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CHAPTER EIGHT: CASSI

CHAPTER EIGHT: CASSI

Keoin just stood and stared a Jayla as she cried on the bench. He felt such gut retching pity for Jayla. Her whole life has been nothing but fear and pain since she was born. She had forbidden marks hidden on her. The killing curse was on the back of her neck, and there was one just above her hip that he had never seen before. Pein must have place the marks on her when she was five or six. Her sister had been a master of using energies to chock the life out of people or crush them into a bloody pulp. It seems that her older siblings trained her relentlessly. Jayla's parents left them alone for months at a time trusting them to take care of Jayla, but they had no idea. Pein must have convinced them to train her into a loyal weapon of mass destruction. Jayla is able to fight in combat almost as well as emery, who has had years of training and time to perfect his skill. The power of her lightening could someday surpass his own and she was able to wield the energies in the air to do her bidding.

Keoin had no idea what happened to Jayla's appearance when she fought Emery. She looked as though someone had flicked a switch and her other personality showed. It must be a type of forbidden curse only downworlders know of. The killing mark forced the subject to fight to the death in any battle. Jay had a good heart and the curse only took over when her life was threatened, a big enough distraction seemed to wake her out of it. If she ever meant to really kill someone, there was nothing anyone could do to stop her. She is the face of death.

Keoin hated himself, he was afraid of his own niece. Than again, there was always the question if she really was his niece. He was almost sure that jay was older than twelve when the assassination of their clan happened. He had though she had been fifteen or so at the time, but she was awfully small then and constantly sick. That was his main memory of jay before she left, her being close to death almost constantly. So many things just weren’t adding up lately, he wished his beloved sister was her, so many secret's she had hid.

There was going to be many days of long gruelling training ahead. Keoin knew jay needs to learn how to master her ability’s and fight the forbidden marks. First he was going to have to talk with her.

“jay” he said softly. “ I have to explain something to you. This is not something that will be easy to live with but I think it is better than to keep you in the dark.”

“ tell me, please” her wide golden eyes were wet with tears. She looked so much like Silvia at sixteen that Keoin had to constantly tell himself she wasn't.

“ you now that from birth till the age of nine a child has markings placed on them. Darkslayers markings are solely for the benefit of the person in which the mark is placed. You see them on your skin now. “

“ what does this have to do with what- what I just did to emery?” her voice was steel and her face full of self-loathing.

“I’m getting there, I promise. First you must understand that both your sister and brother were evil from birth. They loved to cause pain to others and were brilliant fighters. Most people feared them, except for your parents, they only worried that they had damaged their children in some way because they never understood their behaviour. They would willingly follow the wrong people. happy to be servants, never leaders. When Pein came along he promised them things that would never happen and power that could never be theirs. They followed him without question.”

jay was silent. She only starred unblinkingly at the ground.

“why did no one stop them? Or throw Pein in jail?”

“that was the hard part. Pein was part of the Agulorum, a well trusted member too. He was not originally a downworlder, he came from our clan, he was a friend of your mothers. The only people who knew that he was a killer, where the peopled who's family members he had slaughtered. I watched my brothers, Mikhai's, whole family be murdered. His wife and three children killed by Pein. This all happened one year before the killings of the lightening clan. It's the reason Mikhai has become a hunter.”