The Assassin Princess (The Legacy Novels Book 1) (13 page)

“Hurt you?” His eyes flared and flashed. “Hurt you? Oh, you wound me, little sister. You truly do. I give you trust, power, potential, and what do you go and do with it? Hurt
you
?”

Adam shifted his foot down from her shoulder to her arm and pinned her hard to the ground, pointing his sword down toward her.

She whimpered louder, searching desperately for
Dangerous
, the pain’s grip twisting her guts, wringing them—she felt sick, and the blackness threatened again.
Dangerous
had all the strength, all the power. Where was she?

“You did what I expected you to do,” he said, his voice verbal venom as she felt the tip of the blade playing against her dress, pulling it gently from her shoulder. A bruise was already forming. “I knew you wouldn’t be loyal, wouldn’t be obedient.” He pressed the tip into the bruise, and Ami screamed.
The people,
she thought,
dancing on the cliff. Can’t they hear me?
But she knew they couldn’t help even if they could hear her, and they’d die if they tried. “How am I ever meant to trust you, unless I can control you, huh?”

His teeth were clenched in a horrific grin, his melted skin sheened in sweat.

Where was Dangerous?
Ami closed her eyes to search, hiding from death while gladly welcoming unconsciousness. She saw the mirror in her mind, the arches, the columns, the rosebush and walkway—up there a tower, over there a face peering through the forest, blonde hair flicked and gone. Where was
Dangerous?
She couldn’t see her. The sky was turning black.

“Well, maybe I just need to go a little deeper,” Adam said, far, far away. He pierced her shoulder with the blade. Ami’s eyes flew open with the pain. It burned cold inside her, yet her skin burst into heat. She felt dizzy, the blade going deeper into her flesh, her blood seeping out around the metal.

Green flames licked downward and into her skin, gathering and glowing, sinking into her and flowing through her veins, muscles, and tendons. There was screaming far off in the distance, maybe from the magical horizon, from the broken light that lifted and fell upon the water in thousands of pieces; perhaps from the cliff above, for a love that’d fallen—but she knew it was her scream. She screamed as her body set aflame and burned.

*

The music from above was faint, but she was able to hear it better now. She heard singing, laughing—could hear footsteps on gravel—a dance, the shift of a dress; she could even smell the sweet scented perfume over the rotting salt of the sea.

And then Ami opened her eyes.

Between the arches, the moon was lit a dull green, full and jade. The columns were tall and she walked between them, touching the stone, the marble, her booted feet stepping carefully through them. Her hands were a sickly-pale white. Turning, she looked for the rosebush. The flowers were dark red, a clash with the green that fought and fought and—

Ami opened her eyes and looked up the vertical climb to the top of the cliff. Singing, music, serene and tribal, Celtic maybe. She sighed and then sat up straight, shielding her eyes from the sun.

Adam looked down from afar, the red-tipped sword at his side. She looked from the blade to her shoulder, but the wound was gone and her skin was left unmarked, though paler to her eyes.

“I’m alive,” she said, blinking and looking around her. “You didn’t kill me.” She wasn’t just alive though. Ami felt amazing. She looked down at herself and saw her own magnificence. Had she really listened to that pathetic unicorn and tried to escape?

“Kill you? Oh no, of course not,” Adam said, offering her his hand, pulling her to her feet. “No, you’re no use to me dead, little sister.” He picked up the new sword and passed it to her.

Ami felt the weight of it in her hand as she took hold, felt the power in it. A green glow flickered down her arm and across the blade, sparking at the tip.

The music above was clearer, and when she looked up fully, she saw the colours of their dress all the more vividly. It was as if Adam’s power had enriched her senses to the extreme. Everything was brighter and more detailed. The smells in the air, the words spoken—she could pick out these things and absorb them. Ami wanted to see these things, wanted to be in the middle of it all, to drink it and breathe it. The dark skinned men, the olive and bronzed women, their smiles and cries—she could almost feel their wants and taste their fragrant, sweaty flesh.

She turned to Adam. “I want to go up there.”

“They are insignificant,” he said. “Why would you want to go up there?”

Ami couldn’t give an answer, but not for the lack of one. Indeed, there were so many to choose from. To stand with them, unseen; to be powerful in the midst of such weakness; to take their smiles and smells and feed on their missing laughter, their dances lost to tears; to take the innocent happiness and destroy it without warning or reason…she’d take it all and leave them with nothing.

The sword in her hand vibrated, and the power inside her burned. “I want to kill,” she said.

“Good,” he said and took her arm, “but we need to be precise, exact. We are powerful creatures; we are gods of this world, of any world.” Ami let herself be led down the beach, stopping shy of the water. Green flames jumped between them, feeding from each other. “Look up there now with your powerful eyes, and tell me what you see.”

Ami did, seeing the building standing alone at the edge, crumbling and old, dressed in red and white banners. Blue ribbons streamed from its tower and the windows were hung with yellow and gold fabrics. In front of the building were tables covered in food stuffs, and even at such a distance, she could see meats and cakes, stews and trifles. Children ran circles around parents, girls with ribbons, boys in shirts and ties.

Further to the left, beyond the dancers, people crowded and clapped to the music. They swayed and stepped, holding their dresses before them. Golden bangles sparkled in the sun.

“I see everything,” she said, “almost every detail.”

“Yes, this is good, very good, better than I’d hoped. Look very closely now. What’s going on?”

The crowd parted and Ami saw a man and woman standing apart from the others, their arms around each other. The woman was dressed in silk, a dress of lilac draped with scarves of white and cream.

“It’s a wedding,” she said, taking in the scene as a whole.

“Yes, it is,” Adam sneered, “and they have gone to such trouble to make it so beautiful, haven’t they?” He turned her to him, staring into her eyes. “How do you feel about them? What do you feel?”

“Hate,” she said, shocked that the word had come to her so easily. “I feel hate. They don’t deserve the happiness, the beauty. I want it.”

All the pretty colours flashed in her eyes and the celebrations were a temptation too far. She had to have them, like coloured sweets in a jar. She needed to consume. It was so simple and clear in her mind, and Adam’s power had clarified it. She was powerful, a goddess of worlds, and she would paint them upon a canvas of blood.

“Tell me again,” Adam urged, gripping her arms tight, his sharp teeth bared.

“I hate them,” she said, her eyes on his, the fire passing between them. “I want them dead for their beauty. I want to take it from them!” She was seething inside, energised like she’d never been before. Her old life seemed so grey in comparison, even with the colours of art. This was an all-consuming rage beneath her very soul, spurning her on to do what it was in her new nature to do.

“Then go up there.” Adam shifted her forward toward the cliff and its people. “Go up there and take their bride from them. Use your mind, use the power and take her swiftly.” He let her go, taking the sword from her hand. “Assassinate the bride.”

His words thrilled her, and the power rippled across her skin. The cliff came closer, and looking down she realised she’d risen into the air. Green flames carpeted her feet, lifting her toward the sun, the hot wind ruffling through her hair as she passed the rock face in a blur and landed unnoticed in the shadow of the building.

She walked forward, winding through the crowd. She smiled, passing the dancers, the men with their guitars. She passed through the throngs of beautiful and happy people who laughed, danced, and sang. She picked up the tune, her lips mumbling the muffled lines of a song, Celtic maybe?

Dangerous
wasn’t there, but that was okay this time. She didn’t need her for this. She could do this. She felt the power building inside her gut, lethal, poisonous, like a sickness in her belly, and now was the place and the time to release it fully. She felt it rising to the surface.

Ami closed in on the bride who was in the arms of her husband. Yes, take a tissue, a glass of bubbly, and oh what a pretty dress, have I mentioned? Such a perfect day for it too, so lucky. So sorry about your big day, I don’t know you and I wish I did. You look so beautiful, but now you’ll be hurt. So sorry about your dress and how those that are gathered will miss you. So sorry,
that I’m not sorry at all.

Ami pushed her way through the crowd, forceful yet invisible in her black dress and boots. She entered the guarding circle of family and friends.

She felt the disaster of it, somewhere deep inside, felt her tragic Hero sigh as everything was lost again—but she was hungry, hungry for the colour to fade and to spill into her, for it to bleed from the canvas of contentment and enter her.

She looked into the eyes of the girl, no older than herself, whose life was about to end.

Ami pushed the power.

Something broke in the girl, and something broke inside Ami forever.

The bride fell to her knees, staring past her into oblivion.

Ami turned and left, disappearing into the crowd.

As she reached the cliff’s edge, the first scream broke out, and Ami shivered. This was her moment, when she could close her eyes and soak in the tragic loss. More screams, more cries. The music stopped forever. The sun scorched her face and the salty ocean spray kissed it cold, as all good intentions, all efforts of superficial beauty ended as they were to begin. With the artist, with the princess. With Ami.

Her brown eyes glazed to green as she watched a gull soar high above and dip down into the ocean. Without a look behind at the chaos left, Ami dived toward the horizon between two worlds. A flash of green haze bloomed for a moment, and was then gone.

The morning started
in the far east across the travelled hills, a white haze of hope that trickled down the slopes and touched the valley with its cold-morning fingers. It had opened like a timid flower, holding nothing more precious than its initial bloom, the sky an overexposed grey—ever an autumn—a bare and senseless change from the night. Hero had sat by the side of the track watching it arrive, musing on how different it looked compared to home, how close to the land and sheltered, a hostage of the hills. Even the air was different, with a fragrant and relentless wind that sought to chill and expose, though it did little in its selfish passing to mute the sickly iron taste of death. The smell of blood was ripe, though the girl had shifted the bodies into shadow long before the morning had taken hold.

He still couldn’t look behind him, though he knew he’d eventually have to. Just not yet. He would first allow Raven to mourn. The girl had been with him and had done what Hero himself could not do, comforting him in the way that only the most tender of people could do. She sat by Hero’s side now, passing him a goblet, pressing it against his folded arms.

“Here, you need this,” she said. Hero glanced at her. Her eyes were a soft blue and her hair was long, blonde and mussed across her shoulders. She smiled, a small smile on gentle lips. “Please.”

Hero took the goblet and without a word drank from it. Only water, but good.

“Thank you,” he said, “but I cannot thank you fully, without a name to call you.”

“My name is Florence,” she said as she took the goblet from him and held up a package she’d had against her chest. “Eat this. It isn’t much, just something I found in the tavern.”

Hero took it and peeled back the cloth. Inside was a slice of cake, carefully preserved, though a little stale. It was edible, and Hero was hungry. “Thank you again, Florence,” he said before taking a bite. It was fruity and good.

“Raven has had some, though I don’t think he’s eaten it. There is plenty of water. I collected it from the stream earlier, more than enough for the journey.”

Hero swallowed hard and looked back at her. She was refilling the goblet from a water skin beside her. “It seems I have much to thank you for, Florence.” He took the goblet again, but this time drank slower, savouring the coolness in this throat. “You helped us last night, you put yourself in danger to help us three strangers. Why?”

“Do people not help each other in the great land of Legacy?” she jested, though her eyes remained fixed on Hero’s.

“Sometimes,” he said, “and sometimes they attack each other, and sometimes they kill each other. But you chose to endanger yourself—”

“To help Guards of Legacy, yes,” she said, “those in need. I was close by, I could hear them making their hasty plans. I say hasty as they needed little forethought. Rogues attack any who travel at night, friend or foe. For some reason…I knew I should help.”

“A good Samaritan.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, “no, not usually. I just knew you’d need my help.” She looked away distracted, and then took the goblet from him to refill.

Hero lifted his hand to stop her.

“Thank you, I’ve had plenty. And thank you for your help, no matter what the reason. You were impressive.”

Florence turned to Hero and smiled, but her eyes betrayed her concern and flickered behind him. Raven’s sobs were subdued but painful, and Hero closed his ears to them.

“If only it were under better circumstances that we should talk,” she said. “I am sorry for the loss of your kinsman. He was courageous in battle.”

“Yes, he was. I should have listened to him. I should not have brought us here at night.” He looked back to the east, the sun now higher and warmer, the wind bringing in clouds from the south, from the sea; already there were dark bellies to them, bruises that threatened rain.

“You will take Kane back to Legacy then? You are headed back home?”

“Yes, after Raven has—when we are ready to leave, we shall head back home with him.”

“The Captain of the Guard away from the city, travelling back in the dead of night,” she gave him a sideways glance, “you must have been on an important mission…” Hero looked away from her, listening for others, for men or horses, anything to distract him from the sound of Raven’s muffled sobs behind him. “I do not profess to know your business,” Florence ventured, “but I know that there must’ve been a good reason for your risking ambush, and in turn, a good reason why I felt inclined to wait outside a tavern, expecting one.”

Hero looked up and into her blue eyes again. This time it was Florence who looked away.

“What do you mean, expecting?” he asked.

“Like I said before, I just…knew.” She swallowed hard, and then poured herself a goblet of water. “I left my home with my sword—something I do not make a habit of doing in the dead of night—and covered it in oil, knowing I would need to set it aflame.” She spoke slowly, deliberately, her eyes on the goblet that she sipped from. “I just knew. Like I knew that for the past year I would need to practice with a sword, to be able to defeat any adversary. I would go out to the taverns and tempt the men, only so that I may fight them off later. I gained a scrupulous reputation,” she smiled at this, “not as a tease, you understand, but as a fighter. No man will go near me.”

Hero smiled a little, but the smile faded as he thought on her words.
I just knew
.

“Yes,” he said after some time, “we were on an important mission. One that has gone terribly wrong. One that has cost us Kane, though I blame my own judgement alone for that—for all of it, really—as we have lost more than a good man and brother, we have lost our hope.”

Hero looked out of the valley and across the hills, then back westward to the city of Legacy, hidden behind the mountains of Edorus. Florence waited patiently, and when Hero next turned to her, he told her the whole tale. By the time he’d finished, much time had passed and those people of the valley who’d risen from slumber went about their business, giving their small party a wide birth—and the blood soaked ground an even wider one. Horses were ridden far off the track, carts rumbled by in the long grasses, hitting rocks and jolting their riders.

Florence had been an attentive listener and at some point Raven had joined them, though he looked only at the ground and said nothing. He’d taken the water offered by Florence, returning the goblet with a nod.

Finally she spoke, her words carefully chosen.

“It all makes sense,” she said, and catching the look Hero gave her, she held up her hand. “Let me finish, please.”

Hero looked over at Raven, but he hadn’t moved. Their horses were tied against an apple tree behind and Hero could hear them chomping at the lower branches for the fruit.

“It all makes sense that I
knew
to be there last night, to help you, that your stranger-guide-girl-person told you that you must go then, right then.”

“It makes sense that Kane was to die?” Raven whispered.

“No, no, of course not,” she said, “but I think we
were
meant to meet. See, I am not just a Commune Valley girl, and in fact, I’m not even from here. I don’t know where I’m from. I cannot remember further back than a year ago.”

Hero turned and said, “A year?”

“Yes. My first memory is of waking upon my back and looking up at the sky. My legs were in a shallow stream, and the rest of me lay upon marshy ground. I was naked and covered in stinking mud. I had no idea who I was, where I was, or how I’d gotten there.” She paused as a horseman wandered by, tipping his hat to them in greeting. She continued. “I was scared, as you can imagine. There can be nothing worse, surely, than knowing nothing about yourself or your whereabouts, and being totally on your own. I slaked my thirst with water from the stream and then looked all around. Green marshes as far as I could see in one direction, split many times by silver streams, such as I found myself in. In another direction was the sea—a glorious sight of clear waters that ran into the sky—and then around me in all other directions were hills and far off forests. I spent a long time looking across those hills. The day was bland and grey, the sun hidden behind thick grey clouds, but there on the crest of a distant hill I could see smoke rising; and so I lathered all but my face in the muddy sludge to cover my nakedness, and set off toward it.

“As I got closer and rose to the top of the hill in question, quite worn and exhausted, I saw a small farm that nestled within a dip. There were a few animals roaming between fences, and in the middle of all was a small stone house. The smoke I’d followed came from a tall chimney to one side of it. I headed down into the dip.

“When I knocked at the door, a man and his wife answered and immediately took me in. The woman washed me and dressed me roughly in her own clothes, and they fed me heartily. I explained to them that I’d lost my memory, and didn’t know who I was, and they suggested that I travel to Legacy. ‘It is a great city,’ the woman said, ‘so big and so fine, full of people. You’re bound to be from there. I bet they’ll take you into their fold.’ I thanked them for their many kindnesses, and they gave me a walking stick to lean on and leather boots to walk in. I will forever be indebted to them and have in fact since visited them, bringing them wares from the Commune. But at that time, they pointed me in the direction of Legacy, a three day walk.”

Florence paused and drank from the goblet.

“But you never reached Legacy?” Hero asked.

“No. I came first upon this valley, and I was welcomed into its fold. I could have gone on to Legacy, but there was always something stopping me. I’ve been here the whole year.”

“And your memory? Has it returned?”

Florence looked off into the valley, watching its people trundling their carts, hurrying past. “I remember nothing before that day. I know now that the lands I woke in were the Madorus Lands, and the lands I walked through were the Planrus Lands, but I have no memory of those names before that day—no memory of anything before that day.” She looked at Hero. “But something kept me here, and something sent me out last night. Something kept me fighting for a year. And now that same something urges me to go with you, back to Legacy.”

“No,” Hero said, shaking his head, “you cannot travel with us. Our mission has far too much danger, and—”

“And I’m a girl who helped you defeat a ruthless band of rogues last night.” Florence stood up and glared down at him.

“That is different, and I am thankful, but—”

“But what, Hero?” Raven said without looking up from the ground. “We have already lost the princess, lost our hope and soon our lands. We’ve lost Kane on a fool’s run into darkness. Can we not gain something out of all of this? A companion? A fighter? A friend?”

A silence grew between them even as the valley itself descended into hushed commotion. Trading stands, dark and eerie a few hours before were now piled with fruit and vegetables, wares of wood and cloth. Voices rose on the wind, laughter and quiet mutterings. Eyes strayed toward them and rumour grew of blood stained strangers. They’d soon have to leave.

The sky was turning black. Hero could smell the storm to come.

“My better judgement tells me no,” Hero said, finally standing to meet the girl’s gaze, “and my heart still aches for the loss of our princess, who was also our companion, the first of two companions I failed to protect. How can I ask another to risk themselves under my leadership?”

“Oh, Hero,” she said, shaking her head, her blue eyes piercing, “you have failed no one, don’t you see? Someone is helping you, this
stranger-girl
perhaps, or maybe something even bigger. Whatever it is, it’s pushing you in all the right directions. You were told you would lose Ami and you’d have to let her go, no? You have done. You were to ride here at night and you have found me. I have been sent to help you, I know I have, and besides… You aren’t asking me to risk anything, and I never said I would be under
your
leadership. So, I’m going with you to the big city on the mountain. If you don’t want me,” she drew her sword and pointed it at Hero, “you’ll have to kill me.”

Raven looked between Florence and Hero, and a sound came from him that Hero thought he’d never hear again. It was quiet to start with, but soon rolled out of him like thunder. He was laughing. Laughing so hard that he rolled backward on the grass, clutching his stomach.

“What? What’s so funny?” Hero said, a smile of his own playing on his lips. Florence had also begun to giggle, though her sword remained at Hero’s chest.

“It’s just, you two, I don’t know, I—” and he was off again, his sword clinking at his side as he rolled over.

Florence eventually lowered her sword and sheathed it as her giggles turned to laughter, high pitched and sweet. Soon after, Raven stood up and braced Hero’s shoulder, then Florence’s.

“Come now, Hero, let us ride home with a friend, and cheer ourselves along the way at least, for when we arrive, we have sombre duties to perform.”

Now was the time. Hero allowed himself a look behind. His eyes found the horses, side by side and tethered to the tree, and upon one’s back, a man-shaped shroud carefully placed and tied steady. The tears burst from the dry stone of his heart and from his eyes, parading down his cheeks hot and heavy. Raven embraced him and Florence embraced them both as Hero let the last few days flow out with his sorrow.