Free Web NovelChapter 95: Chapter 95
The thick cover of darkness was where people’s fears and insecurities came out to play.
In the dead of night, a man shuffled anxiously around a dimly lit room, his movements sharp and hurried. He frantically shoved his belongings—clothes, a pair of worn sandals, his mother’s old diaries—into a rough, patched bag he had taken from one of the food storage rooms earlier that evening. He didn’t bother to pack everything he owned, just the ones he could carry along with him while he made his escape.
The room he stood in had been his for years, yet it had never truly felt like it belonged to him. The thin straw mattress in the corner, the cracked plaster walls, the lone wooden stool by the window, everything about it spoke of a temporary existence. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ
Just then, he heard a voice from the other side of the door. It belonged to his closest friend. None of the doors in the house locked from the inside, so a moment later the handle turned, and the hinges gave a soft, protesting creak. Neven, his oldest companion, stepped inside, stumbling slightly, his balance unsteady from the amount of alcohol he had consumed that night.
Fae wine was rare and expensive. The people in this house rarely touched it except when there was something truly worth celebrating. Tonight, apparently, had been such a night.
Neven froze mid-step when his gaze fell upon the scene in front of him. His face hardened instantly. Without a word, he turned, shut the door, and dragged a chair across the floor, wedging it beneath the handle to make it more difficult for anyone else to enter.
"What do you think you’re doing, Bram?" Neven hissed, his voice low but edged with steel.
Bram didn’t stop moving, his hands still digging through his scant possessions, shoving them into his bag. freewebnovёl.ƈom
"What does it look like to you, Neven? I’m leaving this place and this hellish life," Bram said without looking up.
" None of us can leave, you know this." Neven shot back.
Bram gave a bitter scoff. "Watch me."
"Do you have any idea what will happen to you?" Neven stepped closer, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Have you so easily forgotten what he did to the last ones who tried to escape?"
Bram’s jaw tightened, but his hands didn’t falter.
Neven moved closer still, hardening his tone. "Whatever has gotten into you, we can talk about it calmly. Just put everything back, and we’ll forget this ever happened."
Bram snapped his head up, his eyes blazing.
"Aren’t you tired of it all? Of being used and discarded at the whims of others?" His voice trembled, not only from fear, but with the rage he had been bottling up for years. In a quieter tone, almost a whisper, he added, "I killed a little girl last night, Neven. I slit her throat because Narfor told me to. And I can’t scrub her face from my mind. I can’t sleep. I can’t breathe. I’m sick of this. I’m tired of being someone I don’t recognize when I look in the mirror."
"So you would rather die?" Neven’s eyes narrowed. "Because that’s exactly what will happen if you try to leave. You’ll die, Bram. Narfor will make sure of it, and then he’ll mount your head on the walls of the Stonehold like the others. You remember what happened to Emre Biven when he got captured, don’t you?"
"I won’t say a word about the guild. The magic only kills those who break their oath," Bram said. His hands finally stilled, and he reached for Neven. "We came here together, let’s leave together as well."
Neven barked out a humorless laugh and shook his head. "What you need is to grow a backbone and do the work you’re given. We all knew what we were getting into when we agreed to his terms."
"We were children, Neven. Starving children who just wanted a warm place to sleep," Bram said bitterly. His voice cracked. "I didn’t sign up to kill children." Tears glimmered at the corners of his eyes. "I can’t keep doing this. I still have a conscience."
Neven’s mouth curled into a sneer. "Lucky for me, I lost mine in the cold streets of Lamora. At least I’m not plagued by this level of stupidity and recklessness." He stepped back, gesturing toward the window. "Go, if you want but I’m not following you on this fool’s errand."
"I won’t get caught," Bram said at last, though the fire in his voice had dimmed. Doubt had crept in, wrapping around his words like cold fingers.
"I hope you don’t," Neven replied flatly. "Prove me wrong. Survive when no one else could."
Neven didn’t move as Bram slung the sack over his shoulder and shoved the window open. He didn’t speak when his friend swung one leg over the sill and then the other. He just watched, silently, as Bram disappeared into the night.
That was how their twenty-year long friendship ended, not with heartfelt goodbyes, nor with a backwards glance or even the courtesy of an embrace. Just the cold, crushing knowledge that Bram was gone, and he would never come back. If he did return, it would be as a corpse.
Narfor, the head of the assassin’s guild, disliked many things, but he hated traitors and defectors above all. Such people met the most brutal ends imaginable at his hands.
He had eyes in every street of Lamora and ears in every tavern. He knew everyone worth knowing in the kingdom. The people who worked for him were once street children—the weak, the vulnerable, the unwanted. He gathered them up like lost coins, polished them into weapons, and in return, they sold him their souls. Once you entered Narfor’s service, there was no leaving. Not alive.
Neven had never been religious. He had never stepped inside a temple but as he stared at the open window, the night air whispering in through the curtains, he found himself praying, not for Bram’s safe departure, because that was a hope too foolish to entertain. No, Neven prayed for something else entirely.
He prayed that when Narfor found his oldest friend, he would grant him a death that was quick and merciful.
