He hadn't noticed till now how his mouth had gone dry, his eyes glued to the tiny screen hardly blinking. His thumbs, which had moved so quickly across the buttons, now froze, hovering. Uncertain.
This was what he wanted.
Right?
Lucky had never been able to stomach the idea of murdering another human being. It was the sight of death that had brought on the
madness that drove him to the hunters, he had learned much later. Nothing good came of death. He looked back in time, to the day he had signed the contract. All he had wanted was a chance to protect the world. To make it better. To
save it - from the things that preyed on the weak and killed them for sport. From monsters.
How optimistic he'd been then. It seemed so simple. The hunters in white were the good guys, and the creatures in shadow were the bad. This was what he'd been taught.
But what if he saw monsters among the hunters, people who had lost their way and corrupted their purpose in being elected guardians?
How long before he too would fall to the same corruption?
Maybe there was no purity in this world, even for those who wished to protect it. Maybe it was only through the cycle that it could be broken, rather than solely from without.
He tapped out a message, slowly, one letter at a time. Sam had been right. This was already far more than he'd bargained for. But they spoke his language; they represented truth, and justice, in a way that H and Caelius never would. It was inevitable, then, that Lucky would choose:
