Blood and Gold

The Lizard

I had woken up in Elvira's room with a sore neck and cat fur on my face. Elvira had insisted that I stay there for the next few days, which had turned into a week and a half now, even though Talon now kept an assassin posted to stand guard by the door at all times. It was odd, seeing her so worried over me.

Felix was on extra high alert during the mission I'd been on yesterday with her. The road to Newham was usually safe, despite the occasional wolf pack or bear. We were doing a delivery of Vidar's poisons to Jarl Beckett. He didn't explain his reasoning as to why, but he'd asked us to also take out a newly formed group of bandits that had set up camp in an abandoned, run-down watchtower just north of Newham.

Dagfinn was extra friendly, I think he felt a little hurt that he wasn't brought along to help save me. He sat beside me at almost every meal and asked to spar and train with me often. It wasn't bad, Dagfinn wasn't overbearing or anything of the sort, but it was a new amount of attention that I wasn't quite fond of.

Kestrel also seemed to think that my near-death experience was a good way to start a friendship. He introduced me to his brother, who looked nothing like him, Vidar. He was taller than me, had dark brown hair, and had scars on his upper lip and left eyebrow. He was much stronger than me, had been in probably twice the amount of fistfights, and was very protective of Kestrel.

My healing had been taking longer than I would've liked, it took a week before I was even able to go on missions, and another one before Hawthorne broke the news of Alvina's body not being where it should've been. Turns out they found Dahlia's body in a similar state as mine, only the black poison that was corrupting my blood, had started foaming out of her mouth. And The Fox was nowhere to be found.

On top of that, Wynstan Claye turns out to be Ajax's brother, who everyone thought had died in battle. Turns out he was running drugs through Northwind, Ajax didn't take that news well. They wanted to come with me when I was given the go-ahead to take him out, but I wasn't sure they'd want to be there when I killed their brother.

"Please, Theron. You know Hawthorne will want you to take someone with you." He had begged me the other day at dinner.

"Ajax, you know I'm going to kill him." I didn't move my gaze from my food.

"He's not a bad guy he-"

"He is distributing drugs."

"We don't know that." They protested, voice raising with false hope. "At least let me talk to him."

"Look, I'll leave it up to Hawthorne, but I'm sure it'll be Felix or Dagfinn. An assassin or a mage." I sighed when they dropped their head. "I'll mention that you want to come with me."

"Thank you, Theron." I gave them a half smile and turned my attention back to Elvira, who had been talking for ten minutes about her most recent mission.

"Hi," Elvira spoke, clearly surprised that I was still in her room. "No early morning training or mission today?"

"I like it here," I admitted, looking up at her from my spot on the floor.

"The thing with Ajax still bothering you?" She rotated to pet the cat that was curled up at the foot of her bed.

"Why would they want to come with me? I'm going to kill their brother." I stared down at the floor. "That's awful, right?"

She ran her fingers through the section of hair behind my ears before starting to braid it. "You know they're going to try to talk you out of it. Make it seem like he isn't all that bad." Her voice was heavy with sleep.

"I know." I sighed again, tilting my head to look at her. "What am I going to do?"

She didn't know either. "Just, I don't know, stay here."