I lifted my head and looked around the cave. Memories of what we did came flooding into my mind. Her determined stance, the bite of the knife, the surprising softness of her skin, the moans she let out when she could let go. The push and pull between us. Her lips stained red with my blood.
I snarled to myself as I looked down and I was fucking hard as a rock. So hard that my pants strained painfully against the material. Why did she have to be The Hood? Why did she have to entrap me into this deal?
I know I made that choice when I saw that pompous, white haired pretty boy prince slid up next to her like he belonged there, looking at her like she was special, and I knew that. I just didn’t likehimknowing it. Rykon and Zayden, I could compete with, but the fucking crown prince? The one we are trying to make the king? I didn’t know so much. It wasn’t an even playing field with him.
I growled at the thought of them together. Her working under him, taking orders from him, being by his side all day and night. Ever since that fight I had with her my mind continued to circle those thoughts around. I clenched my hands until I felt my clipped nails dig into my palms, snapping out of it before they bled and yanked at my shirt where I hung it, roughly pulling it over my head.
What kills me the most, what's at the core of all my anger, was that she had to lie to me. She fought me, fucked me, and left me, all the while knowing her lies. I know I shouldn’t care. I should just say fuck her and never look in her direction like that again, but it’s much easier said than done.
Then, to top it all off, she was The Hood, and that was a hit to my pride. Not the fact that she was a woman. I agreed with Zayden on that point that a woman assassin was sexy as fuck. It was more that I realized that it was her that night in the graveyard. She beat me. It wasn’t by chance or a slim victory. She was better than me.
For someone who has worked all their life to be the best and then have this person come in and shatter those thoughts into pieces was a hard pill to swallow.
I grabbed my gear and stomped my way out. As soon as my eyes saw the rays of sun at the cave entrance, I remembered I was going to have to convince my father that I was going on a job out of town. It was the only way he wouldn’t demand that I explained myself for the trip.
As I walked back to the city gates, I started thinking of different scenarios I could give my father and how he would react to each of them. It wasn’t long before I realized I was going to need help to pull it off, help that I didn’t want to call on.
Once I got closer to the monstrous outer city walls, I noticed there were many people lined up against it. Families of all different sizes, hair so bright and colorful it reminded me of a rainbow as I walked past them to the gate where the guards were. As I got closer, I could hear people complaining.
“What do you mean, I’m barred from the city without proper papers? I was here just last week!” I looked over at the lime green-haired man who was arguing with the guard at the door. The closer I got, the more I could hear him arguing while the guard was saying it was a new initiative. “Comes from the top,” he said as an excuse, and I realized that I might have problems getting back in with my hood up.
I rolled my eyes at this new inconvenience. I threw my hood down when I got closer and the guard on the left only looked at my hair and let me pass. No papers, no asking questions, which means this was something that the priests of light were a part of. An additional measure to keep those with impure blood out of the city to stop the infection.The king’s rule was getting worse.
When I looked back and saw the starving families and smaller, not well-known, merchants loitering outside, hoping that someone could help them, I couldn’t help but think that something needed to change. This was wrong, and it defied the damn cursed gods. I have a love-hate relationship with the stupid gods, but even I don’t do things directly to go against them. That just brought on bad luck, and the worst thing for an assassin would be to have bad luck.
My mind was wandering, thinking about this vague plan of theirs, when I ended up finding myself in front of the last place I thought I would be. I looked up and saw the large double doors of the thieves guild, cringing that my body took me here when I really didn’t want to ask him for help, but if I was going to go on this trip, then I needed the help of a skilled professional in the art of lying.
I walked to the side of the house into the alley, making sure no onlookers caught me as I found the grooves in the brick to grip my hands in and hoist myself up, scaling the side of the wall and up onto his balcony like I saw her do that night.
Once I made it to where the lip of the balcony was, I went sideways and hopped over the stone railing. I looked in and saw him sitting at his desk with a book open in front of him, but he was staring out into nothing. A bag that looked like it was half packed laid at his feet, which meant that she had already told him the news. I was relieved, then I wouldn’t need to tell him much about why I needed him to work with me on this. I groaned internally at my own thoughts.Work with me, I think both of us would rather drink piss than work with each other, but yet here I was, no piss in my belly.
I knocked on the door and his head snapped over, eyes lit up with excitement before he saw who it was, and his lips turned down into a frown. Well, now I know what form of entry she uses to see him. My jaw clenched at that thought, but I let it go. I needed his help, and I was going to get nowhere fast if he saw my emotions on my face.
He got up slowly from his desk and sauntered over, unhooked the latch and leaned against the door frame like a lazy cat sunbathing. “I swear I’m going to need to put some bells around the edge of that rail just to know when you sneaky little assassins are coming.” I knew it was a dig to let me know she had been here, wanting to get a rise out of me.
“She found me at first light so….” I left that out there just to piss him off. It worked, as his entire face darkened and he glared at me, but in that instance, I wished that I had a better way with words like he and Zayden did. It would’ve been a much sweeter victory.
We just stood there, eyeing each other up and down, not breaking the silence until he sighed and pushed off the ledge, walking into the room as he motioned for me to come in with the flick of his fingers. I was glad that he broke the staring contest first, because I wasn’t going to.
“What brings you to my neck of the woods?” He sat back down with a plop as he looked at me through his hair. “If it’s about the trip, then I’m sure I know little more than you.”
“It’s about the trip, but more personal.” This caused him to raise his eyebrow at me and I ground my teeth to the point of pain. This was a mistake, but at the same time, my only option. Before he could ruin it by saying something snarky or something that would just piss me off more, I continued and spit it out as fast as I could. “I need you to write a letter to pretend to be a nobleman from another country that is hiring me for a job.”
He clasped his hands together and looked up at me with knowing eyes, “So you’re saying daddy assassin won’t let you go on a trip and you need an excuse to go? I wonder what our green-haired beauty would think of that.”
My face got tight as I clipped out, “She already knows and she told me to figure it out.” Then I got an idea. I relaxed my face as I shrugged my shoulders. “If you don’t want to, I can just go to Zayden. I’m sure he won’t give me shit about this.” I turned and took a couple of steps when he called out,
“I’ll help! I’ll help. Don’t get your hood all in a twist about it. I had to give you a little bit of a hard time.” He laughed like I was being the silly one, but I was glad he stopped me. I knew Zayden, and if I asked him for something like this, he would want something horrible in return, like to sniff his balls or something equally as stupid. At least with Rykon it would be money, it’s always money with thieves.
“Alright, how do you need this to go? Should I make up a name or will he know? Did you need me to mention something specific? I don’t know what your regular jobs look like.” Again, a small piece of me was glad that I asked Rykon for help because he was good about details and making sure a fake looked like the real thing.
“It needs to be vague.” He pulled out a piece of paper and inked his pen to write as I was talking. “You need to mention you’re a noble from Castell and was referred to us by his friend Montress. It’s a noble man we helped a while back. Make sure to say you have a job you want completed in a couple of weeks and will pay the fee, but to sweeten the pot, you will offer a magical item.” His head snapped up at me as he narrowed his eyes. “Don’t look at me like that. I know you have some pieces lying around.” His eyes glared, and I lifted my eyebrow at him. “I will pay for it, obviously.”
His frown turned upside down, and he went back to writing. “Well then, this is more business than a favor and I will always do the best I can for business.” I closed my eyes and took a breath.Makergod, help me not to kill the one person who was helping me. My hand flexed at my side, itching to pull out my long blade at my hip, but I kept in control.
He took a few more minutes to write everything down and then got up and handed it to me. “Why don’t you look over this while I go fetch a magical item?” I looked it over when I realized who I was dealing with and called out to him as his hand landed on the doorknob.
“It needs to be small enough for a raven to carry and it doesn’t need to be very powerful, just magical & small… preferably cheap.” He tensed up at that last bit of information and looked back with a ruffled smile.
