Prologue

Heroes of war risk their lives to keep our kingdom safe. Join the military to –
Honestly, I’m just here to kill people.
- Evangeline

I’d always been a fan of murder. Some people just needed to die – rapists, animal abusers, enemy soldiers, greedy monopolists, those thick enough to actually need warning labels to live, or – Gods! Those who used people scissors to cut up paper. Those sick fuckers needed to be stabbed, skinned, fucked to death by a yondu, and then set on fire. Did you know how awkward it got when you were mid-torture and you went to pull out your people scissors, only for the damn things not to work because some asshat had dulled them on paper? Cue awkward eye contact.

Then there were the parents that kept showing you baby pictures like they didn’t notice the second “aw” was a lie, the servers who judged you for how much salt you used on your ice-cream, the people who put the cereal in before the milk, the psychos that hoovered before they mopped –

Basically, the list was very long. My siblings called me anti-social, but that wasn’t true at all.

I loved people.

When they died.

Preferably by my own hands.

Which was why I was joining the military at eleven – the earliest one could with parental permission. It was getting a bit hard for my family to hide all the bodies, and my mother (an actual heartless bitch) was starting to look at me funny. At least on the battlefield, it was acceptable to just leave your kills where they were.

But oh my gods, if you left one body on the kitchen counter, suddenly everyone was losing their shit.

“You shouldn’t have killed him, Evangeline.”

“He’s a fucking noble, Evangeline.”

“Why does he have two carrots shoved in his eyes, Evangeline?”

My answer of, “To help him see better, Mother,” had got me a smack across the face and immediate enrolment the next morning.

Which brought me to now.