School of the Crown Assassins

25

The breeze that swept through the Alpha Suite was hot, elevating the already high temperature. There was a silence in the air, one riddled with tension. Even Nydia sat quiet and unmoving, curled into a ball on one end of the couch, staring at the books sprawled across the center table.

I wished for the silence to end. The only thing keeping me company now were the images of Knox's body pinned against the ceiling, and the feeling of his dry skin against mine as we brought him down and dragged him through the woods to the school, trying to give him an appropriate funeral. I kept thinking of kind Alistair back in Cressida. He was the man who spent his whole life protecting Arielle Fortier, looking after like a daughter, but yet, couldn't protect his son no matter how hard he tried.

But most of all, I kept seeing Damien's expression through the ordeal, the one I had seen in the mirror after Echo's funeral. It was an expression of hollowness like there was nothing behind those eyes besides a void where nothing lived or dared to go. It was the void of a lost cause and spirit. It was the void that could drive one to the edge of a bridge or the bottom of a noose. But even worse, it was the void that would turn your mind angry, your heart cold and adorned with spikes. It led one far past sanity, the place one went before they could hold a gun to the people they cared for and feel twisted pleasure at their misery.

Insanity clutched his strings like a puppeteer. I didn't want to be around when it pulled them.

Damien stood, his movement more forceful than necessary, and paced the length of the room, hands tinkering with some tiny object until he gave up and threw it to the side. After another moment of pacing, he resumed his seat on the couch.

"How much longer are they going to make us wait?" he questioned, voice brimming with a barely contained anger.

"Patience," Xavier responded, though the calming word sounded more like a lecture.

"Don't tell me to be fucking patient," Damien snapped, his voice just bordering a shout. "It's been two hours since we turned over my best friend's mutilated body and there hasn't been a single word since. I want a goddamn explanation."

"And what do you want to hear?" Xavier snarled. "How they chopped off Knox's fingers? Or maybe the preferred tool for the eye enucleation—curved scissors or bare hands?"

Damien rose. "D-"

"What Xavier means to say," Arielle jumped in before a fight could break out, "is that whatever they tell us doesn't change anything. Knox is dead. The only thing that should matter to you right now is the task at hand."

Axe lifted an eyebrow. "Which is...?"

"Figuring out who the mole is," Arielle responded and turned back to Damien. "Avenging Knox's death."

I looked up. "Who do you think it is?"

"It's safe to say the mole reporting to the Ravens is the school killer."

"Unless he isn't," Nydia said.

Axe shook his head. "The handwriting on the ceiling matched the messages left by the school killer."

"Then who is it?" Nydia demanded.

There was a silence before Arielle added in a voice barely above a whisper, "It's also safe to say the mole is in this room."

No one said a word and I looked around to see that even if they might be against the idea, they know it must be true. A killer was in our midst.

Arielle continued. "The killer managed to defeat every person they fought, save for Indigo who barely made it out alive. They must be of high rank and only a few people have access to the information required to locate all of the kills. Knox's location was kept under wraps with the exception of us. There wasn't any written record of his location either. The killer needed to have enough rank and be at school all year long. Who else could fit these criteria?"