Let's Kill Her (Book #1)

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"Sehun?" I say, when I'm back in my room. I wait a moment, but there's no response.

I check the window and under the beds and return to the empty common room. On the floor in front of the fireplace, written in ash, are the words Be back soon. I smile at the cleverness and rub out the message with the bottom of my boot.

My conversation with Jungkook cycles through my thoughts. My parents were next in line to lead their Families. They were the best in this school. I can't even imagine what their lives were like before they had me and before they became the Romeo and Juliet of the Strategia world. I need to talk to appa. I have so many questions, so many missing details from Jungkook's story to fill in.

Sending me to the Academy makes no sense at all. My family was in hiding - why put me in the one place where I'd be exposed to the very people who are a threat? Jungkook was right that I resemble eomma: if he could pick me out, surely others can, too. I keep thinking about what Kang said, that strange things happen on purpose. Jungkook said Kang knows who I am, which she must if she attended the Academy at the same time as my parents. But why let me in? She must have known that the shit would hit the fan as soon as the Tigers and the Eagles recognized me.

I head for breakfast table and pull out a chair.

But Kang also gave me information about the glass and the match, and she quoted my history teacher. Plus, Sehun told me that she's an Eagle herself. I tap my fingers on the table. There has to specific reason, a message she was trying to communicate. Strategia aren't random; I've learned that much. So I'm just missing the pattern, some subtle difference, as appa would say.

I think back to my first history class, when Küre said strange things happen on purpose. She was talking about coincidences in historical contexts and how people love to believe them and exaggerate them. And she said that if you could pull off a crime and make it look like a coincidence, it was brilliant achievement. Was she trying to tell me something? What if she was hinting about the murder happening just after I arrived, and people wanting to link it to me and exaggerate the details - which, as it turns out, wound up being true?

Then there was the story of the decoy body being dropped with fake plans to invade a country. The entire plan relied on the fact that people who found the body wouldn't do the inspection they needed to do. Just like I didn't examine Taehyung thoroughly when I discovered his body, not like Sejeong would have. And it wasn't until Sejeong asked the right questions that we figured out that Taehyung had been killed hours earlier and planted in that hallway, eventually leading us to his room, and to the fact that Kai was actually after Jungkook.

My pulse quickens. Then there was my poisons class Hisakawa said that poisoning is truly great when there's no evidence left behind. And that if you manage them, the best poisons of all are emotional and psychological. Was she talking about me and Jungkook? Someone had clearly been trying to pit us against each other from the beginning. And if I hadn't forced myself to talk to Jungkook, I still wouldn't know who my parents are, which is obviously key to understanding how this whole mess started.

I hit my fist on the table. Why hadn't I been paying closer attention? Sehun had it clear to me that the Academy wasn't about academics, it was about learning to read the signs. But I was so caught up in my own fears and frustrations I couldn't see what was right in front of my face.

I put my head in my hands. Moment after moment comes flooding back to me. Küre talking about the rook who sent the letter to those knights, and how he gave them the opportunity to act differently, to change what everyone assumed couldn't be changed.

I chew on my thumbnail angrily. What or who is the inflexible thing in this situation that needs to be approached differently? There's the hatred between the Tigers and the Eagles, but that's not something I can fix in this school. It has to something more specific.