“What about these ones?” Evalina asked as she lightly brushed her fingertips over the deep scars across the far side of Hideo’s back. They were three long lines of red that stretched from his spine to his shoulder blade. They looked especially bright and painful beside the candlelight that flickered faintly next to the bed.
“They were from a man called Xerxes,” he said, remembering.
“Was he someone you were ordered to kill?”
He slowly raised his head from the plump white pillow and brushed his long, dark hair aside. The faintest of a smile was trickling from his lips. “He was actually the man who taught me how to fight.”
Evalina looked down at the scars. They were almost as ghastly as the scars that the Blue Archer bore across her face. They were deep and cracked, destined to be burnt into him for the rest of his time. “He called that training?” she asked, feeling the slightest tingling of anger emerge within her.
“You’ve seen me fight,” Hideo said with a small and quick chuckle. “Without sounding braggadocios, I think his teachings have helped me in the long run, as cruel as his lessons were.”
Her fingers lingered and faintly caressed over his spine until they brushed over the next scar. This one was more sinuous than the last as it trailed into a curved hook shape. “And this one?”
“That one was from a Hell Pig I had to fight in order to prove myself.”
“Their training sounds more like abuse,” she said quietly. She kept her voice hushed. Despite the lack of windows in the lower chamber, she knew it would be dawn by now and her sisters would have long returned to the chapel. She had no intention of allowing them to discover where she had spent the night whilst they were tending to the sick and dying.
Hideo remained silent as he stared into the flickering candlelight. Evalina pulled back the covers, and the frozen air embraced her. The marble floor felt like icy shards on her feet as she traipsed to the nearby wardrobe where she had stored his suit. The sapphire side of the armour glowed in the dark. She was still in awe of how advanced it appeared. It did not look like a human creation. One side of the mask and breastplate was as dark as a starless midnight with lightning streaked across the back, whilst the other side was pure and dark crystallised sapphire. The silver snarling horned tiger on the chest shined and seemed to growl at her menacingly. She retrieved the suit and held it in front of Hideo, hanging it from her hands. “Is that when you also earned this?”
Hideo rested his hanging head in his hand, digging his elbow into the hard mattress. “That was ‘earned’ from something else,” he said sombrely. “They call it the Lightning Moon armour, as it represents both sides of a Night Fang; The dark side, which represents their stealth, agility, and cunning. The sapphire side represents their rage, wroth, and ability to harness lightning.”
“It hasn’t given you as much protection as one would assume,” she said as she admired it.
“It has weak points,” he admitted. “My legs and upper arms aren’t armoured. That’s where he got me.”
“You should armour them if you insist on going back out there,” she suggested as she delicately placed the black and sapphire breastplate back into the hidden darkness of the wardrobe. The half-sapphire helm gleamed, and it felt like something was gazing at her from the darkness of the empty visor. She looked back at him. “Who was he?” she asked. “The one in yesterday’s Jade Herald with that ghastly skull mask?”
“I don’t know,” he said after a long and thinking moment. He sat up on the bed. “Someone better and more skilled than me.”
Evalina felt swift panic as she heard the iron handle twist and the door drifted open. Gabriella entered briskly with a tray of food for the Assassin and stopped in her tracks as she saw them both. The green eyes on her small and circular face widened in shock and confusion. A small, surprised gasp escaped her, and her hands trembled so much that she nearly dropped the tray.
Evalina snatched the blanket from Hideo to cover her modesty. “Gabriella,” she said in unhidden embarrassment and shame. She tried to force a smile, regardless. “I was tending to Hideo’s wounds.” She knew it was a pitiful lie that the young priestess could see right through.
Gabriella nodded uncomfortably. “T-The Archer,” she said with a stutter. “She’s back and wants to talk with him.” She gave a fleeting glance at Hideo as she left the tray of food by the beside. Then she briskly took her leave with her head held down without uttering another word.
Evalina winced at the shame within her. She gathered her mauve robes from the floor. She sat on the bed and dressed herself., frantically and angrily tightening her clothes with the thin rope around her waist. She was irate with herself. Pax have mercy on me.
“I’ll tell her to leave,” she heard Hideo say behind her. He was looking up from the bed, staring at the ceiling.
She nodded. “Please do. I must speak with Gabriella before she tells the other sisters.” Evalina left the bedchamber as embarrassment truly began to infest itself inside her dammed soul.
She dashed up the small stone stairs and made her way into the main hall. The Archer was indeed there, standing beside the bronze Pax statue, her hood drawn back, and her long thick mane of night-black hair sprawled about her shoulders. She had the same dark war paint covering her facial scars. Evalina shivered when the Archer Assassin smiled at her. It was an unpleasant and ambiguous grin, made ghastlier by her facial wounds. “Ah, High Priestess,” the Archer greeted. “Has my friend successfully recovered from his boo boos yet?”
“He’s in his bedchamber,” Evalina said tersely and dismissively as she paced past the wild woman.
She hurried to the adjacent chambers on the other side of the hall. She found Gabriella going about her usual duties in the chapel’s small kitchen. The youngest of the Pax sisters was in the midst of stripping a dead rabbit of its skin. She was doing it more intensely and vigorously than normal. “Gabriella, let me explain what you saw,” Evalina began to implore plaintively. She was thankful that none of the other sisters were around to hear the conversation. Evalina hoped to contain and mitigate what could be a very inopportune scandal.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Please don’t patronise me,” the young priestess interrupted before Evalina had a chance to say her piece. “What dark spirit has taken over you?”
“I never intended to bed him,” Evalina said in a hushed whisper. “I don’t know what came over us. Nature just took its course.”
“I don’t care about that,” Gabriella said with an anger that Evalina had never seen in her before. She slammed a butcher knife onto a carrot. The blade embedded into the chopping board. She turned to look at Evalina. Her brown eyes were wild and furious. “We’re still aiding him.”
“He did not mean to be so uncouth with you before,” she vouched with a shaken voice. “He was awakening from a fever dream-”
“He’s an assassin, Evalina!” Gabriella said with a raised voice. “He’s wanted by the City Watch. We can’t keep him here. He is the antithesis of what Pax stands for. He nearly got us all killed, and we’ll be hanging alongside him if the watch finds out we’ve been harbouring a wanted vigilante.” She grabbed Evalina’s sleeve. “Come to your senses, High Priestess,” she implored in a pleading whisper. “Turn him in, before more people get hurt.” She stormed away to her bedchamber, leaving Evalina alone with her doubts and guilt.
When Evalina returned to the main hall, she found Hideo arguing with the Blue Archer once again. His chest was bare, and he had ripped some of the bandages from his torso. There were sallow patches of bruises across his sides and around his upper arms. His lightning blue eyes flickered as he assertively spoke. “I told you to leave me alone, Amaya.”
The Archer raised an eyebrow about her scarred and painted face. “I’ve come bearing useful information to appease you with.”
Hideo was having none of it. “I don’t care, Amaya. Please leave before you frighten the priestesses again.”
The scar-faced woman in blue frowned and the sapphire bow that hanged behind her back began to shimmer. “Listen, you stubborn and miserable little shit,” she said in a sudden seething voice, “I spent all night hunting the King and Queen of Thieves to bring this to your attention, so you will listen.”
“You went after the King and Queen of Thieves?” Hideo asked heatedly. “After I had explicitly told you to leave this all alone? I told you that your blood debt is paid.”
The Archer’s eyes were made of blue fire. “You can’t just dismiss me when you no longer feel like you need me, which you do. The debt is paid when we rid New Jade of the Inferno Clan. Now listen. Some of them meet at Hook Harbour at midnight at week’s end, which inconveniently is tonight. They unload drugs and supplies from The Wailing Siren. We should discuss how we wish to proceed-”
“There is no we, Amaya!” Hideo shouted obstinately. “You’re unpredictable and incorrigible! Return to Darkfall.” Hideo went to storm off, but something halted him. He turned back to the Archer Assassin with a nasty look on his bruised face. “Or perhaps it’s the sisterhood you’ll be returning to. Xerxes was wrong and vicious about a lot of things, but he might have been right about you-”
The Archer punched him across the face, adding another deep and bruise. Evalina gasped and ran to him. The Archer raised her scarred hand at her. “He’s fine,” she said. “Besides, he deserved far worse than that.” She stepped closer to him. “I think that venom you were infected with has left some damage in your head.” The scars shuffled around the Archer’s face as she smiled. “Fine. I’ll leave you alone.” She leaned in close to him and whispered into his ear, “You’re going to die at the docks tonight, Hideo.” With that, she left him and vanished around the giant chapel doors.
A cold draft crept around Evalina’s shoulders as she lifted Hideo’s chin to examine the bruise. His face was beaten, weary, and tired. “How long can you live this life?” she asked him with disquiet. When he did not answer, she said, “You don’t have to go out there tonight.”
“What would you suggest instead?” he asked wearily.
“Give it up,” Evalina said with conviction. “Give up the suit, your clan, and this life of violence.”
“Evalina,” Hideo said in soft frustration. “I told you what the Inferno plan to do. I can’t just let them murder Sigismund and Rosamund.”
“Then call the City Watch,” she implored, placing a hand on his stony and cold chest. “I’ll even be the one to do it. We can send a raven, place an anonymous tip.”
“And tell them what?” Hideo asked with a nervous chuckle. “That an ancient assassin cult is plotting to kill the King. Many don’t believe the Inferno even exist.”
“We told them about that monster from the papers and what he intends to do,” Evalina desperately suggested. “Surely there is someone in the City Watch that you can trust who isn’t dirty?”
His eyes wondered for a moment. He seemed to be far away for a time. “There is one…” he murmured quietly before his lightning blue eyes awakened and he dismissed the idea before he could elaborate further. “Even the clean watchmen will be too powerless. I must do this alone before they get to the next royalist. Evalina, I haven’t got time for myself or anyone else to go through the battle of bureaucracy.” He left for his bedchamber before she had a chance to respond. Her shame became overshadowed by feelings of frustration and impotence.
When she followed back to the bedchamber, she found him already packing his black and sapphire suit into a leftover burlap sack. “I thank you for everything you have done for me,” he said as he gathered a ripped and ragged tunic the priestesses had provided him. “But I have spent too long recovering and if what Amaya said was true, then I need to make haste.” He donned the stained tunic and walked close to her, placing his hands on her arms. “I owe you a great debt and last night was…” he trailed off, clearly unable to find the words or articulation that he was searching for. “Thank you,” he said. He went to exit the bedchamber.
“Won’t you at least consider what I have said?” she asked him solemnly.
He stopped and looked back at her. The black and sapphire suit rattled and clanged inside the burlap sack that hung over his shoulder. “I have to stop them, Evalina, because no one else will, and the city will fall if I do not.”
“Do you know what I think?” Evalina said with a voice of hardened ice, stopping Hideo in his stride. She felt her chest pound. “You keep insisting on going out there, getting yourself beaten bloody, and nearly killed. Every time you visit, I find a new scar, wound, or bruise on you. Look at your hands for the sake of Pax! I don’t think it is mere altruism that keeps you going, nor loyalty to your guild.”
Hideo scowled at her. “What are you trying to tell me, Evalina?”
“I think you keep putting yourself in deadly situations because there is something deeply troubling within you,” she said somewhere between fiery conviction and frightful concern. “I think you go out there every night picking fights with dangerous people because, deep down, you’re looking for an honourable way out.”
He stared at her, nonplussed for a long time. An incredulous look crossed his face like a dark cloud. He shook his head, as if physically fighting away the accusation. “You’re being ridiculous.”
“You’re the one planning to accost a group of assassins tonight all by yourself!” she yelled. “And after having nearly died from the last attempt!” She gestured to the bed that still possessed the faintest of blood stains from when he was first brought here. Evalina softened her touch as she placed her hands around Hideo’s face. She had already deduced that it would most likely be the last time she would get to feel him. “You can stay here and continue to heal. Or you can go back out there and fight until you wind up dying, afraid and alone.” She gripped him tighter. “Please stay,” she urged, “and if you do not, I don’t want you coming back here. I cannot bear to see you slowly beat yourself to death.” She had not realised that her eyes had grown tearful until she had finished giving him the ultimatum.
Hideo dropped the burlap sack and leaned in to embrace her tightly. He kissed her lightly on the forehead. He brushed her chestnut hair and tucked it behind her ear and whispered into it. “I’m sorry.” He let go of her, picked up his suit, and left.
Evalina sat on the hard mattress alone. She felt the ends of the blood-stained bedsheets and pulled them towards her. She began to weep into them.