AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When the breeze shifted, just as the scent of rotten flesh clogged my nostrils, I whirled into action.
The advancing guard never saw me coming.
My blade was pressed to his throat before he could make a sound of alarm, my dagger slicing through the thin, grayish skin of his neck. Blood gushed from his gaping wound, the color an unnatural and inky black as it dripped into the fog swirling about our feet.
The creature gurgled, clutching at his throat, his depthless eyes wide. Before his knees bent and he tumbled to the dirt, a squelching sound came from my left.
Kiara.She must’ve taken her guard down.
The man I’d slaughtered was dead the instant his decayed face slumped forward, his body accepted into the embrace of the Mist.
It was difficult to remind myself he wasn’t a man, not really. I’d seen what they concealed beneath their cloths, and if ever there were monsters, it was them. Wiping my blade on my trousers, my nose wrinkling at the foul stench, I scoured the obscurity for Kiara.
I only had to wait a minute.
“Well, that was fun.” She materialized before my eyes, cleaning her dagger on her soiled undershirt, which was now slick with black.
“Your definition of fun worries me,” I said, even as my own pulse raced with wicked delight. But that had been the easy part of our plan. It was what followed that would be tricky.
I nodded pointedly to the fallen body at my feet. Knowing the next step was necessary, Kiara grimaced before bending to remove the masked man’s garments and face wrappings. I spotted the leg of the guard she’d slain in the distance and did the same, her man not nearly as well-preserved as the one I’d brought down.
The stench grew so rank that my stomach heaved in warning, but I swallowed it down.
It was nearly as bad as the time Cirian had made me torture a man for a week straight, cutting off various body parts until he’d revealed the names of a group of lords planning to stage a coup. He’d been covered in so much vomit and feces and piss by the time I was done with him that he’d smelled like death long before his heart had stopped beating.
It scared me, sometimes, the memories that lived within me.
Shifting the body to the side, I carefully undid his cloak, cringing as dried flakes of flesh clung to my fingertips. In minutes, his clothing was off and his mask had been successfully removed. I began the gruesome work of dressing.
I smelled Kiara before I saw her. A moss-green cloak smelling of decay swathed her small frame, the hem coated in what appeared to be either dirt or blood. I’d only just finished donning my own tattered garments when I noticed the face cloth laying in a tangled heap in the palm of her hands. She hesitated to put it on.
“Let me.” I sidled next to her, seizing the vile material. My chest pressed against her back as I slid the cloth over her lips and wrapped it around her nose and forehead. It was thin enough so she could breathe, but her nerves must have gotten the best of her because she sucked frantically at the fabric.
“You’ll get used to it. Just try to take slow, even breaths.” I tied off the back, knotting it behind her head.
Kiara spun around, only her eyes visible, which reminded me—
“If you get cornered, don’t let them see your eyes.” She nodded. Among all the gray, her bright amber irises would get her killed. My own peculiar eyes would getmekilled.
This was it.
I stepped into her space and began securing the hood over her head, hiding all that luminous red. “I’ve lived with my brother’s blood on my hands,” I whispered, tucking a loose strand behind her ear. “I won’t let you do the same.”
Kiara’s stare turned fierce, even as she gently placed a gloved hand on my cheek.
“But you need to run if anything goes south,” I said, sharpening my tone. “I don’t care if we don’t get them out. You run, you hear me?”
Begrudgingly, she nodded, but I knew she was lying. Kiara wouldn’t run, especially from her friends. Or from me, I realized, my stomach twisting into knots. She let her hand fall, though I could still feel her warmth long after.
Kiara was a ghost as she slipped into the trees. One moment she was beside me—touching me, gazing deeply into my eyes—and the next she was gone, an illusion carried on a breeze. I could’ve sworn the shadows trailed at her heels like loyal hounds, swallowing up her frame and turning her into the night itself.
I waited one more second before I darted along the tree line, my feet swift and sure. In these moments, during a mission, my brain shut down and an eerie sort of peace drove away the crushing weight of reality. There was only here and now and the end goal.
As always, the end goal would be my blade sliding across a throat.
When I was in position, just on the outskirts of the northern side of the village, I took a deep breath and slipped beyond the safety of the woods, keeping my head down, the hood covering my eyes.
A woman wearing a torn dress that had been ripped to her upper thighs trudged by me, snapping her teeth in the air, snarling at nothing. Perhaps she smelled the freshness of my blood. It would explain how they’d been able to find us in the woods. Thankfully, my clothes reeked of decay, and I hoped it would be enough to conceal the truth. Slowing my pace, I tried to adopt the masked people’s walk, their rigid and unnatural movements.
