The Assassin's Shadow

Chapter 16 (part 1)

I heard the conversation in the living room break off suddenly and then Tom walked into the room. For the first time since I had seen him, he looked slightly nervous.

“Evan, what are you doing awake?” he asked.

Evan? All the blood drained from my face at that name.

“Your voices woke me up. Who’s this?”

“This is Elaine Archer, she’s going to be staying with us for a while. Elaine, this is Evan Wicker. She’s part of the Resistance and a guest in our house as well.”

“Part of the Resistance?” I repeated in a hoarse whisper.

“Yes.” Tom said, scrutinizing my face. “Her parents were killed by the Revolution and she found her way to us.”

“How’d she know it was the Revolution?” I asked, my gaze flickering from Tom to Evan.

“Her sister.” Tom said. “Ashley Wicker had a talent with fire and she told her sister about it. Sadly Ashley was kidnapped, and then a few weeks later her parents were killed. It didn’t take long for Evan to connect the two.”

“Oh.” I said in a small voice.

So it was Ash’s sister.

“Are you looking for your sister, then?” I asked the girl, my voice sounded hoarse to me.

The girl looked at me with a hardened face and I was transported back to when I had first met Ash, when she had shut me out with her ice princess façade.

“In a way.” Evan said coldly. “I’m finding her so I can kill her.”

I blinked several times and then looked at Tom. He gave me an apologetic look.

“Evan believes her sister has turned sympathetic to the Revolution’s cause. We’ve discovered that Ashley has killed many times and there was evidence that she herself did nothing to try and save her parent’s from being murdered.”

“How did you know her parent’s were murdered? They were kidnapped before they were murdered.”

Evan’s face went from rock hard to suspicious in an instant. I could tell she wasn’t as practiced with that mask as Ash had been.

“How did you know that?” she demanded.

I bit my lip and looked at Tom.

Tom shrugged and answered Evan, “She was kidnapped by the Revolution like Ashley was. She just escaped from them.”

“The Revolution? So you must have met Ashley!” Evan said, her eyes growing big.

“Yes, I knew your sister.” I sighed.

She was the most brave, most talented, and most compassionate person I had ever met. She loved you from the moment you were born to the moment I stabbed my blade through her heart. You were the joy of her life, but would you believe me?

Tom shook his head slightly and I took that to mean that she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t believe that her sister had died trying to save her life. I felt like I was going to cry for the first time since that night. 

“Where is she?” Evan growled. Her hands tightened into fists and I saw in her eyes how she felt her sister had betrayed her.

“She’s dead.” I breathed, closing my eyes and lowering my head.

A demanding silence filled the room and when I finally opened my eyes, Evan was staring at me with glassy eyes, her mouth was open in shock.

“How?” she whispered. I looked away in shame and this seemed to help her recover a bit for her voice was stronger when she next spoke. “How did she die?”

I looked back at her. I couldn’t deny Ash’s last wish, I couldn’t not tell Evan why Ash had sacrificed herself.

“She died trying to save you. She rescued a member of the Resistance from death and for that, Cody was going to kill you.”

“Who is Cody, and why’d he want to kill me and not her?” Evan demanded.

I told her that Cody was the leader of the Revolution and explained to her his twisted way of thinking, how he got people to do what he wanted by threatening the lives of the person’s loved ones.

“The only time she ever refused to do what he wanted resulted in your parents’ death. It’s why she did what she did, she was trying to save you from sharing their fate.”

“Then why did she die in the end and not me?” Evan asked.

“Cody doesn’t give third chances. He ordered... someone to track her down and kill her. However this person had never killed before, so in exchange for her death, he promised that you would be spared.”

“Why should this person have cared if I was dead or not?” Evan demanded.

“It doesn’t matter.” I shook my head. “The thing is, your sister spent her life trying to make sure you kept yours. She loved you more than life itself.” I smiled a little. “I was there for her final words, she made me swear to find you so that I could tell you that.”

“Why did she ask you to tell me that?” Evan asked. Her questions were flicked out at me and she seemed to be absorbing all my answers like a sponge.

“She was my mentor and my best friend.” I said. “She taught me everything I needed to survive and then made sure I had the will to live as well.” As I said that a memory came to me and my smile became a little more pronounced. “I remember when I tried to kill myself with poison. She sat by me for the whole two days it took for me to heal, refusing to leave even once.”

“You... tried to kill yourself?” Evan sounded shocked.

“There’s more than one way to escape from somebody.” I said, my smile fading. “That’s the coward’s way out, though, and it didn’t work.”

“What happened?” Evan asked seriously.

I grimaced. I didn’t really want to tell her the story but I felt I owed it to her. “I was out on the edges of the forest at one of the “safe” houses of the Revolution. There was this plant, the Deadly Nightshade, that was in it’s full bloom, it’s berries a shiny black. So I picked off a few and ate them. The side effects of that berries poison were... not pleasant.” I shuddered at the memory of the pain. “Ash told me afterwards that when she found me, I was already dead.”

Evan’s eyes widened at that and she watched my face, enraptured by the story but also suspicious. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Tom and Janet were standing next to one of the four people I had fought in the forest. I thought it was Logan, the one who had been able to see in the dark. I figured the other three, Kyran, Conner, and the british woman, had moved out of the living room as I could no longer hear them.

“She brought me back to the house and watched over me. She begged Cody to give me the antidote but he refused, saying that it was too late for that and if my powers didn’t heal me then I was dead for good. She stayed with me for the rest of that day, until my heart started beating again and I was breathing, and she stayed with me all the rest of the day until I gained consciousness. We were friends since that day.”

“You can heal yourself?” Evan asked.

“Yes.” I nodded. “But only myself. I can’t help anyone else with my powers.”

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small update in celebration of my new cover! Thanks JadeHero330, it looks awesome!