Assassin - Prologue

A/N: I have this up on several sites, mostly cause I'm fishing for opinion and such. Hope having it here will be better for the whole improvement thing I've been trying out.

“Mother! Mother, where are you? Aaron keeps picking on me!”

The shouts of the little girl rang through the large corridor, giving off a slight echo as she ran quickly down it in search of her mother. She hoped that she was in the hearing chamber at the end, where she listened to the pleas of her people as she was required to do as the reigning monarch. The child assumed her mother would still be there as the last person should have left only a little while before, and the Queen usually stayed for some time after. From there she sent orders to others to give assistance to those who had come to her for help.

“Tell him I’m not!” she yelled as she approached the large wooden door. It towered above the small girl as she sprinted up and rammed her shoulder into it, slowly pushing the heavy door open. “Mother, can you come and tell Aaron I’m not a-“

She stopped short, staring with wide eyes at the scene in front of her from the partly open door. Her mother was seated on the simple wooden throne at the head of the room, her beautiful face pale and afraid, her plain silk dress rumpled where her hands clutched at it, and a two toned dagger glinting at her throat. The girl moved her eyes from her mother to the dagger and traveled up the arm holding it to the boy. He stood still and looked over her with cool indifference shown in his expression but his light green eyes that flashed with caution. From the looks of him, thought the girl, he couldn’t be more than five years her senior, perhaps twelve or thirteen. He was tall and sharp yet thin and softened, all factors hiding his true age.

Her mother swallowed and cleared her throat loudly, bringing her daughter’s attention back to her and the boy’s blade which had pressed closer to her mother’s throat. “Sweetheart, why don’t you run along to the courtyard? It’s very nice out today,” implored the Queen, holding her head high and keeping her voice from shaking, not showing any weakness or fear in it.

The child didn’t quite understand what her mother was asking, or why she was asking such an absurd question at all given the circumstances and drifted toward her mother and further into the room. When she looked up from the dagger her mother cast a very obvious look at the door she had just come through, indicating that she wanted her daughter to leave. Understanding crossed the girl’s face and with a last glance at her mother she turned to leave.

There, piled on either side of the door was something she hadn't noticed when she first entered. The guards. They had been missing, but in the shock at discovering her mother’s position she hadn’t paid much mind to the fact. Now, she couldn’t help but gape in horror at the macabre scene in front of her. All ten of the customary personal guard for the Queen were piled over each other, blood from their slit throats staining the clothes of the guard beneath them and the mosaic floor.

She turned back to look at the boy, wondering how a child like her could commit murder and not appear the least bit guilty over doing something so terrible. For a very brief moment her eyes connected with her mother’s and she saw her eyes shining with tears, willing her to run away, but all she did was look back up at the boy. His slim shoulders rose and fell as he took a deep, seemingly calming breath and then tensed along with his jaw as he stared at her, a flash of too many emotions to decipher flashing across his face before he adjusted his grip on the dagger…

And slit the throat of the widowed Queen, so quickly no more than a single drop of blood glinted on the blade while it poured down the front of the Queen's gown. The girl never looked down enough to fully see her mother’s last look of desperation, willing her to look away, instead focusing on the look of sadness that crossed the boy’s pale features, something to the equivalent of having killed his own flesh and blood. Their eyes connected one last time before he stepped away from the corpse that still sat upright in the chair, staring at nothing, only the slightly mussed, almost black hair and the blood on her front giving way to the fact that she was not alive. The boy turned and walked slowly and deliberately around the throne and directly toward the small girl, the dagger raised slightly out to his side as though ready to attack her too, but he never did.

He simply stopped beside her for no more than a moment, whispered a few words, and walked out of the room as though he never paused.

The girl stayed there in the center of the room until Gavin, one of her older brothers, came in a few hours later in search of her and found her kneeling down, more still than the dead around her. He shouted out, running up to her and taking her shoulders none to carefully. “Feyre, are you alright?” he shouted at her, then fear made him lower his voice and loosen his hold quickly, “Can you tell me what happened? Can you speak to me?”

The girl, Feyre, looked at him with empty eyes and said only one thing, “She told me to leave.” Slumping down, she fainted in her brother’s arms, her only tears coming in sleep.

Picking up his rather small sister, Gavin ran as quickly as he could out of the room and back down the hall where Feyre herself had come before to fetch their mother instead of run away from her tomb. Unbeknownst to him, the assassin stood in the shadows of a pillar watching as he went, never lifting a finger to follow. As soon as they disappeared from sight, he scaled the wall, bracing himself against the pillar till he reached a window and threw himself out into the darkening evening.

The castle wasn’t large but the halls were arranged like a maze, that one needed knowledge of to not become lost. Gavin was gasping by the time he reached his brother in practically the opposite corner. Bursting out into the courtyard he shouted as loud as possible, “Aaron! Help me, something terrible has happened!”

Since he had never been one to make a fuss over much of anything, the fact that his voice shook and broke with fear drew not only his brother, but every guard in the vicinity as well, all appearing shocked at the state of his sister, their princess. As quickly as possible, Gavin tried to explain what he had seen while tears streamed down his face and the guards took his younger sister from him to look her over for harm. At the mention of the dead Queen, many of the guards paled and ran to the scene while the several stayed to guard the remaining royalty and one left to retrieve the healer.

Just as Gavin finished his story, Feyre opened her eyes slightly to look around her and they connected with those of an elderly guard who she vaguely recognized at the moment. He knelt down and grasped her small hands in his large weathered ones. “What happened?” he asked her gently, as though not to frighten her further.

She looked him in the eyes mournfully but didn’t reply. Her eldest brother Aaron leaned in and place one of his hands on her cheek. “Can you speak Feyre? Did something happen to you too?” he questioned as gently as he could, worry making his voice sharper than intended, “Did you see the assassin?”

She only shook her head in the slightest movement in reply. It wasn’t as though she didn’t want to tell them what had happened, but instead felt that she shouldn’t for some reason, though she didn’t know exactly what that reason was. Her brothers and the guard continued to question her until they saw that they would get nothing from the now mute and unresponsive child and took her to the infirmary to be cared for. Feyre hardly took notice, the trip from the courtyard to a bed passing by as vaguely as everything else had in the past hours.

The sun had set a short time before but still she stared out the large window at the side of her bed, trying to find the assassin in the darkness although she knew he would be long gone by then. It wasn’t morbid curiosity or fear that kept her searching for him and silent about what she knew, but instead the two words he whispered as he passed, leaving the hearing chamber. Two simple words which hadn’t seemed to fit with what he did and his almost completely aloof attitude toward murder, that were burned into her memory.

“I’m sorry.”