“I won’t hurt you,” I whispered to the rat. The promise was a plea to my Eclipse nature to please, please behave. A heavy pressure built behind my eyes, and I knew they’d turned as black as a shark’s.
Images of Singapore flashed through my mind again, as fresh and raw as if they’d happened just moments past, not two months ago.
The challenger was Thomas N’gaori, a promising young martial artist from the work camps outside the overcity.
It had all happened so fast.
Thomas had lunged forward with a double palm strike aimed at my chest. Twin blades of jinsei had erupted from the simple cord bracelets around his wrists in the same instant he’d thrust a clumsy serpent strike from his palms.
My mind had registered the attack a split second too late to defend against it.
My Eclipse nature, however, was faster than the speed of thought and reacted to protect me before I could stop it. The truth I’d hidden from everyone, even myself when I could, was that I wouldn’t have stopped my core even if I’d been fast enough.
The contender came into that ring ready to kill me. And in the moment when he’d revealed that intent, I’d been beyond furious. If he’d only used a different tactic, some trick that would have immobilized or stunned me so he could score a point, it all would have worked out differently.
But that’s not what the contender had done. He’d elevated the stakes in a stupid attempt to defeat the School’s champion.
In the instant before his death, Thomas had looked at me with the same open, hopeless eyes as the rat crouched at my feet. He’d seen his death coming like a freight train and hadn’t been fast or strong enough to avoid it.
“I won’t hurt you,” I promised the rat.
My aura filled with the rat’s feral and animal aspects as our breaths cycled through my core. I licked my lips at the taste of the creature’s essence. It would be so easy to pluck out its core. No more than a moment’s thought.
Just like Thomas N’gaori.
Alive, vital, one moment.
A dead husk the next.
No.
Killing was too easy. I wouldn’t give in to that urge again. I was the master of my core, not the other way around.
I forced my body to obey my command, lowered my hand to my side, and stood up.
The rat squeaked and rushed off, frightened by the exuberant footsteps headed down the old passageway.
“What are you doing down here?” Clem, one of the few people in the School who’d stood by me after I’d been labelled a thief, called out. I was relieved to hear her voice, rather than someone like Hagar. I didn’t need any more stress while I was wrestling with my Eclipse nature. “We’ve been looking all over for you!”
“Could you have found a creepier place to hang out?” Eric, a member of the Resplendent Suns who’d befriended me along with Clem, practically shouted the question at me.
Beams of light fell across my back and cast long, distorted shadows down the hall. I took a deep breath and pushed the urge down deep. That had been far too close. I waited until the pressure behind my eyes had retreated and then turned around.
Clem shifted the glare of her jinsei lantern away from my eyes, then slapped Eric’s hand down when he failed to do the same. Abi towered behind them, his face hidden in shadow. Of my three friends, he was the one who’d been most disappointed that I’d stolen from Tycho Reyes. I hoped time had mended that fence, because I didn’t think I could go through a year of his disapproval.
“I was looking for Hahen,” I said. “I thought the alchemy laboratory was this way, but I guess not.”
There was a kernel of truth in that. I wanted to see the ancient rat spirit again to thank him for the training he’d given me. There hadn’t been time to hunt him down at the end of last year, and I’d regretted it ever since.
“He’s definitely not down here,” Eric said. When he wrinkled his nose like that, the diagonal scar he’d earned in last year’s final challenge really stood out. “Let’s grab some breakfast before the newbs arrive and get all the bacon.”
“Buffet’s open,” I offered as I headed toward my friends.
“We know that, silly,” Clem said. “When we didn’t find you there, we came looking for you. It’s a good thing you stopped moving around, or we’d have never found you.”
Clem passed through a shaft of early morning sunlight that highlighted all the ways she’d changed over the summer. She’d chopped her dark hair off short and dyed the remaining spikes neon pink. She still wore the sky-blue robes of the Thunder’s Children clan, though this year she’d added bold scrivenings that glowed with shifting white and pink patterns around her waist. Her robe’s’ style was also far from traditional, with no arms and a skirt slit far up to the hip on both sides. She wore bright pink knee-length bike shorts under the robes and a pair of rugged black jika-tabi with glowing white laces and chunky soles that added an inch to her height.
“You look awesome,” I said. She really did. The look suited her more than I would have expected.
“And how do I look?” Abi razzed me. He’d grown over the summer and seemed more like a full-grown man than the tall teenager he’d been the last time I’d seen him. His smile lit up his face when he spoke, even though it didn’t reach his probing eyes. His robes were far more utilitarian than Clem’s and didn’t look anything like the
