Black Reign

Astryd

The mercenaries' territory reeks of blood. The coppery tang clings to the air so strongly I am surprised I cannot see specks of blood floating through the air.

My surroundings are nothing special. Moonlight trickles down through the gutter hole above us, illuminating the wide corridor. The mercenary sigil lies to my right, etched into a wall: a lion's face with its mouth parted in a ferocious roar surrounded by an explosion of crimson swirls that drips down the wall like blood. It usually scares civilians from the sewers. Even the High King's guards do not dare venture down here though, sometimes, I catch a captain or two attempting to fish criminals out only to be rendered lifeless by the kiss of a blade.

"Well?" Citali's voice is hardly audible over the shrieking of sewage water a meter away. We are waiting on one of the two sidewalks cushioning the water tunnel in the centre.

I wet my lips, tearing my vision from the browned water to face her. My gaze does not linger, instead it lifts to the gutter above where a man should be appearing soon enough: the Heir to the Shivarra guild. "We wait for Saeran."

She says nothing, only folds her arms and leans carelessly against the mercenaries' sigil, examining her nails. Solandis slides beside her and focuses on the water. Nye stays with me, silent.

It is but a moment before someone speaks, to my surprise it is Solandis and not her sister. "What about the Dracaeon replacement?"

Replacement. Anger is a searing storm through my veins at the word. I nearly scoff. "There is no replacement." Bitterness overcomes my tone. "They send merely an assassin."

"A lowly assassin," Citali chimes, sniggering.

"I implied no such thing." I growl. "All assassins are equal."

"My apologies, Your Highness," I am surprised she does not give me a mock bow. "They send merely an assassin—"

"Citali." Nye snaps. "This squabble is purposeless. Astryd implies only that Vanadey has not been replaced as Heir... as of yet."

The sound of her name makes my heart ache even though my chest feels like a bottomless pit of ice.

The night I had found Vanadey's head, I had slept as soon as I could, desperate to escape the world. The next day I could not stop the tears when Sahar and Julio took her and her assassins in a cart to the Dracaeon after delivering information to us. Nascha had supplied updated maps for the criminal underworld while the other two the exact timings and movements of the Mercenary King this night.

I had spent the following day in my personal worship room so I could praise Maldara, asking Her to make Vanadey's journey to the afterlife as steady as possible. Something about when I finished told me She had heard what I had asked, and agreed. It had made my heart warm. But as soon as night had reached, after a day full of scheming, I was too exhausted to cry though I felt like it.

How long had it been since someone as close to me as Vanadey had been, died? Even though I was close to the king since recruitment, there was no way in Maldara's Hell that I would have cried so many tears for him. My master had told me long ago that if I wanted to cry, then I should cry.

Many assassins have this ideology that crying is weakness. He had told me.

Is it not? I would question to which he would reply with: No, crying is liberation.

A liberation I hated, but one which helped me anyway.

I had prayed to Her before leaving today, and I will pray once more when I return.

"I apologise for my tardiness." Comes a steady, male voice that pulls me from my thoughts. Saeran, the Heir to the Shivarra guild, now stands before me directly under the moonlight. His face is by far nothing appealing: scars slice down the right side of his face from hairline to jaw, one eye is half-sightless and milky blue, the other a dazzling gold. He wears a blue overcoat over white clothes. His hood is trimmed with black and his mask navy. The stubble that dots his face lays in misshapen patches. He looks old for only twenty-five years.