans too. Every single one of them knows how to hunt weakness.

I practically reek of it.

Small for my age and freshly orphaned, still grieving my pack. One week ago I had a family and a home beneath open skies. Now I sleep inside stone walls surrounded by children who circle me like starving animals.

The bullying starts immediately.

“Half-breed.”

“Monster.”

“Your father fucked a dog.”

They corner me in the training yards, in the sleeping halls, and in the kitchens. Fists and feet and cruel laughter rain down on me. I learn to fight back but the odds never favor me.

I’m scared every single day.

The fear follows me everywhere. Fear of beatings, of keepers who withhold food as punishment, of older students who practice their kills on younger children.

I learn to make myself small, to move quickly through corridors, to eat fast and sleep light, to always know where the exits are.

It doesn’t help.

Then I notice the boy in the shadows.

He is maybe a year older than me, though it’s hard to tell beneath how thin he is. Pale skin, sharp bones and eyes so light gray they look almost white.

Everyone avoids him.

Children step aside when he passes and conversations stop abruptly. Whispers follow him through the halls from students too frightened to say his name loudly.

Shade.

The boy who hides inside shadows.

I know who he really is. Everyone does, though no one speaks it aloud. He is the son of the Nightingale, the master assassin who was captured for treason. She was trying to run away with her lover. They say she is rotting in some prison somewhere in the crypts beneath the guild.

Everyone says her son will follow her path eventually. They say he’s dangerous, unstable, not quite right in the head.

I believe them until the day I see him fight.

It happens in the courtyard during free hour. Ten older boys corner him near the well. I’m watching from the shadows pressed against the wall where no one will notice me.

The boys surround Shade, weapons drawn with the training blades they gave us.

They call him traitor’s spawn and say his mother is a whore who spread her legs for an Aelfheim lord and birthed an abomination. They say worse things too, things that turn my stomach even though I barely understand them.

Shade doesn’t respond or defend her. He stands there with his head tilted slightly, like he’s listening to music only he can hear.

Then they attack.

It is over in seconds.

Ten boys, all older and bigger, all armed. Shade puts them all down without breaking a sweat. He moves like a shadow and without mercy. By the time the last one falls, groaning and clutching broken ribs, Shade hasn’t even drawn a weapon.

When it’s done, he walks away like nothing happened and leaves them groaning in the dirt. The keepers who watched from the windows just laugh and collect their bets.

I make a decision that day.