A knock on her door pulled Eliana out of her thoughts and forced her to stop thinking about how she was slowly starting to change because of this place. She got up to open it, but the door was already pushed open before her hand touched the handle.
Her eyes met Cobra's icy blue ones. His frame filled the entire doorway, imposing and unreadable. For a second, she didn't know what to say. To be honest, she hadn't really expected him to come. Sure, she hoped, but now that he was actually here, her plan seemed... stupid. Really stupid.
His hands looked big enough to crush her skull, just like that one gruesome scene from Game of Thrones. She'd binge-watched the series after a brutal exam period back in college. That time, and the problems she faced then, now felt distant and laughably mundane.
Before she could gather her thoughts or muster up a word, he nodded toward the hallway. "Follow me," he said in his usual deep, annoyed tone, already turning around.
She hesitated, staring at his retreating figure for a beat before deciding to follow him—keeping a bit of distance between them. It was already past curfew, so the halls were empty and dark. The only light came from the moon, casting pale slits across the floor through the iron bars of the windows.
She hoped they were headed to the library... and not some secret torture room. Did this place even have something like that? Probably but she prayed not.
Cobra led her to a part of the academy she hadn't seen before. He stopped at several doors, unlocking them using fingerprint scanners. Her mind, unhelpfully, supplied a thought: maybe she could cut off one of the mentors' fingers and use it to escape.
Dark, but… maybe not the worst idea.
At last, they reached a massive wooden door with intricate carvings. It was beautiful, really. Despite everything awful that happened in this place, Eliana had to admit—whoever built this castle had a flair for drama. The academy had been modernized in some places, but you could still feel the history and weight of it in the architecture.
If she hadn't been kidnapped, she might've actually enjoyed exploring it.
A sharp push to her back jolted her from her thoughts.
"Go. I don't have all day," Cobra muttered.
The push sent her stumbling forward, nearly crashing into the door. She rubbed her back and muttered a curse under her breath as she pushed it open and stepped inside.
The library was massive, lined with high wooden shelves that seemed to stretch toward the ceiling. Paintings covered the walls and domed ceiling above, lending the space an almost cathedral-like atmosphere. Like the door, it felt untouched by time.
She barely had a moment to take it in before Cobra gave her another shove from behind.
Seriously. What was his problem? Why did he even follow her request and come? He seemed as if he wanted to be rather anywhere else than here with her.
But she bit her tongue. She was here. That was what mattered. She could deal with his attitude later since she still had no idea how to ask him to train her.
For now, she ignored him and focused. She didn't know how much time she had and needed to use every second.
The problem was, now that she was here... she had no idea where to start.
She wandered down one of the aisles, scanning titles. Her fingers brushed the spines of ancient books until two caught her eye: one appeared to be a blueprint of the castle, the other a thick volume about the academy's founding.
Jackpot.
She flipped open the blueprint first, but quickly realized she could barely understand it. The lines and measurements made her dizzy. Still, she did her best to make sense of it. She spotted sections she recognized: the classrooms, gym, spa, dormitories, cafeteria and the main hall.
Only one marked exit seemed to lead beyond those areas where the recruits are mostly allowed to move freely, and it was one of the doors with the fingerprint scanner.
Great. So much for escape.
She flipped through the pages half-heartedly, until something fluttered out and onto the floor.
An old, yellowed paper.
She picked it up—and froze.
A map.
A completely different one from the blueprint, and clearly not meant to be there.
This one showed secret passageways. Rooms she hadn't seen. Hallways that didn't exist on the blueprint. It was rough and hand-drawn, but it felt real. Like a lifeline.
Did the mentors even know about this?
She didn't wait to find out. She slid the map under her hoodie, heart racing. Then she looked around.
And found Cobra staring directly at her.
His icy blue gaze bore into her, unreadable and cold. Did he see what she did? If he did—why wasn't he saying anything?
Her stomach twisted in knots. She looked away, pretending to study the books again. If he hadn't noticed, she wasn't going to clue him in.
Trying to calm her pounding heart, she grabbed another book—an old one that looked like a log of some kind. Her suspicion was confirmed when she opened it.
"1856…" she whispered.
The log entries began almost two centuries ago. She flipped through them in disbelief. Names, dates, methods. Records of every assassination carried out by the academy.
"November 22, 1963—John F. Kennedy, killed by…" She trailed off. The ink had faded, smearing the assassin's name.
She kept reading. Princess Diana. Robert Kennedy. Marilyn Monroe. The list went on and on.
Her hands were trembling now.
This can't be real.
Almost every major political or cultural death she could think of was written here.
If someone had told her this before she was kidnapped, she'd have thought they were a conspiracy theorist.
But now?
Now she didn't know what to believe anymore.
She slammed the logbook shut and shoved it away from her.
She didn't want anything to do with this.
Whatever the academy truly was… it was bigger than anything she could have imagined.
And she was in the heart of it.