Darkness and Beauty (The Fated Series, #1)

Chapter 6 - Lance - A Few Hours of Sleep

Murderous, traitorous, giant piece of horseshit - son of a harlot!

My fist comes down in a powerful swing aimed for Fauna's jaw. With a quick sidestep she swings her leg, catching my ankle to take out mine but I roll and am on my feet in the next second.

After our father gave us the rest of the details of his "master plan," we both needed to release some pent-up anger. It was an effort to sit there for another hour and a half and try not to break the chair and lodge its legs into the wall. I bit my tongue so many times that I'm pretty sure eating is going to be tasteless and painful.

Fauna was a little less squirmy then me, but when she sits that still it usually means that she is swallowing down her anger and is frozen so her hands don't twitch to her blades.

Yes, we do have anger management issues, but live through what we have and anyone would be messed up too.

Father was just as visibly struggling not to lash out, but he's always had more control of himself than us. He dismissed us with a wave of his hand and asked that we don't kill each other.

Times like this, everyone knows exactly where we were headed.

Two hours later in the center sparring ring, Fauna and I are drenched in sweat and still giving each other hell.

Since we were raised fighting each other, we know what moves the other will likely use, our tells, our weaker spots, and stronger ones. Fighting someone new isn't ultimately difficult, but it's fighting someone who knows you just as well as you know yourself that's a challenge. It's like fighting yourself in the mirror.

If we were to go out into the streets right now, then she'd kill another three dozen men, and me a mansion, and still we wouldn't be satisfied. Even now, with a crowd now gathered around our ring and my muscles slowly tiring, I still don't feel better.

Will's not the first - and he won't be the last - to turn dark.

In the past, my father would torture and kill the man who has drifted from the code. That was, of course, until Will.

Since he killed not only an innocent but my fate, he wanted to go the extra mile. He locked Will in the darkest room on the lowest level of the keep, starved him, and waited until he stopped screaming at his hallucinations before dragging him into another room to torture him. It went on for about two months before father announced that Will would be burned to death.

His last piece of suffering before getting what he begged for in that dark room.

I used to sneak into the hallways below the training rooms to listen to Will plead for someone to let him out or give him mercy and end his life. Some days I cried, others I simply sat and let his pain fuel my killing calm.

I found Fauna there a few times, sitting in the dark. We never spoke and left when we had enough or had somewhere to be.

Two days before he was to be burned, both Fauna and I were out on separate assignments. I was across the town on a roof keeping an eye on the castle walls. Father wanted me to mark the guard shifts, shadows, possible entrances and exits, the normal scouting stuff. My assignment was to get in, grab a servant for questioning, and get out. After sitting on the roof unnoticed for a couple of hours, I trudged home and found it in chaos.

Father was yelling orders, Jades were running in and out, and newly appointed Jades were being sent out to search the town brick by brick. I knew what happened before I even reached the gates.

Will escaped.

We tried time and time again to track Will down, but like he was taught, he disappeared like a ghost in the night.