INDIGO

I looked down at the street far below as the wind wisped my hair, the sun bracing my cheeks. A bird swooped by and I smiled. It had been such a long time since I felt free, as if I would float away in the wind.

In just an hour, the city morphed. The previously empty streets were bustling, the dreary clouds parting for the bright sun. I had to be careful not to cast a shadow.

The Ravens plan was simple. They would navigate my mother through the streets and onto one of the underground trains. From there, they would carry her across the nation to wherever they needed her to be. The mercenary they hired would work as security, watching over them from the moment they stepped out of a stolen Assassin pod to the train.

I still didn't know why they would detour all the way south from Cressida to go through Orleans. There were times when I myself thought we were too close to the Cárcel del Muro, and we were barely on the Assassin's radar, as far as I knew. The Ravens were taking a risk by passing straight past it while being one of the most wanted people in the nation. Assassins would be walking out of the prison day and night. Someone could easily recognize them or my mother.

My mother.

It was strange to be thinking of her again as someone still living. I only ever thought of her in my nightmares, a shadow haunting the memories of the past, not the present. But here she was, still in the center of the massive game of murder and lies. And, if we succeeded, I was about to thrust myself right back in with her.

The clock tower struck twelve and bells chimed throughout the city.

Here we go.

The Ravens would be unloading her out of the pod now and, eventually, passing through this street. Cree, who's posted two blocks away, will throw up red confetti into the air when they're beginning to arrive. My job was to take care of the mercenary guarding them. Wolf, who was somewhere further down the street selling cakes, would accidentally crash into Trevor, distracting him while slipping a note to Trysha.

If Trysha was truly on our side, she would follow our instructions and lead them into a small alley, away from the attention of the masses, and Nydia would take care of the rest. If not, things would start to get a little messy.

It didn't take long for red confetti to burst into the air from another roof. The people below laughed and clapped, writing it off as another spout of celebration for the Blood Battles, despite it not being the winning team's colors.

I waited before moving from my perch, watching the roof for any further signals. After a pause, two consecutive blasts shot into the air.

The mercenary isn't on Cree's side.

The mercenary was on my side of the road, which meant I didn't have to cross the street, but I still needed to find him. Looking down the street, I found no silhouettes moving across the roofs. He must be slipping through the buildings.

I crouched down and grabbed the edge of the roof before lowering myself into the open window I crawled out through. The window led to a dark and warm stairwell. I sighed as I crouched on the windowsill and pressed my back against the wall, doing my best to blend into the shadows.

The window I sat upon opened to the street, but the mercenary wouldn't be coming through there. He would be jumping from one building's windows to another, following the Ravens below. Due to my position at the corner of the building, I could expect him to crawl through the window adjacent to mine.

I shut my window, allowing the tinted glass to block out the light and cover my position. I would allow the mercenary to slip into the stairwell and then render him unconscious. I squinted through the distant window, waiting.

I watched as the window of the neighboring building slid open. He's here.

I launched myself off of the windowsill and caught the openly hanging pipes in the ceiling. I curled upward, wrapping my legs around the pipe so I was hanging upside down like a spider. I cursed as my abdomen and shoulders screamed from the effort. I haven't been working out properly these days.

I crawled across the pipe, still upside down, and hung above the window the mercenary was about to crawl through. With any luck, he won't look up when checking the room and jump down onto the stairs. I can jump behind him and knock him out fast.

The window slid open and a head poked in, looking down at the stairs.

"All clear," he whispered.

Who is he talking to?

"You don't have to say it," another man replied from outside, his voice loud. "It would be easier for me to just knock them out."

Why are there two people? There was only one person meeting up with the Ravens yesterday. Perhaps their services always came as a package deal. It didn't matter. I could still knock out two average guards without much trouble, despite not being in a proper fight in months.

"You don't need to rub it in my face all the time," the first man said as he jumped down. "I get it. You're a precious assassin who likes to pretend he's better than all of us."

The second man's an assassin.

Shit.

This would be much harder than I expected, depending on the Assassin's skills. In fact, what was an Assassin even doing here?

The Assassin poked his head through the window. "I'm not pretending. I am better than all of you."

I watched him closely as he jumped down onto the stairs far below. He landed in perfect form and stood up quickly. The Assassin was skilled enough to prove to be trouble.

As they climbed the stairs, I followed, crawling across the pipes, listening closely.

"If that's the case, why don't you run back to your school."

"Because I'm better than them too. Besides, school is boring."

"You only have one year left."

"So? I'm not spending another minute there. Like I said, it's boring."

So the Assassin was some rebellious, egotistical runaway fifth year from Evandor. Normally, the school officials would've hunted him down no matter where he is and given him a proper and very publicly humiliating punishment, but I suppose everyone has their hands full with the Ravens.

"Whatever you say," the mercenary mumbled and climbed the last few steps.

I needed to knock out the mercenary and get him out of the way first before dealing with the Assassin. It would've been better if the mercenary was behind the Assassin, but I didn't get to choose the situation.

I jumped down onto the first landing, right in front of the mercenary, and punched him in the face, then the gut, before using his imbalance and disorientation to my advantage by kicking him sideways. He crashed into the railing and toppled right over it, falling to the next set of stairs far below. Blood seeped from his head.

One down.

The Assassin, upon seeing his companion crash to the floor, came to his senses and attacked, tackling me through the doors.

We crashed to the ground in a dark, half-lit hallway. He climbed on top of me, fist raised, ready to punch, but I grabbed his wrist and twisted while kicking. He grunted as he fell to the side. I brought my foot down on his face in an arc and couldn't help the glee rising when I heard him cry out in pain.

I bashed his face again and was about to do it a third time when he caught my foot mid-air and twisted. I writhed under the pain spiking up my leg and turned onto my stomach to regain control of my leg, but he already got to his feet.

"I'm an Assassin," he huffed as he dragged me across the floor back towards the stairs. His bloody face was filled with rage as he snarled. I struggled and kicked to no avail. "You are nothing."

He dragged me back into the stairway and I clenched my fists. I wasn't going to let him throw me down the stairs and I sure as hell wasn't going to let him snarl over me. I twisted back around onto my back despite the pain flaring up my leg and flicked my wrist. A knife slid into my hand.

"And I'm an Alpha."

His eyes went wide for a split second before I flung the knife straight into his left eye. He screamed and let go of my leg, covering his face with his hands as blood cascaded down his arms and onto the floor. I climbed to my feet and pushed him against the railing, forcing his hands away from his face. I didn't care about the blood spraying my cheek or the few drops that fell in my mouth.

"You are nothing," I hissed and flung him down the stairs.

He rolled down the steps and crashed into the wall, head first. His body went limp. He didn't move. Blood pooled around him.

I stood in the silence looking at the scene I created, and I realized that even after the months I spent trying to reject every ounce of me that craved for blood, I could look at the dead body of a foolish boy younger than me and not feel an ounce of remorse.

A cold breeze swept through the halls. Someone opened a window. Sure enough, I turned to find Wolf walking towards me, peeling off a cake-covered apron that looked unnatural on him.

"Nydia's got your mom. Trysha ran before we could offer her our protection. Hopefully, she stays out of the Ravens' radar. The blond Raven escaped, but Nydia shot the other three." He paused, looking over my blood-covered face, before offering a napkin. "Did it go extremely well or horribly wrong?"

I accepted the napkin and nodded at the two bodies bleeding out on the stairs. "What do you think?"

"Considering there are only two bodies and no dismembered limbs, I'll settle for agonizingly plain."

He approached the Assassin, not even blinking as he pulled my blood-soaked knife out of his eye. "Cree and Brianna will clean up and bury the bodies."

He held out my knife to me and I paused before taking it.

"I don't feel anything," I told him.

Why would you tell him?

He studied me for a short moment, grey eyes unfazed. "Good."

I furrowed my eyebrow as he started down the hall.

What the hell does that mean?

I ran after him.

"You're not bothered by that?"

"Why should I be?"

"Because I'm a killer."

"You're an assassin," he countered.

"But I don't want to be."

He raised an eyebrow. "So you didn't enjoy the fight? The thrill? Not even a little?"

I remained silent.

He paused in his stride and turned, fully facing me. "If you want to leave your assassin days behind, that's fine. I'll support you. You won't be forced to do anything."

"But, Nisa said—"

"Nisa only said you should be put to use because you didn't say you had anything against killing. If you tell her, she'll respect your wishes. But if you truly didn't want to be an assassin, why did you agree to join this mission? Why did you threaten us during your trial despite your best senses? Why don't you feel anything?"

I glared at him. "Because some things take a while to get rid of."

"And some are meant to stay."

"You're not being very supportive right now."

He sighed. "Indigo, you can change if you want to. Plenty of Assassins leave behind their former lives and settle down quietly somewhere. But sometimes, it's so deeply ingrained into your identity that ripping away that part of your life is like peeling away your skin. You can't do it without falling apart completely."

"As if you would know. You're a Streeter."

He hesitated and his eyes seemed to darken. "I'm not."

I blinked. "What?"

"I'm not a Streeter."

My mind was whirling. "You're an Assassin?"

Wolf didn't answer, only turned and walked into a room with its window wide open. This didn't make any sense. How could he, of all people, be an Assassin?

"But you said you joined the Rebels when you were thirteen."

"I did," he said as he climbed through the window.

"Why would an Assassin join the rebellion at such a young age?"

He stepped out onto the fire escape. "My parents died. Eventually, I found a home and a purpose with the Rebels."

"There are adoption centers. You wouldn't have been left on the street. You could've found new parents in less than a week."

"I didn't go to the adoption centers. I ran."

"Why?"

"Why did you?" he retorted.

I was silent as I thought back to the night of the cavern, the way I stumbled through the woods, unsure of where I was going.

"It was too much," I whispered.

He looked up at the now cloudy sky. "We were raised as killers, Indigo. Some people can change. But for some of us, it will always be our natural instinct. Denying it will only make it worse."

I stepped onto the fire escape, now standing right next to him, looking up. He was almost as tall as Axe.

"And you're not ashamed of it?" I asked.

He leaned against the railing, looking down. "One time, I was sent to find a little boy who went missing from the base during a game of hide-and-seek. It was only a few months after I joined the Rebels, just two weeks before my fourteenth birthday. They thought he just went to get some ice cream from a new shop, but his parents were too recognizable. They weren't comfortable walking around downtown, so I volunteered.

"When I reached the ice cream shop, he wasn't there. I showed the people working a photo and they told me that he came by earlier and already left. I assumed he went back to the base, so I was about to head back. But, before I could leave the shop, I heard a scream. It was faint, small, but I could've sworn it was him. So, I snuck into the back to find him tied up. He was crying as an old man gagged him. The shop was a front for child traffickers.

"When the old man saw me, he tried to offer me a cut. Most other countries would pay a high price for Concordians since it was so hard to smuggle people past the Assassins' close eye. 'He's Indigenous, so he'll fetch an even higher price,' he said."

He took a deep breath as he looked down at his hands, shaking his head. "I played along, told them to blindfold the boy too so he won't see people's faces."

He turned to me and his voice became low, guttural. Canine. "There were six people working in the ice cream shop that day. I killed every last one of them. And the old man, I beat him until his face was hardly recognizable anymore. I was soaked in blood. I didn't care.

"So no, Indigo. I'm not ashamed of being a killer. Because if I wasn't, that boy never would've seen his parents again and those people would've been richer for it."

I looked down at my hands, unsure of what to say. All I could think of was a thirteen-year-old Wolf covered in blood, carrying a crying little boy in his arms.

"You were right to kill them, but sometimes you kill people who don't deserve death."

"Maybe. But isn't the price worth it?"

Was it? I wasn't sure of the answer.

Liar.

"Come on," Wolf said. "We should get back to base. The others are going to get worried."

He stepped down the fire escape and I followed until he paused and looked over his shoulder.

"And, Indigo?"

"Yes?"

"Not many people know my lineage. Just Laine and Nydia. I would prefer it if you could keep it to yourself."

I nodded. "Of course."

I didn't like that he hid it from me, but I understood why. If people knew he was raised an Assassin before, they would turn on him. And I was starting to truly trust that Wolf was the right leader for the Rebels.

Unsure of whether that was good or bad, I followed him back into the crowded streets of Orleans.

Hey guys!

Thank you to all of you for being patient with me. In case you've missed my announcement, I was held up with studying for school exams for two weeks. Unfortunately, as soon as they were over, I got sick and wasn't feeling well enough to write a proper chapter.

But I'm back!

Hopefully, updates will be more consistent now.

Also, I wanna say thanks to everyone who took the time to check in while I was gone. Love you!

~Sreenija Paruchuri