Stones and Glass Houses (Book 1)

🕷(95) The Banquet of Death

Brooklyn POV-

Brook did her best not to fidget from her place seated at one of the raised tables. 

Each leader of a guild was given a table for them and their families or notable ranks of command. It had still come as a slight shock when Ivan had asked her to sit by his side at the table between two hourglass banners. 

She'd had little choice but to agree, but Brooklyn regretted her decision not to fight the command as soon as she realized all the other Black Widows were seated behind them.

One of them could easily kill Brook, stab her in the back in seconds. Yet, no one had moved to attack in the loud room. Mostly each guild kept to themselves. 

No one stood in the middle of the rectangular room to interact with others.

Like all places in this secret hide out, the building looked run down and old from the outside, but inside, the place was lavish with only the finest polished furniture, a warm series of fires for warmth lit in the corners of the room, and so many jade accents on the roof and columns that brook wondered just who owned this place.

It certainly wasn't Ivan.

The food had been brought out by servants of each guild, and for the raised tables, one servant took a bite of each person's meal to check for poison. After a few minutes of panic in which Brooklyn worried for the blank faced man before her, she was relieved to see no ones food had been tampered with.

Odd...the assassins must be really united if no one was taking this monumental chance to kill off competition.

After that odd silence in which everyone had been waiting for some servant or another to drop dead, conversation picked up again and Brooklyn was able to dig in to the vegetable stew before her. 

The one good thing about her seating arrangement, was that Brooklyn was seated across the room from the League of Villains. Whoever had decided the seating chart for this was either a complete idiot or had a thirst for bloodshed. It didn't take long to notice that each guild was seated across from their 'enemy' without fail.

The Red Room and League of Assassins were not only enemies, but by the looks of it, still the two most powerful guilds even when they both suffered recent downfalls a few years ago. 

Those two tables were not only before one another, but they were in the middle of the room, a place of honor.

Across the span of a small dance floor, Brooklyn took a peek at the table with the green and gold table cloth, assassins with ninja-like outfits and black capes behind it. Damian was seated next to his mom the way Brook was beside Ivan.

He ate with little notice of anyone or anything, and if anyone from another nearby table looked his way, Dami shot them his signature glare that sent them looking anywhere else but at his green eyes.

Had this been a different circumstance, she might've found it funny.

Brook wasn't dumb enough to be so careless as to catch his attention, being seated next to Ivan was giving her enough anxiety as it was. Yet, the teen knew she'd have to make a plan to change that soon because this was currently her only chance to try and talk to Damian about an escape plan, or possibly a way to stop whatever this was.

At the very least, Damian looked unharmed. 

He was still wearing his League attire, katanas on his back barely concealed by the red cape that pooled behind him as he sat crosslegged before his table.