My eyes fluttered open.
For a moment, everything was blurry, washed in blinding sunlight pouring through my windows. My mind felt heavy, sluggish, like it was dragging itself out of wet sand. My ears rang. My breath stuttered.
Then the world snapped into focus.
Ropes.
Bruises.
Blood.
My mother was tied to a chair beside my bed, wrists bound so tightly they'd turned angry red. Her hair hung loose and messy around her face, tear-tracks staining her cheeks as she struggled uselessly against the ropes.
My sister was defeated, sat slumped, stiffly under the windowsill, her arms tied behind her back, a cut across her lip. She wasn't crying; she was glaring daggers at the room with a terrifying calm I'd never seen before.
Two maids knelt on the floor, bound, trembling. Three guards lay beside them—all dead.
And Ariana—
Ariana sat against my wardrobe, hands tied above her head, face tilted downward, bruises flowering across her jaw and cheekbones. Her knees were scraped. Her breathing was shaky. The robe she wore was torn in several places.
And the ring... she was still wearing it, and I felt my eyebrows tighten slightly.
She was alive... but barely.
And in front of all of them—right at the foot of my bed—stood three masked figures dressed in all white, blades dripping with something dark and oily.
Poison.
My heart seized.
Fate wasn't kidding.
She wasn't kidding at all.
One of the assassins noticed my eyes open and stiffened
"He's awake."
My mother sucked in a breath, half in relief, half in absolute terror.
"S-Sora… Sora, my boy—d— don't move—!"
Katarina's eyes widened. Ariana, however, didn't react at all.
I sucked in a breath.
A month. A whole month, I was unconscious.
And the moment I woke up, they chose to kill me again?
My pulse thundered in my ears. My veins trembled. The memory of over a thousand deaths flickered through me like static. Flashes of Ariana's final breath, the sting of poison, the burn of a blade sliding into my chest, the cold, the dark.
And it hit me. I'm... immortal.
The lead assassin stepped closer, raising his dagger.
"It seems we were just in time. Kill him before the rest of the knights are notified."
My mother sobbed, voice breaking.
"NO! PLEASE—NOT MY SON, PLEASE—!"
Ariana finally lifted her head, eyes locking onto mine. Those icy crimson, fierce eyes, widened slightly.
I froze.
Fate's words slammed back into me.
She feels it too.
A tug in my chest tightened—an instinct, a pull, a certainty I couldn't explain. Something in me recognized her. A tether.
A reason.
A purpose.
My fingers curled unconsciously against the sheets.
My breath steadied unnaturally, like something older and colder than me had taken hold.
The assassins noticed. The room noticed. Even Ariana noticed.
I pushed myself off the bed without a word.
I simply stood.
My feet touched the ground.
And I stared at them, steady, calm in a way that made the air itself feel wrong.
The assassins recoiled instinctively, stepping back a pace despite themselves.
Their blades shook.
I feel it now... the arcane within me. I feel it. The surrounding energy. I feel it, Fate. I actually feel it!
Is this the power a Servant weilds?
I smirked that smug signature smirk I'm well known for, a lopsided smirk. I exhaled lightly and rolled my shoulders, bare feet cold against the marble.
"You idiots."
The assassins turned to face each other, confused.
I yawned, raising one arm mockingly, and the other scratched the back of my head.
"If you wanted my attention, you coulda just knocked."
The lead assassin moved first. He was quick and precise with his poison-tipped dagger aimed directly for the gap in between my ribs.
A sure way to reach my heart.
I didn't move, didn't want to. Why would I when I can't die?
The blade slid into me with a sickening, wet crunch.
Mothers' whimpers turned to screams. Kat began thrashing against her binds, shouting curses in between wails. The maids sobbed and swayed. But Ariana didn't do any of that; instead, she raised her head a little higher, eyes widening even more ever so slightly with something I couldn't describe.
Pain streaked across my nerves, my lungs seized, and my heart thumped louder. Fuck that hurt.
I laughed in the assassin's face, blood pooling around my teeth, falling down my chin, and staining his white sleeves.
"H—hey! That hurt..." I managed just before I died.
And in my arms lay Ariana again, her head fell to my chest. The future, eh? Once again, my hand caressed her cheek intimately, brushing over the simple mark under her left eye. Maybe not yet, but she'll mean something to me someday. Which means...
I'll save you, Ari. I promise.
"Hey, where do you think you're going? We're not done yet." I chuckled, wiping the blood off my chin with the sleeve of my dark Henley.
The assassins who were making their way to Ariana turned around to face me, shock etched on their very faces, one of them even stumbled back, wiping his eyes to ensure what he was seeing wasn't a mere illusion.
Mother and Kat combined looked at me with a mix of relief and horror. Even Ari looked at me as if she couldn't recognize her own fiancé. Rude if you ask me.
***
(Lead Assassin)
Impossible. That's not... possible, did I miss? No, no, I didn't. I felt the blade puncture. I felt the resistance of ribs, the give of flesh. I aimed the strike perfectly between the bones, through the lung, straight toward the heart. And the poison… the poison was refined to kill even the greatest of knights in seconds.
And yet, here he stood, laughing with the arrogance of one who lived.
This couldn't be real.
It can't be.
"Wh—what are you?"
He didn't respond; he didn't have to. His laughter told me everything I needed to know.
He wasn't human, wasn't an elf, a demon, a fairy.
He was the devil.
Devil.
My blood ran cold.
Sylah… Sylah had warned me. Us.
I finally understood what she meant.
She came back from the first job and said nothing until we pressed her. Then she admitted it: she blew a hole clean through his torso with wind magic, saw his body fall, watched the life leave his eyes… and yet two days later, he appeared on the morning paper, bandaged up with the headlines calling him the new prince of Vangardia. The engagement with our Princess was official.
We mocked her, called her soft. The next night, she checked his pulse. Poison finished him off; he wasn't breathing. That's what she said.
The next morning, it was announced he was still alive, in a coma, yes. But alive.
A month of planning to break into the royal palace to finish him off, and he conveniently wakes up now?
I stared at the boy, he stared back, laughing and cracking jokes as if he was greeting an old friend. But his eyes, they were so sharp, so flat, so—so ready for murder.
He had the flat eyes of a killer. The flat eyes of someone who didn't just experience death, but welcomed it. It was almost as if Death favored him. Could it be... His rumored Divine ability is a gift from Death? Death doesn't gift. Never has. This is... he is... You are...
Different.
Behind me, Halen and Joru stumbled backward, both whispering prayers under their breaths. One of them even dropped his second dagger.
I couldn't tear my eyes away.
The prince tugged up the hem of his shirt, tapping the exact place I'd stabbed him with a mocking tilt to his head.
"Right here, yeah? You were aiming for my heart, right? Good aim, by the way. A little messy, though."
He even had the gall to grin.
A chill ran from the base of my skull down my spine, settling cold and heavy in my gut.
I was scared.
The arcane was practically dripping off him, such raw power, surpassing that of even our Princess.
He stepped a single measly step, and instinctively, I stumbled back, falling against the door.
"Pl—please, we're sorry!"
I tried, I really tried like the coward I was.
Because no way in hell was I gonna fight that devil.