JUNE ZEILRAN knows one thing: he is destined to live a quiet life in the servant's quarters as a half-blood in a territory of fairies. When the Imperial High Queen offers him a job he cannot refuse, he is thrown into a world of secrets and murder t...
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2410, Dalfa 16, Briss
June stared at his food without really registering what he was eating. His stomach growled but he couldn't bring himself to shove his meal into his mouth. All round him, chatter about today's weather and what assignments to do late into the day bled in and out of his ears. He understood nothing. Heard nothing. After the events of last night, he couldn't expect anything else.
Just like all his completed assignments, he needed a full day to process what he had just done. Now, with year end assessments creeping closer with every day passing, he needed to be present more in the Academy else he risked being retained in his Tresentura trench.
Of course, Nevrin could just pull some strings to keep him inside the Academy for as long as she wished, but he needed to have some kind of performance to put up with it. With Skalis and Relius hovering over him like a colony of iphik, it's impossible to sell something he hadn't done at all.
He had been lucky to have passed Sedentura with his remarks. Skalis thought it a miracle too, although she didn't say it directly. He didn't really mind. If Nevrin wasn't hell-bent on using him to kill her enemies, he would still be home in the Servant's District, with his mother, Riza. If he had a choice, he would have chosen that life and never wished to get out of the dingy shanty he grew up in.
It's funny how time and circumstance made him look back and miss how simple it was, way back when.
A stabbing pain in his side reminded him of what happened two days ago. Nevrin had gotten angry when he failed to chase down a witness who saw him kill off his target. It was an oversight. He didn't realize the maid still hadn't gone home. Now, with her testimony out in the prints, the assassin now had a name: the Knight of Death. This image of a man with a dark hood covering his face and an onyx dagger in hand was perpetuated all over the territory, and if June could count on it, outside the Junction City, as well.
Nevrin was so angry her face turned redder than ripe ajilte. She screamed at him for being stupid and ordered him to chase the maid down. "I don't care if you just got back," the High Queen had snarled. "Find her. Slit her throat. Spill her blood. NOW!"
That's how June spent last night crouched in one of Thenaserine's dark alleys, waiting for a woman with dark hair and sienna skin to pass by on her way to buy dinner. Then, the sky thought it funny to give way to rain so when June lunged forward to do his job, he slipped in a puddle of mud, landing hard on his side. The maid even had to crouch down to help him up only to have her neck sliced through.
June had stumbled out of her corpse that moment. Against the gray skies and the moons shadowed by thick curtains of clouds, the woman's eyes resembled spilled ink. Just like his mother. They stared lifelessly heavenward.
He had never run out of a place as fast as he did that time.
"June!"
His eyes snapped open to reveal Skalis looking at him from across the table. When had he even closed his eyes? Moreover, when had he leaned against the table, folded his arms atop it, and rested his head in them? He edged away from the table and rubbed the sleep off his eyes. His meal remained untouched beside him.
