Plenty of looks came my way. Envy, mostly. Some respect. A few still openly hostile—Delia’s crowd, who’d somehow all landed seats.
“Uh, Instructor,” I said. “I can’t tell all of it. Some of it is classified.”
“I know exactly what’s classified,” Lieutenant Vesper said. “I’ll only ask for what isn’t. This is for their education. Will you do your fellow cadets the honor?”
Put that way, I didn’t have much room to refuse.
Lieutenant Vesper set her flask down and faced the room.
“Before the eastern corridor,” she said, “when did a demon last set foot on Covenant soil? Anyone.”
A cadet near the front ventured it. “Never, ma’am?”
“Not in living memory.” She paused meaningfully. “Eighty-one years, the DarkVeil’s been a wall. Things go in. Nothing comes out. And only the White Witch’s inner circle was ever known to summon a demon at all. So when thirteen of them came pouring across our border in daylight, what does that tell you?”
“The antichrist summoned them,” Bryn said, with total confidence.
That got a scatter of laughter. Some rolled their eyes at my friend.
“We don’t know if they were summoned, or if they came through on their own,” Lieutenant Vesper said. “And note what they did. They didn’t raid. They didn’t occupy. They hunted, in formation, and they cut the train off from its reinforcements before the first window cracked.” She turned to me. “Cadet Morning was on that train. Cadet?”
Every head swung my way. I kept it plain.
“The wards didn’t hold,” I said. “That was the first bad sign. They came up the hull like a military force. And they don’t surrender. We cornered one, and it opened its own throat. They wouldn’t allow themselves to be taken prisoner.”
A low murmur moved through the room.
“Is it true you killed one?” a wide-eyed cadet asked.
“Two, I think.” I shrugged. “One for certain. The other I kicked off the roof of the train at full speed.”
“Does plain steel even cut them?” someone else called. “I heard fire doesn’t work.”
“Elemental flame isn’t effective against the high-caste fire demons,” Lieutenant Vesper said. “That’s our working theory. You want enchanted steel if you’re cutting one down.”
“Convenient.” Delia studied her nails. “A lot of trained soldiers died out there, and the academy’s pet scarecrow strolls home without a scratch. Either you’re the deadliest cadet in our history”—she smiled like a cat that had just cornered something small—“or you spent the whole fight tucked behind three princes.”
The room went still.
“You think three princes have a spare hand for babysitting in the middle of a demon swarm?” I smiled, sharp. “You should apply for the next deployment, Delia. If you’re accepted, the DarkVeil’s right where we left it. Ride out and show us how it’s done.”
Someone in the back snorted. Delia’s smile thinned to nothing.
Lieutenant Vesper cleared her throat to take back the floor?—
And the alarm went off.
It tore through the fortress, every Stormglass klaxon screaming at once, a sound I’d already learned to hate.
Another attack.
Right at our door.
Chapter 28
Max
The alarm blared and blared, a hard metallic pulse that drove through the floor and into my teeth.
