Lenaria remained unmoving. Ezril had spoken the words in the faintest of whispers, almost as if he borrowed a sliver of sound, unwilling to shake the silence. Although silent, with their foreheads together he thought them close enough that she would hear him; close enough that a request so soothing would convey itself. Now, he wondered if he should have lent his voice more power.

After a moment, Lenaria reacted.

Slowly, her grip loosened and the swords fell from her hands, embedding themselves in the snow.

"There we go," Ezril said softly, leading her away from all the blood, and placing her, wrapped in his cloak, against a tree. She gave no protest, simply letting him guide her through it all.

Certain that she was physically unharmed, he left her and went to work.

He retrieved the arrows from Alric's body. The shaft came out with much effort, accompanied by blood and tiny pieces of flesh. It was to be expected when removing barbed arrowheads.

He turned to Lenaria after he was done with the arrows and squatted in front of her. With the calm after the bloodshed, his heart was racing but he kept it from his face. He had just killed a brother. No matter the reason, he doubted the seminary would simply overlook it.

"Can you walk?" he asked Lenaria.

She nodded, rising to her feet.

"Good. This way," he engaged her as she made to move in a direction he could only imagine held her shelter.

His shelter was not so big but he was sure that between him, her, and the old man, they could make it work. Though he was unsure of how she would react to a new face.

Night had fallen by the time they arrived at his shelter. Noting the absence of the old man and how cold the shelter was, Ezril lit a fire and sat her beside it. He cleaned the bloodstains on her skin and hair with a piece of wet cloth soaked from the snow. Her hair proved tricky but he found his way around it, getting most of the blood out.

Certain she was clean enough, he turned to leave. More tasks awaited him out in the night.

"I'll be back," he assured her as he rose. "There's something I must do."

"Don't leave me...” she whispered. “Please."

Her words were soft, lacking in confidence and choked in the embrace of fear. It took Ezril’s heart and twisted. He wanted to stay, to wait, but he had to do what needed to be done. He'd barely taken a step when she reached out and held his hand.

"... please... Ezril."

Ezril stopped. Her grip wasn't strong. It was the name that compelled him. The way she said it.

Four years, he thought. Four years since he had last heard her say his name. He had thought she was happy in her new life. He had thought she had gone to a better life. He had thought she was someone he was doomed never to meet again. So by Truth why is she here; out in the cold, shedding blood, taking lives, suffering the torment of the winter? Why is Aria a part of the church?

And for the first time in his life he cursed a god that would allow such a thing. He cursed Truth.

Lenaria pleaded with her eyes, barely holding his hands. Sadly, Ezril felt some things were too important to be left alone. Judging from what he had seen at the shelter, and the amount of snow at the entrance, he was certain the old man had left just moments after he had gone on his hunt. And from the absence of the man's belonging, he surmised it was for good. Deciding she would be all right, he left in search of Alric.

Before long he found him.

He dug the snow, unable to think of much else. The task was grueling, and so deep into the coming night numbed his fingers and threatened to afflict him with frost bit. Still, Ezril did not let up. It was now that his actions truly dawned on him. It was not the consequence of it but the repulsion to it. Ezril turned away from the hole he was digging and vomited to the side. He vomited twice more before he considered himself stable enough to continue. If he was to keep this a secret of what he had done from the seminary, then there would have to be no body. The work was done poorly but certainly. His hands trembled through most of the task and his throat tasted of bile from his own vomit.

He moved to the bodies of the men Lenaria had killed and claimed their cloaks. They each bore odd tattoos of a blue snake. One carried it on his neck, another on his shoulder and the third at the nape of his neck. Ezril cared very little for what would become of their bodies for they were not a secret he sought to hide. Should anything happen and his attempts at secrecy fail for whatever reason, they would be the excuse for his actions. He cut up their cloths, however, and wrapped Alaric’s body in them then rose to leave.

………………………………………..

Digging into the snow proved tasking, but success came and Ezril was left with one deep enough to conceal Alric for a while. It was a poor hiding spot. Once winter was done, the snow would thaw and reveal the body. Children were lost quite often to these tests so he doubted the priests would care long enough. They would certainly be done looking by the time the snow thawed.

Ezril pushed Alric’s body to the side, rolled it towards the hole in the snow. His wrapping was poor and an arm slipped from it. What would I have done with this in the beginning? Ezril asked himself, fearing the possible answer as he shoved it back into the wrapping and pushed his brother’s body into the hole. Quietly, he shoved dirt and snow over it.

The ordeal proved to keep a fair amount of the cold out of Ezril’s bones. But as he journeyed back, the cloak was no longer enough to hold back the winter’s chill. Hugging it tighter around himself, he wondered what exactly had happened. The only thing that makes any sense is because she's...

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

His thoughts trailed away as nothing came to mind. Nothing made sense.

He contemplated a while longer but only a question was born of it: How did Alric inform them of her location? Or were they the ones who informed him? And who are they? What were those tattoos? Why did he say they were from the Venin guild? What business does a business organization have with trying to kill a child?

He arrived at the shelter as the night aged. There he found Lenaria shivering from the cold. She was lying next to the fire, asleep. She had been through a lot, and Ezril sat next to the fire opposite her. He warmed himself while he ate a piece of meat.

When he was done, he found her still shivering from the cold. He joined her quietly. He laid beside her, wrapping her in a warm embrace. Her shivers slowly subsiding, she sank deeper into him.

Her body had changed. Her hips were wider than Ezril remembered. It caused her waist to dip. A perfect place to rest an arm, he noted. Her features curved slightly, giving her a feminine shape. Four years was a lot of years, and they had been good to her despite everything. She had more meat on her bones as against the skinny child she had been at Green Horn.

"Did he hate me?"

Lenaria’s question startled him. For a moment he wasn’t sure what response to give. Alric had been his brother. He should’ve known something of it. Even if he didn’t know how the boy had felt, he should’ve at least known why the boy would’ve done what he did.

Sadly, he knew nothing.

...Love, anger, hate, those are secondary and surmountable to being unimportant. Men fight because there is something they want that will not be given to them, so they take it.

The old man’s words danced in his head as if to some depressing dirge.

"No," Ezril told her. "He did not hate you, because he did not know you. How he felt had nothing to do with what he did."

"Then why?" Lenaria sobbed. "Why would he help them?"

She knows who wants her dead, Ezril realized.

He wondered if she would come back from this. Taking a life wasn't easy, and she had taken three. She had also done it quite easily. Even with the skills the seminary had thought him, Ezril had no confidence in taking three grown men in a fight.

What happened in the last four years?

"What happened to you?" he asked before he could stop himself.

Lenaria stiffened very briefly at his words. But when Ezril thought she would finally answer, nothing came and her breathing rose and dropped in a steady rhythm.

"The man that adopted me," she said after a while, when he thought her asleep. "He had so many weapons in his study. Every day he would teach me how to use them. Not the best form of entertainment for a child, but I enjoyed it. Frostiff was no different. After the morning mass we would return home and he would train me."

It was against the Credo and the laws of the kingdom for training of any form of violence to take place on Frostiff. The only ones exempt from this law were priests, priestesses, and members of the king’s guard. Even the soldiers were offered Frostiff as a day of rest. Lenaria's adopted father had broken that law and disobeyed the Credo. If the church had ever found out, the man would rue the day. For, in fact, Truth was as much a spiteful god as he was the loving father the church made him out to be.

"He had visitors very often," Lenaria continued. "Among them was Prince Mardin."

There was no one in the kingdom who didn't know the prince, even a place as lowly as the underbelly knew him. Mardin was the first prince, and heir to the throne. A man loved by all the people of the kingdom. People believed he would be a better king than his father. A stronger king with more empathy.

"He would visit very often," Lenaria’s voice flowed, continuing her story and uncaring of the sobs that held it. "He was in his twentieth year then and he took a liking to me. He was a kind man; said my hair was beautiful. Apart from you and my father, he was the only other person to say something nice about my hair."

Ezril remembered vividly how often the children had made fun of her for her hair in the underbelly. She had been different then. Even now, she was different.

"My father was a dissident,” she said, then paused. “He made certain I knew this and kept it a secret. In time, prince Mardin found out and had him killed."

Ezril bit back on the words he would have spoken. With her words he realized that he knew of her father. The man's story was quite infamous in the seminary. The older boys often spoke of a dissident burnt at the stake for his heathen practices and refusal to accept Truth as the father of all. He had burned in shadow fire; a death worse than any.

Dissidents were put to the flame; it was common enough. But the priest that had presided over his execution by the hand of the king had said the use of shadow fire was for the crime of defiling the capital city of the kingdom with his practices, and adopting a child of the kingdom to spread them. One of his crimes was in trying to corrupt a young child of the kingdom. Even the boys in the seminary thought burning in shadow fire too large a punishment for the sin. After all, shadow fire did not just burn the body, it burnt the soul. To be burned in shadow fire was to truly die. The soul would return to neither Truth nor Vayla. There would be nothing of it to roam or move or do anything. The body would die in shadows and so would the soul.

Ezril thought it was too harsh a punishment as well. He knew enough to know that no one deserved to be burned in the flames of shadows.

Did she hold a grudge? he wondered as he held Lenaria. What did her grudge make her to do?

"I don't begrudge him for what he did,” she said, as if reading his mind. “My father knew the risks. But my father's Credo was not what he died for. I heard the conversation the night they took him. The prince demanded he hand me over to him. There was something in his eyes when he spoke, something wrong, like he was crazed. He demanded that he have me, Ezril. Like I was something to be owned, some toy to be moved from hand to hand. My father refused. Even after the prince threatened to reveal his practices, he still refused. They took my father while I hid." Her sobs now were demanding her voice give them its attention and Ezril's chest tightened at the sound. "The Abbess of the convent came for me the next day. When the prince asked her to hand me over, she told him I was to be purged of whatever my father had filled my head with.” She sniffled. “You see, the abbess says it is easy to strike down a man. It is a difficult thing, however, attacking a mother of the church, and an Abbess is not someone that can be fought head on. But I know he will try. And if he fails, then he will take me, steal me from the convent."

Ezril wondered how many people she had told this. They may not have believed her, but he believed her. She was his friend, even if it had been so long ago. And she had been close enough for him to call family. So he believed her. For him, it was the duty of family to believe each other. The verity of what a family member said was not meant to be the first thing to be questioned.

Wasn’t Alric family, too, a voice mocked in his head. Ezril ignored it.

"He was the one who requested the Abbess take me," Lenaria whispered into the silence after a while, regaining his attention she hadn't known was slipping away, her sobs descending to silent sniffles. "She told me, said that it was his wish that if anything happened to him she should take me to the convent."

The Lenaria Ezril knew had always faced the world with a smile. She always looked happy and at peace whenever he remembered her; smiling at him with an eagerness he always wondered at despite how they’d met or the fact that she lived in the underbelly with no one to truly care for her… But not today.

Today she was like watching the snow flake; a residue of the effervescence that was herself.