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*screams extremely loudly and collapses to the floor in a fiery heap*

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH @rose-colored-fancy YOU’VE KILLED ME INSIDEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Niarok

Something was coming. He could feel it, but he wasn’t ready to sacrifice this moment yet. He spun around, where his father was standing. The proud man, shorter than his son but just as strong, with his face to the sunrise.

He’d renounced his vow the day before.

Niarok joined him on the cliff, looking down into the deep ravine as the sun lit the world on fire.

His life was ready to begin.

Yila appeared beside him, and he put an arm around her shoulder. Her eyes were warmer than they ever had been, and Niarok’s heart melted with joy.

His life was right.

Then there was a whistle behind him, and a snap. An arrow whizzed through the air and slammed into his father’s back.

Niarok stared in horror as his father began to fall into the ravine. He reached out and caught the arm that had trained him to use a bow, pulling his father away from the deadly edge.

He was dead.

Yila had leapt up, her heart visibly shattering in her eyes, as she’d run cat-like towards the assassin. He’d had no time to react before the deadly woman was upon him-

Someone touched his shoulder.

“Niarok, nothing’s wrong yet but something might be coming.”

Niarok snapped awake, instantly alert with a hand on his single throwing knife that Yila had forced him to keep.

The castle came into focus, pulling Niarok away from the nightmare, and he took a deep breath when he saw that it was Ayden.

Apprehension swirled behind the calm in his muddy brown eyes, and Niarok allowed a moment to relax his tense muscles. He was still tired, but it would pass quickly.

“What is it?” he asked. Yila was glaring fire at Ayden, and Niarok suspected she’d been about to wake him when Ayden did.

“The castle crackled,” Ayden replied, and Yila rolled her eyes. Disappointment, frustration, and anger scurried around in her withdrawn gaze, and though her body was tense, her mind was a thousand miles away.

Niarok’s heart broke for her as it had so many times before. He felt like a failure for not listening to the nudge that day.

But he couldn’t focus on that now. He stood, partly to wake himself up the rest of the way, and partly to prepare his body in case he needed to fight.

There was another crack, and Niarok’s hands had nocked an arrow to his bow before his brain knew what was happening. Adrenaline rushed through his body, and the sleepiness disappeared.

“I’ve been thinking about the next challenge, and it occured to me that several of you are particularly well suited to it. Our resident assassins.”

Niarok’s eyes widened slightly. Okay, now that was just plain dirty.

If people knew he used to be an assassin…

How does it know?!

He tightened his handhold on the grip of the bow, and his knuckles whitened.

This was bad.

Niarok glanced to where Ayden was standing and saw the man’s face go pale. His eyes were wide, and he stared ahead of him with a look of utter horror on his face.

Ayden is too?

“Lorcan–”

Niarok squeezed tighter. The bow could offer him no protection from the stares and murmurs he would get from the people who thought he was nothing more than a doctor.

“Niarok–”

Niarok’s heart sank, but he didn’t lower the bow. The castle wasn’t finished.

“And Siya Aydin.”

He knew it. And his heart broke. He would never wish the life of an assassin on anyone, least of all his new friend.

But it also explained many of the reactions Ayden had had to the people around him, to the castle.

Niarok lowered his bow. The damage was done.

“Don’t ever call me that again,” Ayden shouted.

Niarok spun around. Rage and fury of all different shades poured out of the man with more force than Niarok had seen in anyone besides Yila. His eyes cast about the walls of the castle, and if looks could kill, they would have crumbled to dust and their occupants would have been free.

Ayden glanced at each person in the cavern in turn, avoiding their eyes and hardly seeing them, before walking multiple steps away from the group. The anger dissipated as quickly as it had come, and Niarok stared after the man.

He was broken. Right there in front of them.

And it was the castle’s fault.

Deep-seated, quiet anger heated Niarok’s body and he vowed to do whatever it took to destroy this castle if it took the rest of his strength.

Yila clutched his arm, and he glanced at her. She looked sick.

And about to lose control.

The hand she wasn’t using to hold onto her brother was strangling the hilt of her longest, sharpest, deadliest knife, and Niarok knew what was coming.

In one motion, he stepped around her and covered the hand holding the knife.

In that instant, his mind made the connection.

Ayden looked like the man who had killed their father.

Ayden was an assassin.

And Yila was getting ready to kill a memory, only the memory was in the form of a real person who had never grieved her but by looking like the man who had ruined her life the second time.

Niarok closed his eyes and turned his head, blinking back tears of pain and anger.

Yila’s muscles were tense. She was preparing to spring, and if she did it and Niarok wasn’t prepared, Ayden would be dead in an instant.

For the slightest second Niarok wondered what happened if you killed someone in the castle. Did they just go back to their world?

Should they try and find out?

Niarok’s eyes widened and nausea rolled in his stomach. There was that little demon voice that had finally ceased to haunt him three months prior.

Anger took the place of all cold-hearted assassin rationale and Niarok set his feet, careful not to telegraph to Yila that he was holding her back and not just trying to dissuade her.

He could feel her tension and anger boiling, and her muscles hardened.

She leapt forward, drawing her knife and throwing it in one smooth motion.

It would have hit Ayden in the back, right where the arrow had hit Niarok’s father.

But Niarok knocked Yila’s hand to the side as she threw the knife and it swung wide, narrowly missing Ayden’s head.

Niarok breathed a sigh of relief as he held his struggling sister back.

He positioned his arms so she couldn’t bite him. She fought ugly when she forgot who she was, and she was losing herself quickly.

Ayden spun, his eyes wide and traumatized and angry and shocked and expectant and resigned all at once.

Niarok felt tears of anger well in his own eyes and he wanted to murder the castle and all its machinations. The hate was more pure and focused than anything he’d ever felt before, and he didn’t try to shove it down.

But when he looked back at Ayden, he tried desperately to communicate that his hatred was aimed at the castle, not Ayden. If the man thought he hated him, there was nothing Niarok would ever be able to do.

Yila’s struggling intensified when Ayden looked at her, and she tried desperately to break free of Niarok’s grip.

She would have had he not been prepared beforehand.

Ayden’s eyes bounced back and forth between Yila and Niarok, and he seemed to reluctantly understand that Niarok did not in fact want him dead.

Yila stopped squirming after she’d permanently bruised various bones in her brother’s body multiple times.

She wasn’t even breathing hard, but her emotions had run themselves out.

“Can I let you go?” Niarok whispered, and Yila paused before nodding.

He cautiously released her, and Ayden involuntarily backed up a step.

Yila took a deep breath, glanced in both directions once, and ran desperately into the tunnel leading away from the cavern into the dark.

Niarok lowered his head, relief pounding through him. He’d let her have a few minutes of space before going to talk with her.

He looked around and saw that everyone was staring. He shook his head and sat down, strength entirely leaving his body. His secret had never been revealed like this before, but no one seemed all that concerned. They’d all stopped looking at him after his sister had disappeared.

But someone was still watching him.

He looked up and found Leytera’s brown eyes focused on him. She didn’t even look away when he caught her staring, and her gaze seemed to say she still trusted him.

He smiled faintly at her, and she smiled back.

Then he glanced behind her to Ayden, who still gazed at him, his eyes a mixture of hope and desperation.

Niarok didn’t know what to tell him.

But he stood up anyway, and slowly approached him, trying to communicate that he wasn’t hostile, he just wanted to talk.

Hopefully Ayden wouldn’t take it the wrong way.

 

Aaacck sorry that was so longggg!!! I got into Niarok’s internal struggle and then I was like… well… XD