The breaking period: Day 1, hour 3
“Don’t talk to him. He’s going to be dead in an hour,” snarled the new demon at Vegar.
I’d have been worried about yet another threat to my bodily health if I had any health left to worry about.
“No way. You really think so?” I asked with feigned shock.
“It’s fine, Zenith.” Vegar slapped the other demon on the back (that must have been his thing), then dragged him forward and kissed his lips. “Aran already knows he’s going to die.”
Wow, power couple alert.
Black veins expanded on Zenith’s face until his skin looked like a patchwork of black ink as they made out vigorously.
A lot of tongue was involved.
Did the veins expand because he was horny or because he was angry?
Zenith pulled away from eating Vegar’s face to yell at him, “You already know his name? Did you give him yours, you motherfucking idiot? We’ve talked about this.”
Suddenly, the demon whirled on me with his lips curled back like he was going to rip out my throat with his pointy teeth.
As a competent woman with analytical abilities, I recognized my chance of surviving the next five seconds was less than 10 percent.
Do it. Rip out my throat.
Clearly, I had no control over my intrusive thoughts.
“Wait, is his name not John?” I narrowed my eyes with pretend confusion.
Before Zenith could break my femur and beat me with it, the boyish-looking man who was plain compared to everyone else turned around abruptly.
“Did someone say my name?”
I rolled my eyes and sucked on my pipe. “You would be named John.”
Vegar choked on another laugh.
John narrowed his dark eyes with confusion as he looked at the two demons and said, “I don’t want any more of last year’s shit happening this year. We settled it on the battlefield, and I expect you two to respect that. If I suffer a single nightmare, I will be blowing your shit up. You hear me?”
Zenith rolled his blue eyes, the veins retreating so his olive skin was once again visible, as he said, “I don’t break my promises like a human. We settled it.”
John smiled, his wavy brown hair bouncing around his ears. “That’s really great to hear.”
I chose to ignore the comment about a battlefield because ignorance was bliss and reeled over the fact that the dude was a human.
How the fuck was a human at Elite Academy, let alone a recruit in the assassin division?
Everyone knew humans were the most fucked-up race as a whole, but individually they were powerless and weak.
“You’re a human?”
John nodded. “And what are you? A Smurf?” He gestured to my bright-blue hair.
It was cut short, but my curls were an unruly mass.
“I’m a fae,” I huffed, wondering if a Smurf was something terrifying like a demon.
I prided myself on knowing a lot about other races, and my chest pinched with worry. How was it possible a human knew about a race that I didn’t?
“I’ve read about the fae. Sexy, with wings, right?” John flapped his arms like they were wings.
Vegar laughed again, and Zenith tugged him down the hall while muttering something about incompetent humans and pathetic fae.
“No to both. Sadly,” I said dryly. “And let me guess: you’re a weak human with no moral compass and no abilities?”
John missed the sarcasm in my voice because he fell into step beside me and grinned at me like we were besties. “Sounds about right. But I’ve actually got some wicked powers.”
Of course he had dimples.
I grimaced at his cheery demeanor because happy people always freaked me out.
John smiled like he’d never been through anything difficult in life, which was not relatable.
“Oh,” I said and shuffled away from him, trying to create distance between us.
I preferred my friends with dry sarcasm and inappropriate humor, not whatever the fuck positive energy was radiating off John.
No one interacted with humans for a reason.
They were soulless.
John followed me across the hall like a puppy. “I’m so glad you were initiated this year. It’s been three years since I joined, and it’s been brutal being the new guy. Plus, everyone already has their cliques, and it’s impossible to break in. We’re going to be great friends, I can tell.”
My brain stuttered as his words sank in. “Three years? How long has everyone been here?”
John beamed like he was talking about something mundane, not an assassin training camp that only lasted for six months like I’d been hoping.
He answered cheerfully, “The kings have been training the longest.”
“Who?”
He gestured to the three fae who were sauntering in the front of the group like they were better than everyone else. “Corvus, Scorpius, and Orion.”
I wrinkled my nose with disgust.
John shook his head. “No, seriously, they’re really kings, and apparently they’re a super big deal. Every woman and man in the academy wants to fuck them. They’re legends.”
I couldn’t explain to John that technically I was the High Queen of the Fae Realm, so they couldn’t be kings, so I swallowed my thoughts and watched them.
Every few steps, Corvus brushed his hand across Scorpius’s shoulder to orient him, but other than that, you would never know from the way Scorpius navigated that he was blind.
It made sense that they called themselves kings.
They were the worst type of people in all the realms—men who knew they were hot.
“Are you sure they’re kings?” I asked skeptically.
“One hundred percent. I’ve heard Lothaire call them kings. Rumor is they’ve been tasked to work with Lothaire on an important mission. Apparently the fate of realms depends on it. Super intense stuff that they don’t just give to anyone.”
I scrunched my nose in confusion. Maybe there was some other fae realm that had its own royalty? It seemed far-fetched, but there wasn’t any other obvious answer.
“What’s the task?”
John laughed like I was joking. “If I knew, they’d kill me immediately.”
“Please.” I rolled my eyes.
His expression darkened slightly as he thought about it.
“Wait, you’re not joking?”
John shrugged. “No, I’m not. All I can tell you is that I’ve heard its somehow personal to Lothaire, and rumor is there are gods involved.”
My jaw dropped. “Gods?”
What have I gotten myself into?
As we walked down the hall, the stained-glass window of a mother holding a baby shimmered red, and I realized it wasn’t from the eclipse like I’d first thought.
The artist had portrayed both as covered in blood.
As I passed, the woman’s sad eyes seemed to track me like she was calling me out for my masquerade. Somehow it felt like I’d disappointed her by hiding who I really was.
“You okay?” John narrowed his dark eyes at me, and I shook my head to clear my thoughts.
“So how long have the kings been training?” I asked hastily so I didn’t have to explain why I’d been staring at a portrait of a mother with sadness.
John grimaced, and his answer was not what I was expecting.
“It’s weird because they’re insanely talented, and Lothaire always talks about how they’re the perfect soldiers, but they’ve been training for ten years. Rumor is Lothaire’s searching the realms, looking for someone, and they’re waiting here in the meantime. But no one knows why.”
Ten years.
My back started to itch unmercifully, and panic tightened my chest.
Ten years was significantly longer than my life expectancy.
John must have seen the terror on my face, because his beaming smile returned, and he punched me on the bicep.
I lost feeling in the limb.
John might be a human with a heinous personality, but he was still a little under seven feet tall and covered in muscles.
I massaged my arm and whimpered.
John smiled and pretended he hadn’t just attacked me. “Don’t worry. I actually haven’t been the new guy this entire time. We’ve had about four other people qualify in the last three years.”
I narrowed my eyes.
He continued cheerfully, “They all died within the first week, so they didn’t really count as new guys. You know.”
No. I didn’t know.
I stopped walking, lips frozen in an O. How was that supposed to make me not worry?
The demons hadn’t been joking.
Neither had Corvus and Scorpius.
They really thought I was going to be dead in an hour.
I started counting odd numbers backward from one hundred as I forced myself to walk forward down the hall.
Ninety-seven.
Two horrifying demons looked over their shoulders back at me.
Ninety-five.
Three alleged fae kings (maybe I was being a stuck up queen, but I wasn’t convinced they were really kings) swaggered ahead, pure power and malice dripping off them.
We followed Lothaire, a terrifying vampyre of lore, down a long hall that dripped with chandeliers and housed priceless mosaics. Lightning cracked and shimmered.
A human walked beside me, the Queen of the Fae.
At this rate, I didn’t want to meet the last eerily pale man in the group that I was 99 percent sure from his coloring was a vampyre.
From the way he glared at everyone and walked by himself, he didn’t want to meet me either.
Seven terrifying males training to be assassins.
The most powerful people in the universe, and I walked beside them.
A female masquerading as a male and a fae, with a monster in my head and a bounty on my heart.
There was no scenario where this ended well for me.
Ninety-three.
Lothaire flung open the heavy iron doors of the fortress.
Still air was replaced by a chilly wind that whipped my hair and frothed the dark ocean into a roar. Lothaire led us down the steep onyx path that was more rocks than steps.
Outside the fortress, the lunar eclipse crushed the stars and shed little warmth.
In another lifetime, Sadie would have said it was time to panic, or some dumb statement like that, and cracked an inappropriate joke. I would have laughed with her and bemoaned the fact that we were so dead.
No one laughed.
Seven men grunted as they walked.
“Grow up. Is this how a queen acts? I’d kill you just to shut you up, and I wouldn’t even take your throne,” Jinx’s twelve-year-old voice whispered in my mind.
Her scorn comforted me and halted my panic attack.
For some reason, it was impossible to spiral when a child was degrading your character.
After what felt like an eternity of climbing down jagged rocks, Lothaire stopped in front of a small steel structure on the edge of the rocky outcrop at the base of the fortress.
He led us inside.
The dingy shelter was empty except for eight cots that barely cleared the rocky ground. Matching black sweat suits were folded atop each one. Metal walls halted the wind, but the air was cold and biting inside.
That was it.
There were no blankets or pillows. No toiletries or necessities.
Not a single throw pillow or sparkly candle holder to bring life into the space. My feminine chakra trembled with horror.
It was an interior design war crime.
To make matters worse, a shoddy toilet sat behind a corner wall, which immediately presented a problem because my enchantment disguised my features and made them masculine, but it couldn’t create what wasn’t there.
I didn’t have a dick.
Going to the bathroom was going to be a problem, and privacy wasn’t the only issue.
Dirt caked every surface, and the lack of cleanliness made my stomach hurt.
My fingers curled with disgust.
I’d always liked pretty things, loved the bright colors and rich materials of finely made clothes and clean bedding.
Nothing about this was pretty.
The rickety structure shook as wind screamed against it, and waves roared as they slammed against the rocks and filled the air with salt.
Six men stared solemnly at Lothaire, muscles expanded, stances wide, and faces hard, like they were mentally preparing themselves.
In contrast, John beamed, cheeks pulled wide and dimples on display.
At least I now knew the stories were true…humans were dumb as fuck.
Lothaire gestured to the space that would be too generous to describe as a hut, then rubbed his hands with excitement. The air literally sparked with power around him.
“Welcome back to the assassins’ barracks. You have three minutes to shit and make yourself at home. Then we begin training.”
Lothaire snapped his fingers, and suddenly his business suit disappeared off his body.
Two things stunned me.
First, who can shit on command?
Second, it wasn’t an enchantment that changed his appearance. Instead, the black air shimmered around him and moved like a tangible force as it reclothed him.
A black sweat suit appeared atop his bulging muscles.
War paint slashed across his high cheekbones and highlighted the whiteness of his scar.
The singular long braid trailing down his back pulled apart. He had long, wavy hair that wasn’t dissimilar from my own’s texture. However, the hair rewove itself into hundreds of small, intricate braids that plaited themselves into a crown atop his head.
Sparks of power glittered around him.
I’d never seen an enchantment do anything like that—Lothaire was insanely powerful. How had we survived the gladiator stadium?
Lothaire had always been imposing, but before, he’d been a beast dressed in a business suit. A man of restrained power.
Now he shed the civility like a mask.
His singular eye glowed like it had been lit by the flames from the rumored hell realm.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
A beast was before me.
Lothaire arched his eyebrow and parted his bloodred lips. Fangs flashed as he said, “I repeat, training begins now. Did I stutter, soldiers?”
“No, sir! Yes, sir!” seven voices chorused back as they clasped their hands behind their backs, parted their legs, and bowed their heads.
His eyes glowed as he stared at me with disgust. “Are you so fucking pampered, soldier, that you think you’re better than me?”
Something told me if I answered yes, despite how hard it was to kill me, I wouldn’t live to see tomorrow. “No.”
“Then why the fuck aren’t you showing me respect?” Lothaire bellowed with such force the barracks shook.
I bowed my head and tucked it low while mimicking the position of the other men. “Sorry, sir!” I shouted back like they had.
The wind screamed, and the ocean roared.
“You will be, soldier. Mark my words: you will be,” Lothaire said, then he turned and stalked out of the barracks.
I believed him.
Suddenly chaos erupted as the men grabbed cots, stretched their muscles, and dropped to the ground, doing push-ups.
This was real.
This was really happening.
Why would someone do push-ups right now? Men were messed up. I could feel a migraine coming on.
I walked over to a cot and avoided doing unnecessary manual labor.
“What’s your name?” Scorpius asked. His handsome pale face invaded my personal space as I looked over the clothes on the cot.
“Aran Egan,” I replied automatically.
Scorpius’s voice dripped with malice as he shoved me to the ground. “Well, Egan, a pretty boy like you isn’t sleeping here.”
He might be blind, but he had no trouble grabbing me and throwing me onto the rocks with so much force that my bones rattled.
Why are they so obsessed with how pretty I am? It was starting to become weird and not flattering.
How the fuck any girl at the academy was into him was beyond me. It didn’t matter if he really was a king; he was a bastard of the worst sort.
Rocks dug into my skin as I scurried back to my feet.
“We warned your pampered ass how this would go,” Corvus’s deep voice rumbled as he slammed his massive foot through a cot in the far corner.
The cheap material ripped in two, leaving the cot useless.
Corvus’s silver eyes flashed. “This is where you sleep. Just because you’re used to a life of luxury doesn’t mean you’re going to get any special treatment around here.”
I fucking hated being called pampered.
All I’d known was torture and war, but all the elite fae had told me I was a sniveling princess because I liked parties and nice things.
Everyone saw a pretty face and expensive garments and dismissed me as a simpering fool.
It made me homicidal.
To punctuate his ignorant statement, Corvus stomped again with his enormous foot. He mangled the cot beyond repair. Bold move on his part, because if my foot was that creepily large, I would not be drawing attention to it.
Corvus stomped one more time.
He was just another dumb, ignorant, judgmental, toxic male.
I’ll show him just how pretty and privileged I can be when I eat his eyeballs from his head with a silver spoon. I growled with disgust.
At my sound of defiance, big-foot Corvus became absolutely feral.
His sharp cheekbones cast harsh shadows across his face, jaw pulled tight with rage, as he stalked toward me.
Seven and a half feet of pure muscle cornered me against the wall, and he looked down his nose at me like an arrogant king at a pauper.
Someday I’d make him lick the ground I walked on.
Corvus’s skin was covered in growing red flames, and he fisted the front of my shirt.
“You’re a new recruit. You will address us as King, sir, or Your Highness, and you will do whatever the fuck we tell you to. This is our division, and you’ve given attitude to the wrong fucking people, pretty boy. We cane brats like you until they beg us on their knees.”
He paused.
“And then we don’t let them come.”
His meaning penetrated, and I slapped my palms against his rock-hard chest. “Fuck off. Don’t call me that.”
The world warped and distorted, and for a split second, I was sixteen again at a ball. An elite fae trailed his eyes slowly down my body and said, “Yes, she’s pretty enough to breed. Perhaps I’ll buy her for myself.”
He leaned forward, gross breath hot on my cheek as my stomach churned.
I’d stumbled away in horror, and Mother had apologized for my “embarrassing lack of decorum.” The proper protocol was to thank an elite fae for the honor when he asked to breed you like cattle.
“Don’t worry.” The creepy man had smiled at Mother and said, “I’ll break her in.”
Harsh hands shook me back and forth, and the aggressive motion threw me out of the past and back into the present.
Corvus stilled, the harsh planes of his face rippling as he blinked slowly. Violence rolled off the psychotic bastard, and he snarled in my face like I’d done something to him. “Never touch me.”
With one hand holding me off the ground, Corvus slammed me against the metal wall with such ferocity that searing pain stabbed across my wound.
If I weren’t so busy swallowing down a scream, I might have found the irony of it all funny.
He let Scorpius and Orion touch him constantly. But now he was losing it? It made little sense.
Corvus had his hand tangled in my sweatshirt and was pummeling me, but he lost his shit when I lightly slapped his arm?
Fucking maniac. “Let me down,” I growled and purposefully slapped his bicep again.
Corvus’s eyes darkened, and he pulled back a flaming fist.
Kicking out desperately, I squinted and prepared for the worst.
Orion suddenly appeared beside Corvus and grabbed his fist. He didn’t speak aloud but mouthed, “You said you wouldn’t. He’s pathetic and not worth your time. He’s going to be dead soon anyway. We need to finish it this year. Remember the mission.”
Orion’s words made my chest twist with pain.
From his actions in the hall, I’d thought the pretty fae man didn’t hate me like his two companions.
I’d been delusional.
Corvus snarled at me, “You’re dead,” then shoved me against the wall one last time before he stalked away.
Scorpius sneered something, but I was too busy trying not to pass out from the pain stabbing along my back.
I gasped for air shakily.
Before I could sink into a panic attack, John was smiling in my face. His twin dimples flashed. “I grabbed the cot next to you.”
He gestured to the now-ruined bed and jumped up and down on the one next to it with excitement like we were having a sleepover.
I scowled.
John beamed.
The teenage girls back in the manor would have bullied him mercilessly. I wished Jinx was here to destroy his self-esteem. The upbeat energy was not it.
He patted my shoulders and prattled a hundred miles per hour. “Don’t worry, the kings are good leaders, and they won’t do anything to actually harm you.”
I scoffed.
I was worried.
Also, apparently humans had the awareness of a rock.
John shrugged as he lay back on his cot, his large body hanging over the sides comically. “Honestly, the kings and the demons, who you already met, Vegar and Zenith, aren’t too bad. Of all the men, it’s Horace you need to worry about. He’s a vampyre and Lothaire’s nephew, so he gets away with murder. Literally.”
John gestured to Horace, who was creepily pale with long red hair and still doing push-ups on the ground. His eyes glowed bright orange in the dim light, and his face was a cold mask.
I’d been right; he was yet another terrifying bloodsucker.
It also hadn’t escaped my notice that Horace had laughed the hardest when Corvus had slammed me against the wall.
Bastard wouldn’t be laughing when I stabbed him.
John kept prattling and giving unhelpful advice, blissfully unaware of my deteriorating mental state.
“The key is to not think too deeply about anything. Or to worry about pain, because Lyla will heal you. Just try not to get sucked out to sea or take a dagger through the heart. It’s all about fighting through the pain.”
John might not have to worry about thinking, but some of us were chronic thinkers.
The more John prattled, the harder it was to breathe.
I’d trained for war in the shifter realm and had fought against spiders larger than trees, yet it felt like I was woefully unprepared for whatever was about to happen.
Like I’d only been in village battles.
And this was a galactic war.
The big leagues.
John kept smiling and talking. Either he was aware I was having an extended panic attack and trying to distract me, or he was dumb. My money was on the latter.
“The whole principle of the assassin division is to put powerful people in awful situations until they break down to their lowest form. I thought it was stupid at first, but it actually works. If you survive, you’ll learn to harness your abilities like you’ve never thought possible. You’ll be unstoppable. It’s worth it, trust me.”
If survival came down to dying or trusting John—I couldn’t emphasize enough—I’d gladly end my life.
Lothaire bellowed from somewhere outside the hut, “Let’s go, soldiers!”
Everyone burst into action.
I stood frozen.
John grabbed my shoulders and pulled me forward out of the barracks as he yelled over the chaos, “You just have to trust the process!”
The red eclipse tainted the chilly air with an ominous glow as Lothaire pointed to the frothing ocean and smiled.
“Trust the process!” John screamed over the wind as he dragged me forward with the group and down the rocky shore.
We plunged into the freezing waves.
I didn’t need to understand battle analytics to comprehend what was happening as John dragged me out to sea.
Salty waves slammed me down against jagged rocks as the noxious scent of pungent sulfur filled my nose.
Frigid water slapped my flesh.
It was obvious: I, Arabella Elis Egan, rightful ruler of the seat of death and wanted monarch of the fae realm, was absolutely fucked.
