“Ouch.” Pissing blood sounded particularly unpleasant. “And you haven’t fought since?”
“No. People wanted us to. A rematch was arranged once, but the warriors must have been tipped off and broke up the gathering before we could. We fought dirty, at night away from school. It wasn’t sanctioned.”
“So he continued to pick on you here?”
He smiled as he threaded the needle through my torn flesh. “No onepickson me, Bonecarver. Dred is dangerous. But Dred also knows I had an off night, and that if we fought again, I might beat him, especially now. I wasn’t in the right head going into that fight. I went in angry and unfocused.”
“What happened before the fight?”
His throat bobbed. He went quiet. The silence became thick. He paused with the needle just above my palm, and his fingers tightened on my wrist. The air between us changed. With his head bent down, our faces almost touched. I knew he had secrets. As someone with my own, I could see it in others. His frequent disappearances at night came to mind.
“Forget I asked.”
“My father liked whisky too much then.” His grip on my wrist loosened some, as if telling me relaxed him. He finished the last stitch, tossed the needle into the sink, and started wrapping my hand in a bandage.
“The whisky made him cross?” I’d seen it at the longhouse many times. Some drunk would get rowdy, yell and scream and hurt others.
He nodded. “He took his anger out on me and my mum sometimes. Luckily not my sisters. He smacked mum across the face that night, and I put him through the window. The neighbors came out and saw him lying drunk in the broken glass. He’s one of the top scholars at the institution and very concerned with his reputation, and we were an extension of him. I always had to get good marks in school, and if he’d ever found out about my underground fighting, he’d have lashed me. Anyway, he toldme to get out after that. I’d embarrassed him. I came here to live with my uncle. It was a couple months until The Rite anyway. I’d already made up my mind to be an assassin, and I knew from my previous tests I could be.”
“But your father wanted you to be a scholar.”
He half smiled. “Of course.”
“It must have upset him that you had the choice and became an assassin anyway.”
“You have no idea.”
Maybe life in the city wasn’t so perfect after all. I might have been scared of what was outside my home but never of what was in it.
His dark hair clung to his forehead, falling into his eyes. I wasn’t sure what possessed me to do so, but I gently brushed it aside. He froze at my touch, then lifted his chin, gaze level with mine. His lips and mouth and tongue were a breath away. He hungered for me, in what way, I wasn’t sure. I could feel him fighting against himself. I didn’t know how I knew that. But I did.
My heart started to pound. I became more aware of the weight of his hips pushing against the inside of my thighs. My core ached in an unfamiliar pleasant way. “Is that why you don’t drink whisky?” I breathed. The bottle he had up in his closet had been dusty and filled to the brim.
“I’ve never touched it.” He sounded different, throaty and tense. “I have enough demons as it is.”
Tonight, when Beast had cut me, it was the first time I’d even glimpsed his wrath. Even fighting vampires, he was a master of control. I didn’t understand why he thought of himself as having demons. I pressed my back against the wall. He slowly leaned in. I wasn’t even sure if he knew he mirrored me.
My pulse thrummed beneath my skin. The desire for him to lean in more, more until his lips pressed to mine gripped me.His eyes held mine, his breaths came faster and uneven, so did mine. I wanted to push forward, let my lips brush his. I shouldn’t want that. It was forbidden. It was a line we couldn’t cross, and even if I was tempted, I didn’t want the fallout. “Is that why your parents don’t visit you?” I asked softly.
He shook his head. “No.”
I didn’t dare ask why. There was something else. Something darker. I could feel it.
A knock on the bedroom door broke the intensity burning between us. He blinked, jerking away as if he hadn’t realized how close we were. Then he was gone, and I was left panting on the bathroom counter. I closed my eyes and pressed the back of my head into the wall. What was I doing?
“Commander Locke and Commander Ace have agreed to oversee the challenge.” It was Falcon. “But Commander Ace wishes to speak to you. Alone.”
“Will you wait here until I return?” he asked.
“I will.”
I scooted off the counter and found Falcon standing near the foot of my bed. She smiled at me as Vander strolled out the door. “Have a seat, Bonecarver.”
My brows creased. “Is there a reason he asked you to stay?” Dred or Beast wouldn’t come attack me in my own room, would they?
“I don’t believe it’s safe for you to be alone right now, and neither does Viper. I hope you thank him after this. You don’t know our ways yet, but this is not common. A challenge between assassins is rare, and to stand in for an apprentice is rarer still. Most trainers wouldn’t do this for their apprentice. They would leave it to the higher-ups to dole out the punishment or make their apprentice fight their own challenge.”
“But isn’t this really about their rivalry, not me? He wants to fight Dred.”
