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“Shame the tail got damaged,” I say.

“Yes,” he agrees. “Shame. Anyway, congratulations, Mr Shaw. I look forward to seeing what you do here. And glad the arm stayed sturdy. But if you’ll excuse me—”

I take Leo’s gift from under my arm. Most of the fabric falls away to expose the thing, and the dean steps back.

I have the manticore’s stinger in my hand.

For the first time since the fight, I feel alive. Adrenaline thrums in my blood, and the power—that feeling of total control—makes me near giddy. I have the stinger up against the dean’s neck, and he is pressed against the wall. He raises both his hands in surrender, but it’s his eyes that give me worry.

There’s no fear in them at all.

This is his game, of course. I am a new player.

“Noli esse stultus, Cassius,” the dean drawls. Do not be a fool. “Pro hoc pugnasti et trucidasti et immolasti.”

For this you fought, slaughtered, and sacrificed.

I press the stinger closer and he flinches, which is how I know for certain the threat of the stinger is real. But I think then of how many of us have died. This was a culling.

Slaughter is too chaotic a word. Cull is better. This was deliberate. It was planned.

London is overcrowding, and something has got to give.

The good in me, the thing I wanted my prayers to nurture, whispers, "Nihil boni ex hoc loco nisi mors veniet.”

Nothing good will come from this place except death.

And the dean grins like he’s won this round before he’s even said anything.

“Monstra quae opponimus crescet semper fortior si id destruis quod ea retinet.”

And he is right, of course. The monsters we face will grow ever stronger should you destroy that which keeps them at bay.

That is the function of this place. This little society. And my function will be cannon fodder unless, as Leo put it, I can learn enough to survive.

“What mantle will you be pledging for Mr Jones?” the dean asks me. I didn’t realise I was moving my hand, but I have already lowered the stinger.

I think about what I can do. I can step forward and paralyse the man, and kill him. And this will do nothing, because the University is an institution, and all of London is built around it. I can destroy the wards and doom all of us. I can try to fight.

Helplessness claws at the edges of my apathy until I breathe deep and bury it again. “Hunter,” I tell him.

I turn tail and walk back to the apartments.

* * *

I think, in another life, I didn’t know who I was. I was doing this for my mother. I was doing it for Thaddeus. And I wanted all these bastards to like me. How funny is that? That I was so preoccupied with being liked?

Well, I am a murderer, now. And I can’t be sorry for it. As Virgil said: Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.

I am not doing this for anyone else but myself.

Not for Leo Shaw. Not for the soft heat of his lips against mine.

But for Cassius Jones.

Because, by God, I want to live.

END