He flips us round, roughly tossing me onto the bed.
"Onto your hands and knees, whore," he grumbles, pulling my hair.
Fucking bastard.Hold your tongue, Renna, hold your tongue.
"Trust me," I whisper, kissing his neck as his hands run over my chest. "Let me be on top. You'll never forget it."
He grunts in agreement, rolling over like some kind of obese beagle. Though not a pretty sight, it grants me the time and space to straddle him, pinning his hands down beneath my knees. I slip the tiny glass vial from the black leather strap around my thigh, pulling the cork out with my teeth whilst ignoring his confused expression.
But like they all do, he realises too little and too late. In the blink of an eye, I slide a needle taped to the inside of my wrist into the vial and pierce his neck, covering his mouth with both of my hands as he begins to choke on the poison.
I wait until his body is devoid of life beneath mine before removing my hands and wiping them on my thighs. A knock on the warped wooden door has it rattling on its flimsy hinges, disturbing me as I clean the tiny bead of blood off his wrinkled, sun-damaged neck.
"Are we good?" Comes a deep voice with an Aquinellian accent, from outside.
"We are good," I confirm, standing up and shrugging my black top back on. "Come in."
A huge, ever-protective hand settles on my shoulder, a striking pair of worried, yellow-orange eyes meeting mine. "Did he get far?"
"No, O. He didn't touch me much." I smile to reassure him, but I doubt it has the desired effect. He worries too much. He’ll fret himself into an early grave one day, I am sure.
"You know I hate this way of doing this," he mutters, his square jawline tense. Behind him, Stell quickly cleans up any evidence of the poisoning, whistling to himself as he does it. Stellan has this omnipresent good mood. He's seen so much, been through so much, and instead of beating him down, it's made him grateful for each day he has.
I wish I was like that; I've tried and it's not for me. I turn back to Onyx. "Well, it's the least suspicious way. We do the job, we take the money, and we go." That's how it is, that's how it's always been.
“You know, if you ever get a husband he’ll have a heart attack if you keep doing this,” says Stellan, tossing the poisoned needle out the window.
“She’s not getting a fucking husband,” argues Onyx, at the exact same time that I do. Stell and Onyx laugh, but I don’t. I’ll never marry. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. It’s an odd thing, to grieve the loss of relationships that never existed. I’ll never be able to let someone close enough that they can see who I really am. I’ll never marry, never have a best friend that isn’t my brother. Even Annaliya thinks we’re friends, but all that she knows about me is false.
"Fucking hell. Moment of silence for this ring. I didn't realise fingers could actually engulf a ring," says Stellan, giving up on trying to wrangle it off the finger.
I laugh out loud because he’s stolen the words straight out of my mouth, but mostly because I was desperate for a change of topic. I'd cut off his middle finger, but it'd be hard to play this off as an accident if I did that. Stell turns back around and throws me an exaggerated thumbs up, along with his famous boyish grin, his mood the complete opposite of Onyx's, as usual. The piercing in his tongue glints in the candlelight as he speaks.
"Good job, trouble. Ready to turn on the waterworks?"
I nod, taking a deep breath and, on command, bursting into tears. O and Stell make themselves scarce and I run down the stairs, sobbing into my hands and spinning the innkeeper an elaborate web of lies about how the man had a heart attack while we were making love.
Finally, Onyx appears, taking my hand and apologising to the innkeeper on my behalf. The barman eyes him warily. "You're her husband?"
"Her brother," he replies, truthfully. "Adopted brother," he quickly clarifies, when the innkeeper spots the obvious; his eyes are bright, glowing yellow—a clear sign he is an Evergreen, whilst mine are a dull brown, just a mere mortal. The man eyes Onyx sceptically but takes him for his word.
We collect payment for the assassination at another inn across the town so as not to leave an incriminating trail behind us. Another job done.
As we gallop out of the gates of the small township on the easternmost border of the River King’s territory and begin our journey back to our camp, I wonder if there is something wrong with me. I never manage to feel any guilt. I suppose for what that man had done to his wife and children, I would've killed him for free, but sometimes I imagine what life would be like if I didn't have to do this to earn money.
I wonder when the switch flipped in my life, when the animal-loving, happy girl became the thoughtless killer. I suspect it wasn’t a switch flipping at all, more of a gradual rotting of my insides that left me filled with nought but ugly malice. But wondering is a waste of my time, and I drill that into my hunters as hard as I do into myself.
"The gods must truly hate me, to condemn me to a life with you two," mutters Onyx, as Stell and I reach our third rendition of the same song, dancing around our newly-built campfire in the middle of the mountains with a bottle of wine each. The song moves up an octave, and even I have to say the standard of our performance is nauseating. I sound like a cat with a throat infection and Stellan sounds worse.
We are halfway through the two-day journey back to Forests' Edge where we'll join our people for a day before gate-crashing the King's Gathering. I shriek with laughter as Stell swings me around, my toes just skimming the flames. Stellan and I are two alike;clinically insane. Without Onyx, I think we'd be long dead.
Flames cast dancing shadows over my brother's serious features. He says nothing, just staring into the fire with a haunted look in his eye. He is just a shell. Just the remaining fragments of the person he was before the world let him down. "Go to bed, you children. I'll keep watch tonight."
I smile, waving my brother goodbye for the night and vanishing into the tiny tent hidden between two trees with Stellan.
* * *
We arrive backto my people late the next day and I’m rushed off my feet immediately. I run the hunters through archery drills, hand out everyone’s assignments for the week, and get started on the contracts for the upcoming months. It’s a good kind of busy, though.
