Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere by Bella Forrest Page 0,11

who have gone before you. There are still mountains to climb, and you would do well to remember that.”

A rumble of laughter made its way around the hall, with those in black suits giving each other knowing nudges. They were the graduates—the ones who’d made it. It wouldn’t be an easy ride to get there, and I didn’t want it to be. I would work my ass off to get one of those black suits and prove that I could make something of myself, curse or no curse.

“To the graduates, I also advise patience and modesty, for you are not kings amongst peasants. Your purpose is to keep the magical and the human worlds safe from the dangers of monsters. You will never have laurels or glory, nor should you expect them. That is not why we do this. If you still think you will gain glory out of this, I have to assume you’ve got wax in your ears or you think I’m joking.”

A richer chuckle rippled around the hall. There was a reason she’d ended up as the head huntswoman, and this speech went some way toward proving why. The crowd hung on her every word, even though they weren’t all rainbows and butterflies. She told it how it was, and I appreciated her for that.

Victoria raised her hands and settled the hall again. “You might have noticed that I mentioned patience and modesty a few times there. That wasn’t an accident.” She cast a fleeting look at me. “No one is born with all the knowledge, or all the skills, or all the talent. This is a perilous profession with a low survival rate. There are no assurances. One mistake can cost even the finest hunter dearly, but that is part and parcel of the life you have all chosen. It is the tough grunt work that keeps the world safe, with our only reward being the continued security of the global covens, fueled by the energy that the beasts we capture give to the Bestiary. We are hunters and captors, not killers.”

We are not fuel… Leviathan’s voice crept into my skull, a memory of a past encounter, and his words raced to attack Victoria’s. My heart began to race, my throat filling with cotton wool as I tried to drag in a breath or two. All my life, that had been the status quo—beasts were fuel, and magicals needed that fuel. But to think of those creatures in their boxes, maybe feeling the same way that I’d felt in my dream… It swung my moral compass a little, letting in a trickle of doubt that I hoped wouldn’t shatter the dam and unleash hell inside my head.

“Are you okay?” Genie put a hand on my shoulder, interrupting my small panic attack.

I closed my eyes for a second to let the world calm around me. “It’s warm, that’s all.”

I leaned against the pillar for support as Victoria carried on. “There is nothing glamorous about this profession. If you are looking for celebrity, you are in the wrong place.”

I wouldn’t say that around your founders. I glanced at the Basani twins and saw a flicker of annoyance cross their identical faces. Once upon a time, my uncle Finch had told me tales about those two, and he hadn’t exactly been generous with the flattery. He’d met them in some strange monastery back in the day, and he’d said the twins had been charlatans with an impeccable PR team who’d made sure the duo was splashed on the front page of every magical magazine in circulation. After that encounter, however, Finch guessed the Basani twins had gotten a kick up the caboose and had actually put in the legwork for their legacy. In the aftermath, they’d traveled far and wide to catch beasts, dedicating years to it, until the truth finally matched the lies they’d formerly told—namely, that they were responsible for 15% of the beasts in the Bestiary. And now, this was their empire.

“It is messy, it is bloody, and it is dangerous.” Victoria put her arms behind her back, standing proud. “But I have faith in your courage and determination, which you have already shown or I would not be speaking to you now.”

Bloody. I still had my qualms about beast-kind, but I also understood the merits of monster hunting. Without it, monsters would swarm the world, free to hurt and kill innocents who couldn’t fight back. Without it, Leviathan’s vision of Hell on Earth would be