Assassins Without a Choice

- chapter three -

After a while he lets me go and my mind clicks back into place. Where I am, what's happening and who I'm with. Locked in a metal box with a boy who left me. I stand frozen as Jasper flops down in his chair, like he's been here before.

He looks at me "coming or not?" I wipe the tears from my eyes and force my feet to move. They feel like they're stuck to the floor. I finally manage to put one foot in front of the other and sit on the edge of the other chair opposite Jasper.

"So, how have you been for the last 5 years?" He says as he drums his fingers on the table, I glare at them.

I decided to play mean "I've actually had a great time, remember Noah? He asked me to be his girlfriend shortly after you left"

"Are you two still together?" He asks, his voice painfully sorrowed

"Yeah, we were supposed to go to dinner together tonight but I guess since I'm locked in here with you that won't be happening" I hid my face to hide my smile. Almost everything I said is true, apart from the fact that he actually asked me out only two years ago. But Jasper doesn't need to know that.

Jasper looks away "Sky, the time you fell through here? That was three days ago"

"Three days?" I repeat in disbelief "but how's that possible?"

He takes his feet off the table and leans forward, reaching to grab my hands. I pull them away and rest them in my lap. "Three days in the human world equates to one day here."

"Where's here?" I ask, afraid for the answer.

"The faerie world"

"You mean like fae like from my books and shit?" He chuckles and nods his head "but I'm not fae and you're not fae so how-" I get cut off by a mirror appearing in front of me. A woman stares back at me, my green eyes slightly bigger, smooth pristine skin and pointy elongated ears.

"How's this possible?" I ask him while touching my new ears.

He wrings his hands, something I learned that he does when he's nervous. And he's only ever nervous around me "when you come here into my world you change and you can't go back to the way you were before until you do the tasks that the king sets you"

I stand up so fast my vision goes fuzzy "Jasper Alexander Stoll!" I glare at him. "What have you done to me?"

"You always said that you always wanted to be fae" he shrugs looking apologetic.

"But I still want to see my family and friends!"

"You can, after you complete the tasks, and then even after that people choose to stay" he gets up and pushes me back down in my chair "no one knows what the task is, how long they'll take or how many you'll be given. It depends on how much he likes you and how well you do." I jurk up "buttttt if you do badly and disappoint him you'll either be stuck here forever or killed immediately."

I slump back down in my chair "so, how are you here?"

"I was actually born here. It was my job to go to the human world"

"What, what were you doing there?" I stutter

He looks away "I can't say" I look at him questionly "when you get a task from the king you can't tell anyone until your dying breath or until you complete it."

"So you're not finished yet. Does it involve anyone at school?"

He looks back at me "it involved all of you, all I can tell you is I'm almost finished. I just have to wait till the others get here. You're safe, I swear on Moanias life" I remember that swear from back when we were friends, it was a way to know that we were completely telling the truth. Moanias was a hamster that we had secretly shared for a year before I told a lie, on moanias life, and he died. From then on we always knew that we were telling the truth when we swore on his life, ours didn't really matter to us back then. Our mental health was pretty shitty. "I would never voluntarily do anything to hurt you"

I laugh, a cold meaningless laugh "well that ones a lie"

"As soon as I tell you what you have to do and you meet your team then I can tell you what my task was" not a question, an order. Sounds like he's pretty important around here. Wherever here was.

He stares at me like he knows what I'm thinking "so you gonna talk to me or sit there looking creepy?"

"Let me think" he rolls his eyes, a playful role, "you have to kill someone, princess" he brings back the old nickname but I can't tell him off. I have to kill someone.

I sit up straight and hid my shaking hands "kill someone as put a knife through their heart and watch their skin slowly go white and their eyes blur over? Watch as there body goes limp and blood squirts all over my hand?"

"Woah woah woah You've been watching and reading too many books. But yes that is what killing entitles"

I give him the middle finger at his smirk "and do I have a choice?"

"No"

"Uhggggggg," I groan "How long do I have to complete it?"

"Three months, no more"

"Am I to work by myself?"

"No"

"Who am I working with then?"

He smiles "now that I can't answer Sky, all I can tell you is that they aren't all strangers"

"If your bring my family and friends into this I will fucking murder you" I growl.

He puts up his hands "you'll have to murder me then"

I stand up and place my hands on the table "what did you do Jasper?" I ask calmly. The table was slowly getting warmer underneath my hands.

"You'll all be safe. We'll protect you" he removes my hands from the desk, his hands strangely electric. Burn marks were on the table where my hands formerly were.

I stand up and lean on the wall. Too mad to sit down.

"ky," he says and walks up to me, I try to back away but I'm against the wall, in a corner, in a tiny box with this boy who just told me I have to kill someone. "You'll be safe I promise"

"Why should I believe Jasper, how much have you said to me that isn't a lie. That was out of friendship and not your 'job'? Who said you're telling the truth?"

Jasper looks down at me, like a looming shadow above me. He sighs and holds my hand, "I, Jasperan Stollan Alexander, swear that I will protect Skylar Audra Forrow until I die" as he says that a tattoo wraps around my shoulder and on to my back. It was etched into my skin but there was no pain at all. The tattoo had a pattern of a lion and on Jasper's shoulder a face of a tiger peaked out under the collar of his hoodie.

"I can't break this promise. I break it, I die, and neither of us want that do we?"

"And how do you break it?" I smile at him, a sugar sweet fake smile.

"You can't"

"That's disappointing"