Page 68 of Hunted

The cathedral hall was filled with bodies. More than I’d ever seen in one place at Blackwing Academy. There were recruits lined up in neat rows, silent and lifeless; motionless, nameless witnesses in rows behind them; and the Commander presiding over all, his face impassive and unaffected by the many blank stares gazing back at him.

Ethan took his place among the T’s, and I moved into position beside him at the tail end of the S’s. Apprehension flooded me like wildfire. I felt sick. Dread burned the back of my throat as bile rose and lingered there, my skin prickling like I’d just stuck a finger in an electrical outlet.

Out of all the recruits alphabetically ahead of me, only Dakarai Abina gave me cause for concern in regards to the lone Eagle assignment on offer.

And as luck would have it, he would be the first to find out what his future held.

“It seems Graduation Day is upon us once again,” Commander Varco boomed from the podium upon the raised platform, giving pompous-pastor energy rather than the revered-reverend he was probably aiming for. “As it was upon us last year and the year before that, and will come next year and the one after that, too.”

Yawn. So inspiring.

“Blackwing Academy is an ever-turning wheel and we will never stop rolling. Year after year we produce the world’s most elite assassins and influence all of the most world-changing decisions. We are catalysts of change, yes, but we are also advocates for stagnation.”

We—because it was we now; I was just as much a part of this wheel as any of the power-players in this room—were money-hungry zealots, sell-outs, and bigots. We exchanged life for coin, no matter whose pocket it came from. Hell, if the payout was worth it, we’d even take out the President of the United fucking States.

In fact, we’d probably done so once or twice already.

“You undoubtedly think of today as a celebration—an achievement—something to be proud of. A day of high emotions and gratitude that you’re finally done being a worm under somebody else’s boot. Well, let me reassure you”—he stepped around the podium, toeing the edge of the platform—“you will always be somebody else’s worm.”

I winced at the visual.

“You are not heroes. You are not patriots. You are not saviours of mankind. You are not even particularly remarkable.” He huffed a laugh. “All you have proven by standing before me today is that you are durable. Trainable. Malleable. And your survival depends on all three of these qualities.

“The sixteen of you who managed to make it here today—including my own son, Sebastos”—Seb straightened in my periphery as his father beamed at him—“are all that remains once we have removed all others who were not useful enough, durable enough, or smart enough to get here.”

I’d pay good money to turn around and witness Nadine’s silent wrath at that comment.

“In a moment, you will each receive your individual assignments. You will wonder how you can make a difference out there—make a name for yourself. But you would still be operating under the delusion that you mean something—that you can be the one to change the world.

“Let me rewrite that delusion for you, shall I? Making a name for yourself is the very opposite of what you should aspire to do. Your goal should not be to become the person everybody wants to hire. No. That would mean you’re actually very poor at your job, and it would be spitting in the face of all who’ve come before you; all who have trained you to be what you are today.

“The best assassins are the ones who never reach for notoriety. The ones who do what needs to be done without ever leaving a trace that they’ve done it at all.

“Take Beckett, for example.” Varco sneered at my almost-no-longer physical instructor. “Did any of you know that he was the one to take out that famous pop star? What was her name?” He clicked his fingers thrice, demanding an answer of Beckett—one he seemed reluctant to give.

“Zara Storm,” he murmured, eliciting a series of gasps as the name fell from his pretty lips.

Well, fuck. I remembered when that story dropped. It was only a few years ago. The overnight sensation, Zara Storm, grabbed the music industry by the balls and started twisting—singing songs about how fundamentally fucked the patriarchy was and how broken the music industry secretly was.

They found her in a bathtub. Not a drop of water in it, but blood everywhere—like whoever killed her felt bad enough about the mess the poor cleaning staff would have to deal with that they sequestered it to the one area it wouldn’t matter got messy.

The tabloids said her boyfriend did it, but the authorities never found proof, never had so much as a photograph of the elusive Hudson Harlow.

I guess we finally knew what Hudson Harlow looked like.

Beckett’s face was carefully expressionless. He betrayed none of what he felt about being outed—the perfect little pocket assassin for Varco to keep in his coat.

The Commander cleared his throat. “My point is that out there, no one cares about who you are or what you want. They only care about their own selfish desires and what you can gain them. They will not admire your training or fear your resolve—they will simply stop existing. And if you’ve done your job as we’ve trained you, no one will associate their absence with you.

“Your goal, no matter your assignment, is erasure without authorship.

“Execution without association.

“And above all, remaining useful to the Academy—because usefulness, you will find, is a fragile condition.”

My heart raced like a stampede of stallions—coiled somewhere within my intestines, because it had dropped several minutes ago when Beckett’s green gaze met mine across the room. Intense and unyielding—like a warning. Like a storm.

Like he knew something I didn’t.