“Wouldn’t it be nice if they could just stay in their land and we stay in ours,” I muttered.
“Not when we are their source of food, and not when it’s humanandducai nature to secure our survival, and we do that by killing anything that could threaten that. It’s us or them. And if it’s them, they will kill the ducai and enslave the humans.”
I’d never thought about it that way. Maybe because I’d always seen myself as prey, and not an apex predator. Like my childhood rabbit, Edwyn, I’d found bloodied and torn apart by some vicious animal. It had broken my heart to bury him.
He waved for me to follow him. I finally looked at the apprentices sitting on stools with their trainer next to them. Falcon had a needle in hand and a black ink bottle on a small side table next to her.
“Initiation is a tattoo?” I stilled beside Celine and Falcon. I didn’t want something ugly permanently branded on my body.
Vander nodded toward the empty seat next to Celine. “LOA—your initiation tattoo. We all have one. Sit.” Taking my lip between my teeth, I sat and started bouncing my leg.
“It doesn’t hurt that bad, Aesira,” Celine explained. “If you can take a knee to the face and get back up, you can handle this. You need to plan retaliation for that, by the way. He beat the shit out of you in front of everyone.” She glanced over her shoulder, and I followed her gaze to Morrow, who was currently walking around shirtless and flexing. Somehow, he had a gaggle of admirers. Not everyone was seated for a tattoo yet. Some were gathered in groups waiting for their turn.
“And he’d do it again if he had the chance,” I said quietly. “I don’t want to retaliate, and I don’t know how to fight like all of you.”
“Yet.” Vander sat on the stool in front of me and dragged the table with the tools closer to him.
It wasn’t the pain I worried about. I hadn’t even had a full day to acclimate to my new life, and I was already getting tattooed.You are LOA until you die. There really was no going back home, no matter what Kace or his father did. Not after I was tattooed as one of them. I scooted forward to slide off my seat, and Vander pressed a hand to my chest, halting me. Maybe it was the eldest daughter in me, but I quelled the urge to smack his hand away and tell him off.
“Everyone gets the tattoo, you aren’t the exception.”
“I thought that I should get it after I pass training, you know? After I become an assassin and not an apprentice. What if I fail? I might not be cut out for this.”
“Youwillpass, failure is not an option. It doesn’t matter if it takes you a year or five, you’ll graduate to assassin level one. The only way out of the league now that you have been chosen isdeath. Even when you are old and retired, which will be a long way off, as ducai live twice as long as humans, you are still one of us. You don’t want to die, do you?”
What kind of stupid question was that? No one wanted to die. “If I had a death wish, all I would have had to do was step out my door at night and wait for the vampires to get their supper.”
“It was a rhetorical question, Aesira. I know you don’t want to die.” He finally dropped his hand from my chest and tapped my left bicep.
“And mine was a rhetorical response.”
Falcon glanced at us, and Celine was quietly laughing, but Vander wasn’t as amused as they were. He shook his head and picked up the needle.
This was it then. My heart pounded and it wasn’t because that needle looked sharp. “You’ve done this before, right?”
“Nope. First time,” he deadpanned. “Everyone gets it in the same spot. It’s considered part of the uniform.”
“First time? And I’m your test dummy?”
Falcon tucked her short hair behind her ear and snickered. “He’s done it many times. Don’t worry, there is a stencil we follow so everyone’s LOA looks the same.”
I tugged off my long-sleeved black top, leaving me in a snug camisole. I was stuck in this until I died so what did a tattoo matter? I thought back on Vander’s and decided it was simple and appealing enough not to complain.
Vander dipped gauze into a clear liquid, then rubbed it across my skin a few inches down from my shoulder joint on the outside of my arm. It smelled like alcohol. Once the LOA was stenciled in with a rich black paste that felt a little sticky, he wrapped his cool hand around my elbow. “Hold still.”
It didn’t hurt like I thought. It was more irritating than anything. “So how long have you been in LOA?”
“Since I was nineteen.” He lifted his bright blue eyes with a bit of playfulness.
“Obviously.” I smirked.
“I’m twenty-six. Do the math... you do know basic math? Or do I need to teach you?”
That stung. Angry heat crept into my cheeks. “You really think those of us outside the wall are just a bunch of incompetent fools, don’t you?” I found my jaw started to ache with how hard I was clenching my teeth. Everything my father had ever said about these people and what they thought of us was true.
He paused only a moment but didn’t take his eyes off his work. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
