The blood wouldn’t stop gushing. Evalina struggled to stitch the man’s open leg wound whilst the city was falling to pieces outside. Rioters had taken to the streets. Shops and houses were being set alight. She could hear the shouts, the cries for blood. She did not know what had caused such pandemonium. All she knew was that she was frightened. All she could do was continue helping those that needed it. It was Pax’s will.

Griswold bit down onto the strap of leather as he shrieked. He was working in his forge when looters entered his property and stole his weapons. He took a shiv to the leg for trying to defend himself. That was the song he had sung told the Priestess. Evalina found that people always liked to make themselves the hero of their own story when the real truth wouldn’t make them appear so golden.

His child was standing next to him as the Priestess operated. She was weeping. Evalina did not think that Griswold would succumb to such a small wound. Perhaps the blacksmith’s daughter was more afraid of what was happening outside the chapel. She should have been.

Evalina wrapped another layer of bandages around Griswold’s bulging leg. The white fabric swiftly turned a dark shade of maroon around the centre. Fortunately, it bled no further. “It’s done,” Evalina said after she took a long breath. Griswold nodded with dewy eyes and spat out the leather from his mouth.

As she watched the grizzled blacksmith embrace his daughter, Gabriella approached from behind. Her face was grave. More so than usual. “He’s back,” she said nervously.

Evalina discreetly withdrew herself from the self-made operating table she had built at the corner of the chapel. Lately, with the rising cost of elixirs and doctors, she had found more and more people turning up at her door seeking aid. Especially tonight. She had already seen multiple innocent bystanders beaten by the City Watch during their heated fury against the rioters.

She followed Gabriella with a fury of her own, beginning to brew within. She had told him firmly not to return. It hurt her greatly to tell him so, which made his flagrant repudiation of her request more insulting. Gabriella led her through the back entrance of the chapel behind her chambers.

The moon was a misty shade of bronze. Looming and wistful. She and Gabriella stood out in the alley. Evalina could feel the faintest cold touches of raindrops against her blood-stained hands. Hideo emerged from the shadows. He was in his armour and half-sapphire mask. For a change, he did not look injured or near death. A welcome sight for an unwelcome man.

“I know you told me never to return,” he said, half raising a scarred hand in peace. “I’m here regarding Rosamund.”

“What about her?” Evalina asked with a scowl. She pulled her mauve hood over her hair as the rain began to hit harder.

“She didn’t make it here?”

She stared at him in perplexity. Many strange callers came to her chapel doors at night. Wounded blacksmiths, birthing mothers, ninjas… Never a princess.

Hideo cursed under his mask. “They’re hunting her, Evalina.”

“Isn’t the King keeping her safe inside the palace?” she asked sceptically.

“Sigismund’s dead.”

She heard Gabriella shriek behind her. The young priestess had her hands clasped around her mouth in shock. Now Evalina understood the chaos around her. She heard conflicting stories and rumours as to the origin of the riots. Some said the Velociraptor was going to unleash disease on the whole city. Evalina found that preposterous. The worst that could be was an empty threat. Others said Sigismund had been plotting to burn the city down. Neither tale made much sense to her. Yet one concerning truth had just crawled out from the rubble of lies.

Stolen novel; please report.

“Was that you’re doing?” Gabriella asked the Ninja sharply.

“No,” Hideo answered with a slight slither of that inhuman echo in his voice. “I tried to save him. I failed, and now they’re after Rosamund. I told her to come here before we were separated.”

“She never arrived,” Evalina stated.

“Why couldn’t you take her here yourself?” Gabriella berated. “You make a pox of everything and then dump it on our doorstep!”

“Enough,” Evalina yelled back at her. She flickered her wild eyes at the younger priestess. “Go back inside and see if there’s more wounded to tend to.”

Gabriella opened her mouth, as if she were considering arguing back, but thought better of it. She hanged her head low and silently drifted through the back chamber doors. Evalina sighed and stepped closer to the Assassin. She lifted the half-crystallised helm from his head. The face under the mask appeared bruised and tired. Dark lines circled around his eyes. His forehead brandished cuts and throbbing bumps from his previous conflicts and he appeared burdened with forlorn fatigue. “The ninja looks fearsome, yet and the man inside the suit looks near death.”

“My sister, Evalina,” he said with a voice in deep pain. “I… I think Sigismund had her burned.”

“What?” she could not hide her incredulity. Sigismund had always had the reputation of a King who was stern, yet fair. He would hand down harsh sentences yet be willing to forgive on occasion those with justifiable motive. Most of the unjust rulings of the past were handed down from the Sheriffs or local watchmen deputies. To burn who would have been a teenage girl at the time… That was not of the man’s character. Emperor Nerva, perhaps. Not a New Jade ruler. Never a ruler from New Jade…

“He burned so many for practicing witchcraft,” Hideo said. His voice was beginning to break, the twang of an echo long faded. “He was a monster, and I was protecting him this whole time without even knowing.” He knelt down and dragged his hands through his hair. “Oh spirits, Hiroko…”

Evalina sat beside him and placed her arm around him. “I am truly sorry if this is what has become of her.” Evalina did not know what else to say. About Hiroko. About Sigismund. About the bleak state the entire city found itself in. “At least now you can grieve with closure.”

Hideo was weeping at this point. He wiped the last straggler tears from his eye and snorted. He let out a hollow chuckle. “Before he died, Sigismund told me she might have escaped.”

“And what do you wish to believe?”

He did not answer. Instead, he arose and offered his scarred hand to lift her to her feet. “I need your help, Evalina.” His voice was wanning. “I don’t know who else to turn to. It’s my last request.”

She felt the side of his face. It was cold and throbbing. One cheek was heavily bruised, one eye blackened. His escapades had not been kind to him, just as she had warned. “You want me to try to find Rosamund Greenfire?”

“I need to stop Dorian Ambrose,” he said, his tone turning frightful. “He killed Sigismund and now he’s managed to weaponize the Red Plague. It took too long for me to get here, and he threatened to use it when the next night falls. He proclaimed this the night before.”

Dorian? He was the masked lunatic? The famed Knight was revered as one of the finest swords in the kingdom. In the entire Midlands. Small wonder he had left Hideo in such a broken state after the night at the New Jade library. Poisoned and in anguish, whimpering for death in his sleep. “Your last confrontation with him did not end well.” She felt compelled to point it out. She didn’t want him to die. It hurt her to see him become so beaten by the world.

“I know. I meant ‘last request’ in a literal sense.” He took her hand from his beaten face and lowered it. “This time it’s not for an honourable way out. It’s because someone has to try to stop the city from collapsing.”

After it chewed you up and spat you out…

Evalina felt the scars around his fingertips. She studied the bruises around his cheeks, his long dark hair, the lightning blue eyes. She tried to remember every detail of his face. It would most likely be the last time that she would see it. “I’ll find her,” she assured him. But will it make any difference? The thought crawled around her like an unwelcome spider. She could not stop it. Night was already falling, and if Dorian made good on his word,

Hideo nodded, leaned in, and hugged her. Then he detached himself from her and donned his mask. He walked out into the night without a word.