Angelborn

3. Quiet Night

CHAPTER THREE - QUIET NIGHT

I was walking through a side garden, headed towards the main hall, when a pair of little hands grabbed my shoulders and pulled me down.

I shrieked and dropped my candle, tried to spin around, but the one who had grabbed me threw their arm up to catch mine - quicker than myself.

"Quiet," a familiar voice whispered into my ear, "or they'll hear us."

I was dragged to the edge of the garden, where no torchlight could reach. The hands let me go, but pushed my shoulders down, telling me to hide.

When I turned around, Aria's golden eyes glowed straight into mine and made me blink away.

"What's going on?" I asked, squinting at her face. Aria, like Darius and I, was Angelborn,  except she had a unique perk of being able to see in pitch black darkness, and so her eyes were always the brightest at night. I could still see the faint outline of her tiny body, but the rest of her, apart from her eyes, was completely hidden from me.

"I watched you come back from the city," she spoke quickly and looked around frantically as she did so, her eyes darting around in the dark around her face, the only part of her I could see, "you were followed. I tried to get down to you, but someone was outside your room."

Her eyes landed on a part of the garden, and froze, but she continued to speak, "They're here, and they're waiting for you. But they don't know where you are."

Aria's other senses were heightened, as well. She could hear a pin drop from across a busy room, could feel a caravan's thunder from the other end of a forest. And while she could sense the someone who had been following me, I hadn't a clue as to where to even begin to look for him.

She grabbed my hand, "Was there a letter? They're saying something about a letter."

I fished for the crumpled message in my robes and handed it to her, "Only this."

Aria took the paper and unfurled it, opened it and read it with no light from anywhere at all.

"An obvious forgery," she said, not looking at me, "but a good one." Her eyes glanced over at me, "Do you know who these people are?"

I shrugged, "No, but they obviously know my contractor, who was missing tonight," I peeked out into the garden and caught a glimpse of a shadow skulking between the leaves. "Traitor," I spat, "Veneticci was playing me all along."

Aria shushed me, then spoke incredibly low, incredibly quiet, "Don't move. There's someone else."

Following her orders, I held my breath and tuned my ears to the sounds around me. Amid the rustling of plants, I heard the shuffling of feet and the mumbling of low voices, but there was something else that Aria was listening to, something I couldn't hear.

And she took in a sharp breath.

I heard the cocking of a mechanism, the sound of a dart piercing through skin and sinew, and the final thud of a body hitting the grassy floor. The man gargled on his own blood before going completely silent.

Faster footsteps rounded a corner into the garden, and I could see a pair of armored men bent over what was presumably their fallen friend.

Aria took my hand, pointed my finger, and then raised it in the direction of a rooftop.

"Look there," she whispered in my ear.

By the glow of the moon I could see the outline of a figure, his cape blown by the wind. He was on the roof of the barracks.