Edited
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Daniel had taken Alex to the healers tent, leaving Ivy alone.
She entered the tent with her head held high, she wasn't going to show Irian her shame, maybe he would hit her like Gideon, her teacher, had at the early stages of training every time she cried for her dead family. He'd wish he didn't.
Why had she ran? Coward.
She scolded herself and waited for him to speak, and after a short while he did.
"Ivy," he paused, seeming to search for the right words. "Now I think about it we most likely got off on the wrong foot." His words were worse than a kick to the shin. Forgiveness. It had been a trait that her mother had tried to teach her before she had died. A trait that her mother had died for.
Anger bubbled in her veins, consuming her.
Anger won't solve anything, Ivy.
She heard her mother's voice and almost choked. Swallowing her dignity she stood straighter. Why was she still so affected after all these years?
"Indeed." Her voice strained with the tension of suppressing her anger. Save it for a battle. Gideon's voice whispered in her mind.
"I think that tying you up was a mistake-"
"It was."
"And capturing your friend-"
"That too."
He made a small noise and sat back on a wooden plaited chair.
"Are you actually listening to what I have to say, Ivy?" He spoke in the same tone as if speaking to an insolent child.
"Yes."
"Sit then." She hesitated for a moment, how had she got here? Feeling ashamed by doing something that any normal person would.
You're not normal though.
With a huff she plonked down onto the chair identical to Irian's in an unladylike fashion.
Heck, when had she ever been ladylike?
Now sitting, she waited for his next words.
"I- we -would like you to join our family. You could be useful to us and help us fight these moron's who think that they can wipe out a village and not face the consequences."
A family.
She swallowed down the lump in her throat and put her poker face on.
"What's in it for me?" He frowned at her frankness.
"A family, Ivy. That's what's in it for you."
"I have a family already." She said stubbornly.
His expression screamed with doubt.
"You may think that, but they only want to use you."
Her anger started to push against her barriers furiously.
"What makes you any different?"
He paused dramatically and sighed.
"Because I'm giving you a choice."
To her horror, she flinched at his last word.
Choice.
She had scarcely been able to choose in her life. Aside from her cloak and her own mind. With sharp clarity, she realised that everything at the Sanctuary had been chosen for her.
Choices were a rare thing when it came to assassins; they were given a job and would complete it without a second thought. That was a lie, she had, had third and fourth thoughts when it came to her job but she had always completed the mission.
Apart from that one time.
She looked back on the memory.
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Ivy crept through the front door, adrenaline pumping through her veins. Once up the stairs she made her way down the corridor, it was strangely familiar to her but she brushed it off. The targets bedroom door was slightly ajar, a cold breeze blowing through it. She pushed the door fully open with her boot and snuck inside. And was frankly met with a teenage boy holding a knife out in front of him. She blinked in surprise. He wasn't the target. She looked past him and to the twin beds, both empty. She darted her eyes to the open window, the source of the cold breeze. She sighed.
"Are you Scarlett Hastens brother?" She asked politely, despite the situation.
"Y-yes, I'm Bayle Hasten." He gulped, his eyes frightened and wide.
"Where is she?"
He stayed silent.
"How did you know I was coming?" She had always been a curious person.
"Scarlett told me that she had done something to a-aggravate sir Ronand. She said she hadn't meant to and that some bad people were coming to g-get her so she had to l-leave."
He seemed close to tears.
She pondered his words for a good minute and then made up her mind. "It seems you have done the job for me, I should kill you really. You are a witness." She tilted her head slightly.
"I won't tell if you won't." His face turned from scared to confused and then to excitement.
"I promise I won't tell!" She smiled slightly at his enthusiasm, it was a slightly sheepish smile but she enjoyed the feeling of letting someone live.
"Well, I best be off. Oh, and if your sister comes back tell her to leave and never return."
It was dangerous to leave a witness, she knew that. However, when she looked at the boy all she saw was Kit.
Selfish as it was, she couldn't look at his dead face again.
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Ivy shook herself out of the memory, she wondered what had happened to the boy that hadn't been more than a year younger than her and had, had the decency to be frightened of her.
He had known who she was.
"Ivy?" Ivy jumped at the sound of her name and shook her head out of a daze.
"What just happened?"
"Lost in my thoughts, sorry." She winced at the excuse.
He nodded slowly and repeated the words that she had missed.
"So will you help us?"
She thought of all the people that she had killed. All of the lives that she held in her heart. Then she remembered the man who led his soldiers into a village full of innocents and ordered to kill them all.
Vaguely, she wondered what his name was.
She looked at Irian, her mind made up.
"Yes-"
Irian interrupted her with a sigh and went to speak.
"-but I have a question."
"Of course, what is it?" The excitement was plain on his face and for a moment she was flattered that he thought so highly of her.
She shook the feeling off and asked the question that had been bothering her for quite some time.
"Where are we?"
YOU ARE READING
When Embers Grow
Fantasía***READ THE FLOOD INSTEAD*** Ivy's never been normal. She always had something different about her, that's why she was hidden. Though she didn't know, there was a reason why her family was taken from her. It wasn't just assassin's working for the mo...
