Lost trust

Everything Goes Wrong

A guttural scream shatters the air like I've never heard before. My ears ring. Heather's body collapses to the floor. Her red dress begins to darken. I crash to my knees next to her.
Heathers blood is everywhere. Cries echo around me, drowning out my own. My hands are warm and sticky as they clutch at Heather's chest. Her eyes glitter under the bright lights, never to blink again.

I cradle her head in my arms, whispering pleas.

"Come back to me, Heather," I sob, hardly able to see straight through my tears.
Calloused hands close around my arms, dragging me away from her body. My hands flail wildly, catching onto the thin fabric of her dress and somehow managing to claw a piece off. More big hands pull at me, surrounding me until there are five large guards hauling me away. I don't care where they're taking me, I just want to stay with Heather.

One guard kicks a wooden door open and takes us down a winding flight of stairs. I howl as Heather goes out of sight.
"Please let me stay with her," I choke.
"Please," I repeat softly. The guard pays me no heed.
I realise the other guards who hauled me away from Heather have disappeared and I am currently slung across the shoulder of a burly man as if I were a bag of flour. The further we descend, the more a cold numb passes over me. My hyperventilating has worn me out, the fear fading into a dull ache in my heart.
With it, however, follows a clarity in my mind.

"I'm going to throw up," I say suddenly. The guard halts, grabbing me by the shoulders and setting me down in front of him.

I don't waste a second. Driving my elbow into his chest, I whirl behind him, drawing my dagger as I move and slam the hilt into the back of his head. The large man collapses to the ground with an almighty thud.

After a moment of contemplation, I decide it best to continue down in the hopes of finding an exit. There are probably many guards stationed outside the door we just came through and if I'm being perfectly honest, a selfish part of me simply can't bear to look at Heathers lifeless form.

I eventually reach the bottom and am faced with a dark, narrow corridor that for some reason is a sharp incline.

Why was I brought down here?

I grab a torch off the wall, it's flame casting an orange glow onto the dusty brick walls. The floor isn't dusty though, which means this corridor is well used but not looked after.
The torch I'm holding seems to be the only one here and I can't see the end of the corridor. At this point I have nothing to lose, so I continue my brisk walk regardless. My knees burn as I practically climb upwards. I'm trying not to think about it but my thoughts keep flitting back to the image of Heather's corpse, blood pooling beneath her. Instead of focusing on that, I try to distract myself by thinking of why she was murdered.

Were they aiming at me?

No, the shot was too perfect to be a miss.
So why did they target Heather, an innocent bystander and not me?

A thought stops me in my tracks.

What if that was the plan all along? What if the person who hired me to kill the duke had already arranged for someone to take out Heather?
But why? If they wanted to shut me up they could have bribed me.

You may be thinking that they could have taken me out instead but that is not the case.
If someone is hiring me for an assassination, they will not be able to take me out. I am at the top of the food chain. However, it seems they know that and decided to take out the only person close to me instead.

But who do they work for? Whose side are they on; the kings' or someone else entirely?
My knees threaten to buckle as the realisation smacks me in the face that I am now all alone.
Is that what they were trying to do? Take me down with emotional torture, hoping to render me defenceless in my grief? What if the duke was a trap? Maybe my gut feeling was right and I just murdered an innocent man, falling right into the hands of whoever wants me gone.