S triker must choose, and then I can judge him.

I remove my hand from the wand, waiting for him to show me who he really is.

I’m prepared for him to choose destruction.

I’m ready for him to take control of the students and command them to turn on me, just like Vulture did. I expect him to take hold of the ultimate power and use it for his own gains.

Blood oozes from the bullet wounds in his chest and the new cuts on his body from his fight with Hadrix.

With every labored breath he takes, the light from the wand increases.

Its myriad powers of deception and desire pollute the air around us.

To my confusion, he seems intent only on holding my gaze.

His lips part as he inhales a deep breath, stronger than before.

I sense the wand’s power, giving him a surge of energy a moment before he raises it off his stomach and points it at me.

“Death,” he says.

Power from the wand shrieks upward, streaking past me, so close to my face that it burns my cheek.

I twist to see Hadrix creeping up behind me just as the wand’s power hits him.

He drops to his knees as the life disappears instantly from his eyes, and he drops to the soil beside his wife’s body.

I’m still crouched beside Striker, and now his hand touches my cheek, just his fingertips, as he holds the wand clear of my face.

The gentle way his fingers graze my jaw and one corner of my lips shocks me.

I freeze, my heart thumping harder than I expected, while my snakes slither around my shoulders and waist, their movements calming.

Striker’s arm drops back to his chest. Without a word, he presses the wand tightly against his heart.

I’m not sure what he’s doing until the molten lava that flows through the open veins down his arms begins to spread across his hand, the fiery substance flowing along the surface of the wand now clutched to his chest.

The lava lines on his torso break free from their confines and flow toward the wand, sliding across his skin until the white bone is covered in fire and no longer visible.

His eyes close, and the lava disperses, drawing away from where the wand used to be, leaving nothing behind.

My eyes widen to see that the wand is…

Gone.

He destroyed it in the fires of hell that he carries within himself.

He chose.

His face is smudged with dirt and blood. His incisors rapidly disappear. The fire in his eyes is finally dying.

He won’t last long now, but his choice has determined that I won’t be the one to kill him.

The strangest feeling fills my chest. As if… I’m about to lose something that might have once been precious to me.

I push that feeling away.

It has no place in my mind or my body.

I’m already turning to the human men with guns, among whom the tension is rising to a breaking point. I don’t fear them, but I won’t stand for them killing anyone else who doesn’t deserve to die today.

I quickly rise to my feet, but Striker’s whisper stops me.

“Peyton,” he says. “I choose you.”

Perplexed, I stare back at him.

I am not to be chosen.

“I will not kill you today,” I say before I spin on my heels and hurry away from him, rushing toward the twitchy gunmen.

They all train their guns on me, although the smart ones are looking at the gaps in the fence, no doubt wishing they’d taken the chance to escape already.

Just as I step toward them, bright forms appear in the sky above me.

The assassins.

I made a deal with them to protect all of the students at Bloodwing: I promised to purge the academy of Hadrix, his wife, and his men and return four of the five assassin’s rings that Lady Tirelli stole.

In return, the assassins promised they would not hunt Striker or any other student here.

There are three Factions of assassins in the United States: the Legion based in Boston, the Dominion in Portland, and the Horde in Austin.

Every assassin is an elite warrior with no mercy for their target.

They’re all human—or supposed to be, although I know they aren’t—but control magical rings that give them superhuman strength and agility.

They live by a code of honor that requires clean kills and restricts who they’re allowed to target.

Now, there are five of them in the sky above the Academy.

Circling overhead are a Valkyrie woman with silver wings, a Keres woman with copper wings, and a Valkyrie man with wings made of shimmering electrical currents.

The Valkyrie woman is Hunter Cassidy, and the Valkyrie man is Slade Baines.

I was sent to kill Slade, and despite the odds against me, I succeeded, only to bring Slade back to life when I realized I had been manipulated.

The Keres woman carries a man whose name I remember is Cain, while Slade carries a man I’ve never seen before.

That man’s head is shaven like those of the men with guns, but that’s where the likeness stops.

He is taller and broader in the shoulders and chest, and his nose is beaten up as if he’s taken too many hits, his expression more fiercely calculating.

I quickly recall that when I made my deal with the assassins, they mentioned a man called Alexei Mason. I can only guess this is him.

As the five assassins soar overhead, Alexei’s firearm is already aimed. He and Cain take quick shots before they reach the ground.

Five men with guns fall dead, shot clean through the head.

As the assassins land, they spread out, the identification of their targets rapid and efficient in the extreme.

Despite the return fire from the remaining gunmen, five more of them fall dead to the ground.

That leaves only four remaining.

Their deaths are merciless but clean.

The assassins want death, not pain. My power tells me so.

I press my lips together with disapproval. I would not have been so lenient. My justice would have been delivered with pain.

Hunter alights on the ground nearest to me and runs toward me, but Slade shouts a warning to her. “Hunter, stop!”

She slows down, her gaze following the snakes twining around my body, before she finally draws to a stop. She turns to glance at the students, who are all waking up from the trance the White Wand held them in.

Some of the students are shouting, and many are crying, but all of them are backing away from the assassins.

They were led to believe that the assassins would come to kill them. It’s how Hadrix manipulated all of us, using our need to protect each other against us.

Oh, how love and fear were used as weapons against us.

I quickly take a moment to assess each of the students’ hearts to determine that all of them may live.

Many of them are staring at me, their faces pale. They may have been controlled by the White Wand, but they will remember what they did, the way they tried to hurt me.

Lucinda’s brown eyes fill with tears as she tries to step toward me. She was my first friend here. Now, her face is filled with horror. “Peyton…”

I raise my voice to a commanding shout. “The assassins won’t hurt you! Do not fight them, and they will leave you be.”

My shout seems to calm all of the students. Another pang strikes across my chest as I remember the trust they placed in me—and still do, it seems.

Hunter waits for me several paces away, her silver-green eyes raw with sadness as she allows me to approach. It seems that the absence of emotion in my own eyes upsets her. Again, my power tells me this.

Slade is a protective force beside her. He is the first to speak. “Peyton?”

I focus on the important information. “Striker Draven doesn’t deserve to die today. But I can’t help him. He doesn’t have long to live.”

Maybe a little more time now that he absorbed some of the wand’s energy.

I continue, “Whatever power I had to heal someone else is gone now. If you wish to help him, you will take him to the Saber Lane Witch, Tanzanina Gray. What you do with him after that is up to you.”

“We’ll help him,” Hunter promises, glancing at Slade, who gives her a nod.

He quickly strides to Striker, carefully leveraging the dying hellhound into his arms before he shoots into the sky, disappearing with Striker within seconds.

“You will find four assassin’s rings in that box,” I continue to Hunter, pointing to a box that lies several paces away from Hadrix’s body. It’s the container in which he and Vulture kept the White Wand.

As I consider the box for a moment longer, I detect the scent of panther shifter blood that lingers around one of the rings within the box. I’m not sure how that blood got there, but it doesn’t matter to me right now.

“The fifth ring you seek is located inside a book in the fourth-floor library. It seems that all five rings were here after all.”

“All five,” Hunter whispers, her shoulders sinking with relief.

When I made my deal with her and the other assassins, Hunter revealed to me that Lady Tirelli had stolen five assassin’s rings, each one dangerous, and that Striker’s stepfather, Oliver, was using the missing rings to blackmail the assassins.

Worse, if the Magical Magnate—the corrupt governing body of supernaturals—found out about the missing rings, they would use it as an excuse to take control of the assassins.

Hunter’s intense relief washes over me. She is bound by the Assassin’s Code. All of her kills must be sanctioned. She can’t take action against the corrupt or the cruel at her own whim.

I do not have such limits.

“The dryad can show you where the library is.” I point at Lucinda, ensuring Hunter knows she’s the dryad I’m speaking of before I return my attention fully to the assassins.

“In the library, you’ll find the fifth ring inside a small compartment cut out of the pages of a book about hell and damnation.

Specifically starting at the page about Furies. ”

Lucinda seems to have given up on waiting for me to come to her. She hurries toward me before I can turn away from Hunter.

Lucinda reaches out for me but stops when my snakes arc toward her, forcing her to take a step back. Her eyes widen with shock. “Peyton?”

“Follow the assassins,” I say, stepping away from her.

“But…” She dares to snag my arm, searching my face. “Where are you going? You need to stay. We have to talk. We need to figure out the future…”

I give her a surprised glance. “Those decisions are yours, not mine. I’m going to find my sisters. I’m going to find a place without horror or pain.”

I need peace.

Even here, among those who try hard to rein in any darkness in their hearts, I am confronted by all of the emotions that can betray even the best of intentions.

Fear, most of all.

Easing out of Lucinda’s hold, I levitate upward, dragging in the clear air and exhaling the scent of blood as I rise all the way up into the clouds.

My sisters are calling me, beckoning me to my new home.