I'm not sure if I hear Jojin correctly. I stand there like a malfunctioning bot. My ears must be faulty. My heartbeat glitches as it skips in rhythm like I'm made of wires and coding. Is this what it feels like to break?

"So, will you do it?" Jojin asks, leaning forward. His elbows rest on his knees as he watches me closely. The bastard really had given the order to kill someone.

"Do I have a choice?" I ask, knowing what his answer will be before the words slip through his oversized canines.

"Do you ever?" He cocks one thick brow at me.

Any choice I ever had vanished the moment I witnessed one of the lorkins murder a human in the alley behind my apartment building. Wrong place, wrong time. I was almost dead too when the lorkin turned his gun on me, the barrel pointing directly at the spot between my eyes. When he saw my pointed ears, realization of what I was dawned on his face and my brain got to stay in my skull, but he didn't lower his gun. Instead, he delivered me to Jojin, and to keep the secret of what I'd seen in that alley, I was given my last choice the House of Horns would ever give me—join ranks as one of them or die. Jojin had said he'd make my death quick out of respect for my ancestors, but he'd rather use me for the treasure he believed me to be.

I know what I am versus what I'm supposed to be. I'm not destined to be legendary. My ears are smaller than the images of elves I've downloaded on my gigapad. My frame is shorter and bonier, my voice lacking the musical lilt I've heard in the videos I watch and the songs I listen to. I am one of them, but I'm not, like a torn page from a book. At least I have two things going for me though—I'm quick and I'm smart.

"Do you want me to kill him fast or slow?" I ask as if either option is fine. The thought of ending a life crawls on my skin like a spider, threatening to reveal my discontent as the lorkins watch intently for my reaction.

Jojin chuckles, a smirk twisting at his lips. "Now that, Little Elf, is a choice that I will give you."

How kind.

Leaning back in his white leather throne, Jojin glances at his son and then back at me. "Before you leave, go with Venjo. He will brief you on the situation."

I turn my gaze to his son, who is already glaring at me with such ferocity that he has to be imagining my painful death. Maybe he is wishing the lorkin who'd brought me here those months ago would have shot me instead. What is his deal?

I stare right back at Venjo, unblinking, holding my gaze until he is the first one to look away. If only I won a prize.

"Come," he tells me, stepping away from his father's chair. He doesn't give me another glance as he clasps his hands behind his back and walks toward the door I entered through.

I turn to follow him, but Jojin's voice stops me cold in my tracks. "One more thing, Little Elf. You come back here, and the job isn't done, then this partnership is through. I don't care that you're the last elf in Voltyss, or that you deliver shipments faster than any of them." He points his fat thumb in the direction of his cronies, who grumble under their breath at his words. When he spins his gaze onto them, their traps snap shut. Then he looks back at me. "Prove your loyalty to this gang or I'll take your ears as a souvenir before I throw you out of the city and into the Evernight."

My face grows cold, my throat swelling until I'm unable to swallow. With my hands quivering at my sides, I nod curtly at Boss and pivot on my heel. I ignore the whispers of the lorkins watching me, follow Venjo out of the door, and let it slam closed behind me. Oops.

Halfway down the white hallway, Venjo unlocks a door. He lifts his head and his eyes dart in my direction when he hears the door slam shut. His brow knits into a frown as he searches my face, and for a flicker of a moment, it looks like his expression softens before he turns his attention back to the door. He pushes it open and disappears inside without another glance at me.

I enter, unsurprised by the pristine whiteness of it. Every room in the House of Horns seems to be the same, with neon light symbols hanging from the walls. Except for the cellar, and I refuse to think about that place. This specific room holds the scent of cleaning chemicals. Many times, I've heard the beatings of rival gang members behind the closed doors and the pleas echoing through the hall. I try not to let the fact that someone might've died where I'm standing affect me. There is no way Venjo doesn't smell my fear. Maybe that is why he's gone still in the middle of the room.

"You're frightened," Venjo says, his back facing me.

"You're wrong," I lie, stepping by him and plopping into one of the black armchairs against the wall. With one hand, I brush my long white hair over my shoulder, trying to seem as cool and confident as possible.

"You can fool the rest of them, but you can't fool me." His voice is hard like stone, the weight of his words crushing me.

"And you know nothing." I gather up as much anger as I can muster and throw it in his direction with narrowed eyes and a clenched jaw. "Go ahead and brief me so that I can get on with this job."

"Is that what you really want?" he asks. "Because the scent I'm picking up from you right now says otherwise."

I cross my arms over my chest. "Isn't that some kind of invasion of privacy? Stop smelling me."

"You're the one who's clogged up my fresh air."

"Well, if it wasn't for your father ordering me to kill someone—"

"So, you admit it." Venjo sits down in the chair across from me, a gigatable between us, a savage glint in his eyes. "You're scared." He leans forward and begins tapping on the table, the glass lighting up as it comes to life.

I don't reply. There's no use and I'm not about to admit out loud that he's right. I would argue in the dark alley with Grit and Grubble.

Venjo types away as he gazes down at the gigatable, a strand of his dark wavy hair falling down across his brow, his semi-sharp claws clicking against the glass. I'd always wondered why he files his claws down, but as I observe his hands, I realize why. It must be annoying trying to type with long claws.

Colors, numbers, and letters whiz by on the screen of the gigatable, and then it stops on a picture of a young man. Venjo taps a button and the image flips to my side of the table.

The male is standing on the sidewalk of a busy street. There is a deteriorating wall behind him and the blue glow of protective and distinguishing lights. The outer-district's lights. The Cobalt District.

In the image, his hands are tucked in his jean pockets, his frame illuminated by blinking red sign above him, his head turned to the side as he gazes at something down the street. Black tattoos curl up the side of his neck, disappearing into his t-shirt and trailing down both of his arms. His charcoal hair is buzzed close on both sides of his head but remains long enough on the top to flop to one side. A cigarette dangles between his lips, smoke rising from its burning end.

Above the picture is his name in block letters—Macon Falcove.

"I'm guessing this is the mage," I muse when Venjo says nothing. I lift my gaze to him to find him already looking at me. He clears his throat and glances down at the image that lights up the table.

"Yes," he says. "This is Falcove. Electric mage. Ranking member of the Starfoxes."

"So, he's a thief."

I've had a brief encounter with a Starfox before, and I wish I hadn't. The shifty little sneak swiped my gigapad and ten shinies before I even had a chance to register their hands were inside my coat. If Macon Falcove really is a Starfox, then maybe I won't feel so guilty after I end him to save my own ass.

"What did he do to piss off the boss?" I ask Venjo.

He swipes, revealing a grid of images and a silent video that plays on loop. With a tap on the screen, the video enlarges, encompassing the whole gigatable. Two white freighters that I recognize as the House of Horns' pull up to a garage in a dimly lit part of Voltyss. I notice a flicker of movement in the alley next to the building as four lorkins exit the freighters and open the back hatches. Large black crates sit stacked in two columns on the inside. The lorkins begin to unload, oblivious to the watcher from the alley. Once all twelve of the crates are re-stacked in front of the sliding steel door, Macon Falcove slides out from the mouth of the alley like a snake's forked tongue. His prey stands no chance against his strike.

I've seen some crazy shit. But I've never seen the raw magic that happens next in the video.

Macon raises his hand, his fingers pointing up at the sky, palm facing the lorkins. They grapple for their guns at their waists, but they aren't quick enough. The black tattoos lining Macon's skin flare electric blue, the swirls swaying like flames in the wind. Four bolts of lightning shoot from his hand and into the lorkins, who thrash violently before falling to the pavement. Then the video stops, and I find myself breathless, chest rising and falling as if I'd been there.

"Did he kill them?" I ask.

"No," Venjo replies. "But the electric shock was enough to leave them cold for a few hours. Grit and Grubble had to load up their bodies and bring them back here."

"And the cargo?"

"Stolen, of course. The garage is one of ours. It's a storage facility to keep our extra light weapons when the Mercs come sniffing around." Ah, the Mercs, the Voltyss Court's favorite and only anti-crime force—the angry human men with big guns. They give the gangs plenty of trouble, but what would their might be against a mage with this kind of power?

"If he dropped four full-grown lorkin, what makes your father think that I stand a chance against him?"

I'm dead. One-hundred-and-twenty-percent-dead.

"I tried to tell him you weren't ready," Venjo says, watching the video as it replays. "But you took the job in a heartbeat."

"Because I have no choice." I raise my voice, stating the obvious.

"There's always a choice," Venjo counters, looking up at me from under his brow.
"And there's no going back on the one you made tonight."

"Right." I shake my head at him and rise from the chair. "Kill or die. You guys really have to stop giving me such amazing options."

"If it were my choice," Venjo growls. "It'd be me doing the job. If it were my choice, you wouldn't even be here. You don't belong here."

I'm not going to lie to myself and say his words don't sting a little, because they do. Being the last elf in the city has already promised me a wretched loneliness, and now I'm even more unwanted, despite how much I dislike the House of Horns. I don't glance at Venjo as I dodge around his chair and march to the door. "Well, lucky for you, if I die on this suicide mission, you'll get your wish."

"Alyndra," Venjo starts. He rises from his chair as I grip the doorknob and yank open the door. "That's not what I—"

I slam the door so hard, the frame trembles.

From the room comes a crash of something being thrown against a wall. The sound echoes down the hallway as my boots click toward the entrance and I slip out into the city.