Beauty in Red | NaNoWriMo 2021

Chapter One: Marie

The blood coating my tunic and breeches was not mine, but it almost had been.

As I slipped through Emery's dark corridors, avoiding the loud and boisterous men and women haunting the taverns in the lower part of the city, I tried to ignore the feeling of the cloth sticking uncomfortably to me in the places the blood landed--I wished to Saela I could change out of the soiled clothing, but I still had several blocks to go before I reached the safety of the upper city. A woman, running unaccompanied through the streets at this hour, would not go unnoticed by the darkness that always seemed to hover over the lower city like a cloud, and a beautiful woman covered in blood that was clearly not her own?

The corruption that plagued the city guards would be all too glad to see me disappear.

The hood of my cloak was pulled up over my face, hiding as many of my features from view as possible. My hair, which was usually done up in the current most fashionable style of Freidmont society, was pulled back in a braid and tucked neatly inside my cloak. Long hair would be a dead giveaway of my family's wealth--something else that would not go unnoticed. The working-class women tended to keep their hair short, cut to a length that kept it out of their way so they could go about their busy lives with little to no fuss.

Some days, I wished I could cut my hair, and revel in the freedom of not worrying whether I was fashionable. But then, my mother's cold voice would ring in my ears, the all too familiar warnings not to be ungrateful for the life I was given, to not forsake the good graces of lady Fate herself.

So I kept my hair long, and kept in mind that while my life was not one I would have willingly chosen for myself, I had privileges most who lived in the kingdom of Freidmont would never have.

I turned a corner, my steps slowing in relief at the sight of the carriage just a couple blocks ahead, the matte black paint seeming to absorb the night. There was a single line scratched into the door, marked to indicate that this specific carriage was one employed by the Light Bringer.

Only those who were well trusted enough to be in his inner circle would recognize the line as a symbol, instead of an imperfection marring the otherwise smooth wooden door. There were only five carriages in all of Emery that carried the mark, all of them stored on a property that was unlisted in the royal registry.

Most taxis in the lower city were painted this same shade of black--the marked carriages could be hired, and oftentimes the drivers would spend their nights taking passengers from place to place just to keep from being conspicuous by just sitting all night while they waited for whomever the Light Bringer tasked with a mission to return.

The drivers were usually men within the inner circle, those the Light Bringer trusted implicitly with the secrets of our order.

But when it was me the Light Bringer bestowed a mission upon, there was no one in the entire world he trusted more than himself.

I could see him now, sitting back with one foot hanging casually, the other resting against the box on the floor in front of him. His elbow was draped across his knee as his head was tipped back, looking up at the stars as he was most times when he thought people weren't paying attention. A wide-brimmed hat hid his identity from the world, but I would recognize this man anywhere.

Because he was not only the Light Bringer, but also my father, Samuel Blanchet.

No one else within the order knew of my existence, and we both preferred to keep it that way.

Knowing I was only a few short moments away from a return home, which meant changing out of these blood-soaked clothes and into something a little more...respectable, of a lady of my stature, made my body relax, the tenseness of my muscles uncoiling after the fight that nearly left me disemboweled just a short hour ago. It was enough to make me forget, for a moment, where I was, who I was.