The Sanctuary

CHAPTER FIVE

 I had met Kat two months prior. I was sitting in the library, my head burrowed over a new book that the Stealers had brought in. This thick narrative was about fifty types of herbal medicine. Healers were always needed on Rider expeditions. Maybe if I knew healing, they would let me in much faster.

I was trying everything and anything. 

“Alaya,” A nearly mouse-like whisper drew me out of my thoughts. 

“Yes?” I muttered, exasperated to be drawn out of my relentless study.

Elena, a girl no more than fourteen, stood in the quiet library, wringing her hands nervously. 

“Madame Widow requires your presence. There’s been a new addition.”

I looked at Elena, sharply. I did not want to ask, but that sinking feeling in my chest told me exactly why Madame Widow was asking for me.

“So why does she need me?”

Elena looked white. “You are to be their Shadow.”

I groaned inwardly. This was the worst thing for me at the moment, and most likely the very exact reason Madame Widow had assigned me this role. Nothing gets past her, not even my daily swordplay training sessions with Jonrick that we had been studiously sticking to behind Madame Widow’s back. Swordplay was not taught until you were seventeen, the last thing skill required prior to becoming a Rider.

I nodded curtly at Elena, and watched, bemused, as the girl exhaled a sigh of relief and scuttled out of the library. I had made a rather strong reputation as a ruthless fighter; the entire Sanctuary knew of my unwavering goal to join the Riders. As Reece constantly reminded me, the others found me intimidating.

I tried not to let it bother me. Throwing myself into my training even more may not have been the best solution but it was all I knew.

I slammed the book I was reading on the dusty table. The other children in the room, whom I had barely noticed, jolted in surprise as I stomped out into the hallway.

There were nearly two hundred children who lived in Madame Widow’s Sanctuary. We pronounced our arrivals with howls of fear and despair. Newer children would always hole themselves up in a corner or in their beds, refusing to move, eat or speak to anyone. Madame Widow would let them be in the first few weeks. It wasn’t their time to accept their new home 

The rest of us would watch, from the corner of our eyes, as the new child would finally rise up. Their tears would cease; their whimpering slowed. Sadness would turn to fury. They would open their eyes up and accept.

That’s when Madame Widow would step in.

Each new recruit was paired with a Shadow. Taken through the routine, the steps and day-to-day routine of living in Madame Widow’s Sanctuary. The days were for learning. Reading, writing, studying. Madame Widow had encompassed a large library, and new books from the Stealers were brought in nearly every week.

Each child had a role. Some of us cooked or cleaned, others stitched clothes, and even more fashioned weaponry. We all learned a trade, passed around from child to child. My own role was to fashion weaponry. I had a passion for it; whittling away at arrows, sharpening blades, hammering out shields. I would imagine the sword in my hand, carving the air as it rose up and hammered down on my enemy. It was a way to release my anger in something else other than fighting 

Ah, but fighting is what the children of the Sanctuary knew, oh too well. We lived and breathed our combat training. We were expected to excel in every facet of martial arts; archery, swordplay, hand-to-hand combat. We were groomed to be capable warriors but also pushed to develop our own unique set of skills. Jonrick, for example, was the best in almost all sectors of fighting – his forte was swordplay.