“That’s Charlotte, right?” I nodded toward the younger woman.
Genie gave an approving nod. “Bingo!”
A few marble statues caught my eye as my gaze drifted away from the stage and back across the hall. I’d missed them the first time. They were embedded everywhere, gracing the front of the stage, the recesses in the walls, and all the cloisters opposite. Smaller than the dragons, they were no less striking. I spied a chimera, a griffin, a unicorn, a quartet of kelpies pulling a chariot, a pair of loup-garous, and a cluster of feathered snakes, amongst more obscure monsters that I’d seen in my dreams. Wherever I looked, I found more, as if I were playing an elaborate game of hide and seek with these statues, and I was “it.”
Gradually, the hubbub of the crowd died, and Victoria Jules took center stage. Her voice boomed around the hall, making me think there was some magical amplification on display there. I couldn’t see a mic, but it sounded like she had twenty.
“Welcome, everyone, to a new season at the Basani Institute,” she began, drawing everyone into her formidable gravitational pull. “As we draw away from the hardships of winter, we must look to the buds of oncoming spring—the nascent sprouts who will bask in the Institute’s knowledge and bloom into fearsome hunters under the tutelage of our expert educators. Please, put your hands together for the new arrivals, for it may be the encouragement they need to endure the trials to come.”
She paused for applause, and the crowd gave it to her. Reverence hung thick in the air.
“For our new students, I would advise patience and modesty as you learn what it is to be a hunter. There will not be a single day that passes that you will think of as easy. If you do, you are not doing it correctly. As those who have graduated will tell you, the real world of hunting is far more challenging than anything you will face here. We will prepare you, but your education will never stop.” Victoria surveyed the hall with her intense black eyes and swept a hand through her oh-so-cool hair. “You will hurt, and you will curse the day you came here, but you will build bonds that last a lifetime. And you will understand that your limits are merely guidelines.
“To our existing classes, I would advise continued patience and modesty for you, also. You walk in the shadows of giants: the great hunters who have gone before you. There are still mountains to climb, and you would do well to remember that.”
A rumble of laughter made its way around the hall, with those in black suits giving each other knowing nudges. They were the graduates—the ones who’d made it. It wouldn’t be an easy ride to get there, and I didn’t want it to be. I would work my ass off to get one of those black suits and prove that I could make something of myself, curse or no curse.
“To the graduates, I also advise patience and modesty, for you are not kings amongst peasants. Your purpose is to keep the magical and the human worlds safe from the dangers of monsters. You will never have laurels or glory, nor should you expect them. That is not why we do this. If you still think you will gain glory out of this, I have to assume you’ve got wax in your ears or you think I’m joking.”
A richer chuckle rippled around the hall. There was a reason she’d ended up as the head huntswoman, and this speech went some way toward proving why. The crowd hung on her every word, even though they weren’t all rainbows and butterflies. She told it how it was, and I appreciated her for that.
Victoria raised her hands and settled the hall again. “You might have noticed that I mentioned patience and modesty a few times there. That wasn’t an accident.” She cast a fleeting look at me. “No one is born with all the knowledge, or all the skills, or all the talent. This is a perilous profession with a low survival rate. There are no assurances. One mistake can cost even the finest hunter dearly, but that is part and parcel of the life you have all chosen. It is the tough grunt work that keeps the world safe, with our only reward being the continued security of the global covens, fueled by the energy that the beasts we capture give to the Bestiary. We are hunters and captors, not killers.”
We are not fuel… Leviathan’s voice crept into my skull, a memory of a past encounter, and his words raced to attack Victoria’s. My heart began to race, my throat filling with cotton wool as I tried to drag in a breath or two. All my life, that had been the status quo—beasts were fuel, and magicals needed that fuel. But to think of those creatures in their boxes, maybe feeling the same way that I’d felt in my dream… It swung my moral compass a little, letting in a trickle of doubt that I hoped wouldn’t shatter the dam and unleash hell inside my head.
“Are you okay?” Genie put a hand on my shoulder, interrupting my small panic attack.
I closed my eyes for a second to let the world calm around me. “It’s warm, that’s all.”
I leaned against the pillar for support as Victoria carried on. “There is nothing glamorous about this profession. If you are looking for celebrity, you are in the wrong place.”
I wouldn’t say that around your founders. I glanced at the Basani twins and saw a flicker of annoyance cross their identical faces. Once upon a time, my uncle Finch had told me tales about those two, and he hadn’t exactly been generous with the flattery. He’d met them in some strange monastery back in the day, and he’d said the twins had been charlatans with an impeccable
