For once, the first throw stuck to the tree, but it drooped a little. She turned to me, arms crossed like a trainer as she instructed me, “That was good, but I need you to throw with a little more snap at the end. Put your strength into it and it will stick in straight.”
I nodded, preparing myself for another throw. I cocked my arm back, made sure my thumb was pointed at the center of the tree, and I had a snap of force at the end. As soon as I let go of the knife, I could feel the difference in the release. The knife landed with a thud and stuck straight right into the tree. It wasn’t dead center, but it was in the damn tree correctly.
Emerald looked up at me and smiled again, my heart falling on the floor, begging her to pick it up and keep it for me. “That was a great job. Now all you need to do is practice enough to get the aim into the center.”
I tried to play it off by keeping my face neutral, but I was so excited that I finally got the damn thing on the target correctly. “And how long does it take to get more consistent in the center?” I wanted to know how hard I needed to practice.
She thought for a second, “I would practice every day until your arm feels like it’s going to drop off for the next month. Then you should be able to hit the target consistently. Then we can start getting into the next level stuff.”
“What next level stuff?” Isn’t it just throwing a knife?
She smirked at me as she pulled out her knife, held it in her palm as she put her back to the target. She winked at me before she did a backflip that turned into a roundhouse kick with a knife flying out, mid-kick, that hits the target dead center. My mouth dropped open. An embarrassing amount of drool came out of the side of my mouth as she sauntered back over to me. I wiped it up before she could see.
“That’s what I mean. When you can add combat moves with your knife throwing, while keeping accuracy, that is the next level. It will also be the best use of knife throwing, since it can take out an encroaching opponent while you are busy with another.”
I wanted to talk to her about a million things, glean more information that she had about our craft, but what came out of my mouth was the one thing that kept tugging at the back of my mind ever since she said it. “So, Rocnal was your dad?”
She stiffened, mumbling about her big mouth, before straightening. “Yes, he was my father.”
It was crazy to know that my all-time idol, the man who I secretly admired from afar, was also the woman of my dream’s father. I didn’t want to say something stupid again to upset her, so I asked her, “I heard he died, but no one said how. Since my father considered him his highest rival, he didn’t really look into it.” She acknowledged it like that was expected, but I still felt shitty about it. He was the best of the best and deserved respect from all in our field.
He was a legend. Places from far and wide knew about him and his deadly ways. Sometimes, I felt like it was his reputation that kept Onisea from harm. He was a boogyman to some and a butchering heathen to others. When she said that she was his daughter, it all clicked. All started to make sense of why she would be trained in such a manner all over the world. I bet her father was cashing in favors from all those that enlisted his help over the many years.
She looked back at the tree, not looking me in the face as she said, “He was magically poisoned.” I nodded like that made sense. Nothing of natural means could’ve taken him down. Then I remembered it didn’t happen here but overseas, or else I would have heard about it. But how did she know it was a magical poison? Some of the higher end poisons don’t show up in autopsy, especially a magical one.
“How did you find out?” Rykon’s voice surprised me as he was next to me, looking tired but alert. Zayden next to him, yawning. I wonder if we woke them.
She eyed both of them, rolling her eyes. “You two need to go to bed.”
Zayden took the moment to pipe up in a sleepy, low voice. “After you answer the questions.”
“Questions? Plural?” She asked, glaring at him, but he just shrugged.
“Covering my bases.”
She thought about it for a second and agreed. “Vance found out that his father was the one who commissioned an outsider to kill my father.” Zayden gasped, but Rykon nodded like he knew it had to have been something like that. I, on the other hand, was pissed off. How dare the king do something so sneaky and devious like that to his own assassin.
We all got quiet, figuring out that this was another layer to taking the king down. Knowing this piece of information made me want to kill the king even more, but with what she just told us, how she felt about her training, I just blurted out. “But you hated him, right?” Zayden immediately punched my arm, not really affecting me because we were in different weight classes, but the gesture was the same.
“You don’t say that shit, you big oaf.” He whispered, and I looked back up at her, hoping she wasn’t pissed at me again.
She looked at the ground, her face pinched as she focused on her feet. “My father was a… complicated man.”
I didn’t want to push her into telling us more, but I could see that all of us were curious about that thought process. I know that a piece of me hates my father, what he has put me through, and how he has made me feel over the years. Like I wasn’t enough, I would never be enough to him. But that didn’t stop the smaller, young boy piece of me that just wanted his father’s love and acceptance. I wondered if it was similar to that or not.
She looked up as none of us made a move and sighed. “He wasn’t a good man, but he wasn’t a bad man either. I think, at his core, his entire goal was to ensure that I survived against all odds, or at least as many as I could. He pushed me to my limits, telling me to keep going past them. Once he couldn’t force himself to do any more, he sent me to the other assassins to learn their training and styles, the same that he did when he was learning his craft.” I thought that was so cool until I remembered what she had yelled at me. How training from another assassin might be traumatizing and not something you would choose if you knew in advance.
I saw her rub her thumb into her palm, wondering if this was a nervous tick, but she interrupted those thoughts as she continued. “I think… he knew it was going to be hard.” Her eyes glazed over as she was remembering something. “He always looked pained yet firm when he sent me to them, always staying at an inn close by, just in case. He always sent me with a magical cream that would heal any surface wounds, giving me more than I could need, even though that was extremely expensive.” She snapped out of the memory as she looked down at her body. “That’s why I don’t have any scars from my training.”
I looked down at my arms, seeing all the thin lined scars on my arms from lessons I had learned. Reminders of what I went through. I looked at hers and wondered how many of hers were covered, healed over to help her forget them.
Zayden stepped forward. “Ya, but the difference is it seems like hechoseto do that. You were sent, forced, to do that.”
She shook her head, “No. I had a choice. I could’ve told him no, ran away or something like that but… but I didn’t…” She stumbled to say it and I understood that. To be this example, a symbol of strength and yet still be human, to admit to a weakness, was harder than you thought.
“You didn’t want to disappoint him.” I whispered. She looked at me, appreciation and understanding laced her eyes as she nodded.
“I didn’t want to reflect badly on him to his associates. I wanted him to take me seriously. I wanted to make him proud of me. So, I pushed myself harder and harder, but that really wasn’t his fault.” At the end, she tried to blow it off. I had the feeling she was at the end of her rope, talking about her past and her feelings. I watched as she straightened her shoulders, building that mask up on her face like she was impenetrable.
