School of Swords and Serpents Boxset: Books 1 - 3 (Hollow Core, Eclipse Core, Chaos Core)

by Gage Lee

  Rachel’s robes were in disarray, one sleeve torn almost completely off. She cradled her right hand against her chest, and a livid purple bruise had already started to rise against her skin. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and her lips trembled.

  I reached out for her, but Rachel pulled back.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, ashamed of what had happened.

  “Your eyes,” Rachel whispered, her voice low and wavering. “What are you?”

  The words stung more than a slap. I blinked hard, willing the darkness of my Eclipse nature to leave me. The look of terror on Rachel’s face was like a knife through my heart, and I knew she’d seen the truth about me in that moment.

  Even if Rachel didn’t understand the change that had overtaken me, she knew it was horrible.

  “Rachel,” I said, “it’s me, Jace. You just surprised me, that’s all. My new technique—”

  “That was more than a new technique,” she whispered.

  “Please,” I begged. “Let me explain.”

  The terror in Rachel’s eyes convinced me to tell her everything, even if that was a death sentence for me. If I couldn’t control myself, if I hurt those closest to me, then maybe I didn’t deserve to live.

  Rachel wasn’t in the mood to listen to anything I had to say. She bit her lip and backed away from me, her eyes locked on mine as if she were afraid I’d attack her again if she dared to look away. When she reached the door, she bolted out of the library cell.

  I followed my girlfriend. I had to talk to her. I needed to make her understand.

  I nearly collided with Clem, who was heading into my cell as I was rushing out.

  “Jace?” Clem stopped me with a hand on my chest. She looked down the hall at Rachel’s fleeing form. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, raking my fingers through my hair.

  “Oh, Jace,” she said. “I’ll talk to her. She looked really upset.”

  “No,” I started, then stopped at the quizzical look on Clem’s face.

  “She’s my friend, too,” she said. “Even if I wish things might have worked out differently. Let me help you both.”

  The hurt in Clem’s eyes cut me deeper than a fusion blade. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I knew I couldn’t stop her. I watched, frustrated and uncertain, as the two most important women still in my life walked away from me.

  The Hit

  AS GOOD AS THE FIRST half of my second year at the School of Swords and Serpents had been, the second half was shaping up to be a complete disaster. After what had happened in the library cell, Rachel avoided me like the plague. Clem didn’t exactly take my former girlfriend’s side, but she did tell me to give her some space.

  “I don’t know what happened in there, but she’s scared,” Clem said, her eyes searching my face for some clue that would shed light on the mystery. She hated not knowing things, and this thing in particular bothered her. “If you won’t talk to me about it, either, there’s not much I can do to help. Just give her some time. She’ll come around.”

  Rachel was still avoiding me when the winter chill had given way to spring’s warm breezes. She’d gotten very good at being where I wasn’t, even going so far as to transfer out of the Intermediate Scrivening class. When I did catch sight of her in the halls, she ducked her head and took off like a shot.

  I tried to reach her through Rafael, but that was exactly the wrong thing to do. Whatever grudging respect he’d had for me after our duel had burned away. He was furious that I’d scared his sister, and I didn’t blame him.

  “Leave her alone,” he told me flatly. “If you keep after her, we’ll cross swords again. And this time, Song won’t be there to keep score.”

  My Eclipse nature bristled at the threat, and I turned away before Rafael saw the darkness flow into my eyes. As nice as it would have been to stomp him flat for standing in my way, that would only prove his sister was right.

  I was a monster.

  The tension from living with Hagar and having hidden security teams patrolling my quarters at all hours of the day and night certainly made matters worse. I couldn’t concentrate on my schoolwork. My Intermediate Scrivening mark had fallen to a C-, and Professor Shan made it clear that if I didn’t turn things around before the end of the year I might have to repeat the course.

  The thought of repeating a class I’d already suffered through once made me so miserable I was almost relieved when Hagar dropped a bomb on me on a cloudy Tuesday in the last week of May.

  “We know who’s coming for you,” my handler said. “It’s very exciting.”

  “What are you talking about?” I wasn’t in the mood for word games. “Spit it out.”

  “The assassin who’ll try to kill you next. It’s Preethi Adjadumlun.” Hagar followed me into the kitchen. “They call her the Death Weaver.”

  “And that name should mean something to me?” The elders had replaced my coffee set with a much nicer one that made me nervous to use. I carefully placed it on the counter.

  “She’s a very high-priced murderer for hire,” Hagar said matter-of-factly. “She’ll be here tonight.”

  “I see,” I said. “I assume I won’t be here when she arrives. Claude and Brand will deal with it?”

  “Oh, no.” Hagar wiggled her eyebrows. “There’s a security team here, and we’ve set some traps in preparation. Unfortunately, the elders can’t be here because they’ve been called to Kyoto.”

  “Kyoto?” It hit me. “Grayson’s trial. I’d almost totally forgotten.”

  “You have a lot to think about, with your girl troubles and assassins and whatnot,” Hagar said with a grin. “But don’t worry about it. Our best guys are here, and the Death Weaver relies on surprise to get the job done. Thanks to our intelligence teams, we have the advantage there. She won’t last thirty seconds.”

  “What if she needs less than thirty seconds to kill me?” I asked.

  The truth was, I didn’t know how I felt about another killer showing up. My core had gotten stronger day by day, even after I’d advanced. My senses had grown so sharp it was almost impossible to sneak up on me now. Anyone approaching from behind roused my Eclipse nature from its slumber, ready to fight. That wasn’t so convenient at school, but it would certainly come in handy with a mysterious killer on her way. Maybe I could beat the assassin.

  But that might not save anyone who got in her way. Hagar was a pain, but I’d feel terrible if something happened to her during the attempt on my life. I didn’t know the guards—they’d made it a point to avoid me while they patrolled the grounds to keep their professional distance. I assumed, though, that they had families and friends who would miss them if an assassin snuffed their lives out. Their lives were on my shoulders, too.

  “It’s going to be fine, Jace,” Hagar said. “Preethi always strikes at night, so we’ve got an hour or two. Come upstairs. I want to show you what we’ve got.”

  I followed Hagar up to my bedroom, where she pointed out the scrivened circles around each of the windows. They radiated a subdued golden glow to my enhanced sight, and what I could understand of their sigils told me they’d alert us to any intruders who broke the glass. The circles also had a nifty set of aggressive countermeasures that I couldn’t interpret.

  “Don’t stand too close to those,” Hagar cautioned. “You can’t set them off, but their offensive capabilities have a blast radius.”

  “Blast radius?” I didn’t like the sound of that. “Don’t destroy my bedroom or blow the roof off the cottage, all right?”

  “No promises.” Hagar winked and crossed to the closet. She opened it to reveal that all my clothes had been removed. The small space now held a wiry man dressed in black, an ugly gun holstered on the webbed harness that crossed his chest. “This is Henry. He’s here to make sure nothing happens to you.”

  I waved to the man, and he closed the closet doors.

  “Friendly guy,” I said.

  “He’s not paid to be your friend. There are
three more guards around the perimeter, and two more on standby.” Hagar nodded to the stairs. “Let’s get some coffee, then we can hunker down and see what happens.”

  I tried to prepare our drinks, but Hagar pushed me aside.

  “Let’s not break another set,” she said. “Your hands are shaking. It’s probably the adrenaline. Take a seat. I’ll make the coffee.”

  “How can you be so calm?” I asked. She was right, my hands were shaking. Part of it was adrenaline, but the rest was raw fear pushing its way past my confidence. The idea that someone had been paid to kill me preyed on my thoughts. Even with guards all over the cottage, there was still a chance the Death Weaver would find her target. In the heat of combat, almost anything could happen. For that matter, in these close quarters, friendly fire was almost as much of a danger as the enemy. Even if the assassin didn’t kill me, there was a very, very good chance someone would be badly injured or killed during her attack. I didn’t know how to process the idea of other people putting their lives on the line to save mine.

  “This isn’t my first rodeo,” Hagar said with a grin. “I’ve been working with the elders for years. This isn’t even close to the weirdest or most dangerous thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Once again, I was reminded of how not everything I saw was what it seemed. Rachel and Rafael being related had been completely unexpected. Last year I’d considered Hagar to be one of my worst enemies. This year, she was one of the few people I could trust, and she’d had an exciting few years as an Empyreal secret agent. It was a lot to take in. I sat in silence and pondered the potential secret lives of my friends.

  Eric was a member of the Resplendent Suns, a clan that still hadn’t publically denounced Grayson Bishop’s compact with the Locust Court.

  Abi was a cadet in the Portal Defense Force, and he was just full of classified secrets he’d learned from that job.

  And Clem...

  She was Adjudicator Hark’s daughter. If any of my friends was a secret agent, it was her.

  “You’re thinking too hard.” Hagar placed a mug of coffee in front of me. She fetched the cream and sugar that we’d both ignore, dropped them on the table, then retrieved her own cup from the counter. “I know this is all strange and scary, but you’ll get used to it. One day, people will know what we’ve done. When this is all over, we’ll be heroes.”

  I didn’t say it, but we both knew she was sugarcoating things. We might be dead by the time the fight with the heretics was over. Their attacks were getting more dangerous. Graffiti was out of fashion, and firebombs had taken its place. And now they were hiring assassins to take out Empyreal agents.

  To take me out.

  “I don’t want to be a hero,” I admitted. “I thought I did, but I’m not so sure anymore.”

  Hagar chuckled. “No real hero wants to be one.” She sipped her coffee and looked out the window next to the kitchen table with a wistful sigh.

  “Do you even know what the heretics want?” I asked. “I know they hate the Grand Design, but that hardly seems worth all this trouble.”

  “They want to tear it all down,” Hagar said. “The whole Empyreal Society. Clans, elders, the Flame, all of it.”

  That idea filled me with a cold dread. The idea of maniacs who wanted to destroy everything the Empyreals had built over the millennia of their existence was horrifying. I couldn’t imagine how deranged someone would have to be to even attempt such a thing.

  “But why?” I asked.

  “The Grand Design is bigger than mortals can understand. It’s like this coffee.” Hagar dropped a dollop of cream into her coffee and stirred her finger through the cloud it formed on the surface. “What we see is just the shallows. If we try to dig too deep into it, we get burned. Some people don’t like that. The idea that there’s an invisible hand that keeps them on a path they didn’t pick for themselves makes them furious.”

  I wanted to chase after that philosophical question, but Hagar suddenly tilted her head to one side. She pressed her fingers against her temple, and I noticed she had an eye-snapper connected.

  “Stay calm,” she said. “The scouts reported an ether blip. Someone’s opened a portal here. Don’t run. Take one more drink of your coffee, put it in the sink, and then walk upstairs. Imagine you have to use the bedroom for something boring. Don’t look like that. Be normal.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked, doing my best to mask my concern over the fact that there was a stone-cold killer minutes away from her target.

  Me.

  “She’s not after me, Jace,” Hagar assured me. “I’ll be fine right where I am.”

  I hid my displeasure behind a drink from my mug. The coffee was warm and velvety on my tongue, and I enjoyed it like it was the last drink I’d ever have.

  Because it just might be.

  I put the cup in the sink, rinsed it with a little water, then headed upstairs at a leisurely pace. I even faked a yawn.

  But every step seemed more difficult than the last. As I climbed up the steps, I leaned on the banister for support. Someone was coming to kill me, and I was walking straight into their line of fire. That was much harder to do than anyone could imagine.

  “Don’t let anything happen to me, Henry,” I whispered as I entered my bedroom. There was no answer from the closet, and I hoped that meant my temporary bodyguard was just being extra cautious not to tip our hand.

  I forced myself to take a seat at my desk and opened my computer. The quantic laptop was an impressive piece of tech, though I wasn’t as fascinated by it as Eric was. I held my hands above its keys, careful not to make contact with the laptop. The last thing I wanted to do was make myself blind and deaf by connecting to it.

  After what felt like hours of pretending to type some homework, I was sure we’d fallen for a false alarm. I felt terrible for Henry stuck in the closet, cramped from standing still until his feet swelled inside his boots. He had to be hurting no matter how much of a professional he was. Maybe I could go down and get him something to eat. Slide it under the door.

  I stood up from my desk to do just that, stretched my arms overhead, and headed for the stairs.

  That’s when everything went to pieces.

  Lines of black jinsei shot through the air outside the cottage’s rear window. They converged on a central point and wove a web of dark lines that pulsed with movement and deception aspects. There was no more than a single heartbeat between the instant the first line had appeared and the last one forged the final connection.

  The web unfolded in a flash of black light, and a woman clad in a tight-fitting black bodysuit burst through the darkness at the heart of the jinsei web. She wielded a short jinsei blade in each hand and hurtled toward my window so fast she was little more than a blur of motion.

  “Incoming!” I shouted. It was the first and only warning I could think to shout, and I hoped it didn’t confuse anyone.

  My fusion blade appeared in my hand, and I dropped back into a defensive stance, blade raised horizontally across my body. My Eclipse nature greedily sucked up aspects as I cycled my breath. My adept-level core merged with my aura and nascent serpents, uniting all three parts of my being so they could work together in perfect unsion. It would only take a few seconds for me to gather enough energy for the Thief’s Shield.

  I didn’t get the time I needed.

  The Death Weaver burst through the window at astonishing speed. She was incredibly fast, but the scrivened circle that guarded my window was even faster. A siren wailed, and a tremendous flash of white light washed through my bedroom.

  I was blinded for a moment and prayed the assassin was crippled as well. If she recovered from the scrivening first, I was a sitting duck.

  “Burn you!” The woman cried out in obvious agony. When my vision cleared, I saw why.

  The trap had knocked her flat on her face. Three rings of red jinsei encircled her shoulders, waist, and ankles. They’d pinned her arms to her sides, and smoke drifted away from the points wher
e the rings touched her.

  Before I could move, Henry burst from the closet and pounced on the assassin. He landed with his knee in her back and rammed the muzzle of his pistol into the back of her head. The big, ugly weapon forced her face into the carpet, and she went instantly still.

  I couldn’t blame her. The weapon looked big enough to turn her skull into a messy red stain on my floor.

  “Clear!” Henry shouted.

  “Clear at the back!” a man called from outside the rear window.

  “Clear front,” another guard shouted.

  “The portal’s closed,” Hagar called as she poked her head up from the stairway. “No more hostiles detected. Good work, everyone.”

  Henry stood and dragged the Death Weaver onto her feet. She staggered and winced as the jinsei rings bit into her. The barrel of the pistol against the back of her skull couldn’t have felt nice, either.

  “They know it’s you, Jace Warin,” the assassin spat at me. “I won’t be the last one to take the offer. Your luck will run out, eventually.”

  “Shut your mouth,” Henry said.

  “Wait.” I raised a hand. “Who knows what about me?”

  The Death Weaver glared at me, eyes burning with hatred.

  “You called them,” she said. “You’ll pay for that.”

  Hagar appeared at the top of the stairs, and she and Henry both looked at me quizzically.

  I shrugged. I had no idea what this woman was talking about. She sounded insane.

  “Now what do we do with her?” I asked.

  “We’ll secure her, then arrange for transport to a holding facility,” Henry said. “She’s worth a pretty penny to the authorities, so after we’ve finished with her, the elders will turn her over for the reward.”

  The Death Weaver opened her mouth to say something, and her face exploded in a fountain of blood. She stood for a moment, then her knees buckled, and she crumpled to the floor. Henry was already on the ground behind her, a fist-sized hole through the center of his head. I saw the red-stained wooden floor through the space where his face should have been.