Page 17 of The Pretty Savage

"But they gave you an invitation for two people, correct?" Who the fuck were these people she was so afraid of? "I mean, you're just doing what they asked you to do, right?"

"Yeah… I don't know. I have never met them, you know? The letter appeared in my room two days ago, and up until today I had no idea if I should go or not. We've all heard stories about them, about the things they've done throughout the years, and I'm not sure if I want to be a part of that."

I wasn't sure if I wanted to get myself entangled in something like that either, but what other choice did I have? I had no information about Tyler and what he did during his time at the Academy, and I didn't even know what Adrian Zylla looked like, and if he was going to be there, then I definitely had to go.

"Is this an initiation?" I asked.

"I guess." Yolanda shrugged, her eyes downcast, shoulders slumped, and I knew I was slowly losing her.

And I couldn't lose my one connection to that place.

"Look." I took a deep breath, unsure of how to deal with a girl that was obviously terrified. "I'm not gonna lie, but I would be afraid too."

"Really?" She beamed at those words, and I had a feeling Yolanda wasn't somebody who would often hear that from another person. "I mean, you look like you're not afraid of anything." If only she knew. "And my older sister often says I'm afraid even of my own shadow."

I wasn't going to lie and say I knew what that felt like, because I was trained not to be afraid of things that lurk in the dark. Because I was one of those things. My fears had nothing to do with the real world and the monsters walking among us. I was terrified that I would wake up one day and regret every single decision in my life.

I was terrified I would just go through the motions, the habits, and I would realize that everything I did, everything I thought was a good thing, would be just another lie, just like everything else I had uncovered in the last couple of months.

I thought The Schatten was my home, my family, that one place where I wouldn't have to pretend, but the lies I had uncovered that brimmed underneath that seemingly perfect surface were what had me rethinking my entire life. I didn't want to kill people for a living, whether they were good or bad. It wasn't our job to determine who deserved to live and who deserved to die, and it was a constant battle deep inside my bones where I had no idea what to do.

On one hand I wanted to punish those that had wronged the innocent ones, like that man from the alley, because I knew law enforcement would do jackshit to put him behind bars. He didn't deserve to win, but those same thoughts didn't make me better than anyone else. They just made me seem like someone that was playing God, and I wasn't so sure I liked that version of myself.

I loved the thrill, the chase, the fact that I could perhaps do something good with the skills I had, but out there, in the real world, where people lived freely, completely unaware of the fact that darkness existed in every single pore of our society, I was a nobody.

And I fucking wanted to be somebody.

Someone that mattered.

Someone that loved.

Someone that was loved.

Someone that could go out on her balcony early in the morning and drink that first sip of coffee and light up that first cigarette, without having to look at the people passing down below on the street and think the worst of them.

And I had no idea if I would ever be able to train myself not to think that way. I had no idea if I would ever be able to look at another human being without starting to analyze their moves, their speech pattern, their ticks, and the little things they thought no one else saw. I had no idea if I would ever be able to go out for a coffee with somebody else without trying to uncover the skeletons existing in their closets.

And the saddest thing was, every single one of us, no matter how good or bad we were, had those skeletons. There was not a single person who could say they were a saint throughout their lives. The guilty had to pay for their crimes, but what happened when the guilty didn't deserve to die?

"Earth to Vega." Yolanda pulled me back from my reverie, and for a moment there I didn't want to be back. I didn't want to be at the Academy, where every single wall, with every single picture hanging, and every single word that came out of Yolanda's mouth had reminded me this was the place that destroyed what little semblance of innocence I had left.

Tyler was the only person that brought it out of me, because even as a child I was aware of the shadows dancing in the periphery of my eyes, calling my name, beckoning me into their cold embrace, and when he had died, I stopped fighting them. I stopped trying to be better, trying to look at the situation objectively.

No, I became one of them. I became the weapon The Schatten was training me to be. The ruthless killer with no remorse, and only recently had I started thinking about all those lives I had destroyed, and I would never know if they were truly guilty of the crimes The Schatten had shared with me.

"Sorry." I smiled, trying to shake off the fog from my mind. "I think traveling for as long as I did has started messing with my mind."

"Oh, I totally get that. I remember when I had to fly from Australia to Colombia, and that was not fun. Like, at all."

"No, I can imagine it wasn't." Silence descended on us as I took a good look at her. Her blonde hair was tied in a low ponytail, and the innocence still shining in her eyes told me she wasn't as cut out for this life as her family was forcing her to be, but sometimes we didn't have a choice. Sometimes those choices were taken away from us even before we were able to say our first words, and being born into certain families meant our destinies were decided for us whether or not we wanted them to be.

And Yolanda was most definitely one of those people that was born into the wrong family.

I had no idea why, but maybe it wouldn't be so bad to have a friend here. Even with all my pretenses and all these masks I would have to wear, it would be good to have someone to talk to, to pretend I was a normal twenty-year-old with typical boy problems and whatever else it was that the girls my age usually talked about.

"Look, Yo," I started. "If you're not feeling comfortable with me going tonight, I really don't have to. The last thing I would want is for you to get into any sort of trouble, and I have a feeling that they aren't people who forgive all that easily. Besides, you've only just met me, so it is understandable why you would feel like you cannot trust me yet."

"Oh, no." She frowned. "That's not it at all."

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