The Nightingale (One Shot)

The Nightingale

I wrote this with my friend kellymhausmann. I hope you like it.

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The Knight's Son. Standing right in front of me. All my life has been leading up to this moment. And it's him. Why him? The gun in my hand feels heavy – it never has before. Every time I imagined this in the past, I thought it would be the happiest moment of my life, now all I feel is fear. This isn't how it is supposed to happen. I think back to how this all started. My parent's death. That awful Wednesday night eight years ago...

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The knife landed in the center of the target board. I grabbed the next knife and was about to throw it, when the door creaked open. My aunt Rhea stepped in. She didn't usually come in here, especially without knocking, so I thought she had to share some exciting news with me. When I lifted my head, I took three steps back, she looked distressed, her eyes were red-rimmed, and her hair was a mess. Immediately I rushed to her and asked what had happened. It wasn't like Rhea to be in tears. She was crying so hard she barely managed to get a sentence out, "I-, y-your parents, p-plane c-crash, d-didn't survive", she sobbed out, before collapsing into my arms. Didn't survive: It rang out like an echo in the room.

We sat there for what felt like hours, tears streaming down both of our cheeks, until she left sensing I needed some space. As soon as the door closed behind her, the reality of the situation settled in and I felt rage build up in me. I knew it wasn't a plane crash. They had told me they were going on a mission. Someone must have killed them. My sobs were replaced by screams, my hands hitting the floor in despair. I grasped the nearest knife and flung it at the rope, that was holding up the punching bag in the corner. It sliced through the rope, the bag crashed to the floor and then everything came to a stop. I couldn't feel anything. Everything was numb and silent. But as I lay on the floor, a desire for revenge crept into my heart.

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The next few months I spent locked in my room. I didn't want to go out. I didn't want to see people. People with their happy lives, who still had their parents. People, who hadn't spent their lives as the secret daughter of two deadly assassins who worked for the undercover organization, The Tardigrades. People, who hadn't been trained by their parents their whole lives to become an assassin themselves. Rhea, although she did not know about my parents' job, supported me the best she could. She invited me to move to her house but then left me alone as I grew more distant. However, as the months went by, she begged me to go out, to make a friend or just to get some fresh air. So that's how I found myself on a sunny day, sitting in a tree, reading a book, to escape my aunts nagging; the day I met my only friend.

The book was just getting to the exciting part, when I heard a splash coming from the stream that ran through the woods by my new house. I looked up from my book, curious, there weren't many people who lived around there, so I was hoping to catch a glimpse of a cool bird. To my surprise my eyes fell on a boy around my age 13 at most, who had seemingly just fallen off a log, that served as a bridge to cross the river. I couldn't help it – I burst out laughing. He looked ridiculous sitting there in the shallow brook, his soaking black hair plastered to his forehead, covering his dark eyes. I tried to muffle my laughter, I didn't want to be rude, but when the boy looked up to me, a little surprised at my presence, but grinning, I couldn't stop myself. "What are you laughing at?", he asked, quickly joining in. I jumped down and put out a hand to help him up. The boy grabbed it, "I'm Seth. I haven't seen you around here before."