Aurelia is a Courtesan, not an Assassin. Her world is turned upside down, however, when she kills a high-ranking Senator in self defense. Given his status, and the political power his family wields, Aurelia knows she will be executed without a trial...
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Countdown: 9.5 hours, 4 deaths
The thunder continues to crash overhead, an endless cacophony of horrific sound, punctuated by screaming, whistling winds and bursts of light. Aurelia remembers the whore with the eyes of a Rivergater asking if a summer storm was a hurricane, and how silly she had thought the woman. This, on the other hand, sounds like Glascoast might actually be in the early grips of one. The siren has not sounded, though, so perhaps it is only a tropical storm.
Fitting weather for the night, Aurelia finds herself thinking. As though Ila-Ama and her daughter are bearing witness to what she will do.
There is the sound of a lock turning over, and then the door creaking open. A light flickers on, glowing through the crack at the bottom of the closet door. Aurelia stills her breathing, pushes herself as far into the shadows of the small closet she is crouched in as she can, her thigh brushing against the edge of the empty trunk the primos had all been gifted.
Her hand clenches tightly around the master key she had found, the delicate scrollwork of its bow biting into her palm.
"Go to bed. I am not in the mood for your company tonight," she hears Laerius Colonos tell his servant. She hears no reply from the girl, but her breath comes easier when she hears another door open and shut as the servant presumably complies.
A moment later, there is the sound of the hiss of a shower, and even from her hiding place in the closet, Aurelia can smell the sweet scent of the soap as it lathers. She waits, crouched and cramped, holding her breath in the darkness, until sounds of the shower have ceased, and there is no longer a crack of light beneath the closet door. She waits longer than that- she counts to four hundred after she hears the tell-tale noise of sheets rustling and the groan of the mattress.
She slips her hairstick from her hair before she emerges from the closet. When she pushes the door open, the hinges creak, and Aurelia freezes, her heart hammering in her throat. She counts to four hundred again, just in case the noise had woken Laerius Colonos.
When she hears no movement, no noise from the bed, she creeps forward, slinking out of the closet, crawling across the ground, making as little noise as possible.
She's heard it said that the Amaliem hunters can move through the jungle without so much as cracking a branch underfoot. She has no such skill, or such grace, but she is as silent as someone untrained could possibly be.
Her heart is pounding so fiercely, though, that she is sure it is loud enough to wake the dead. It is all she hears as she slinks forward- tha-pum-tha-pum-tha-pum- the sound of it in her ears, the feel of it thudding in her chest as powerfully as the thunder that continues to roll- causing her to grind her teeth together.
The sheets do not rustle, the pattern of his breathing does not change.
Aurelia rises up on silent soles as she approaches the bed, her hair stick uncapped, gripped tightly in a sweating palm. She leans over him, her chest heaving, the tha-pum-tha-pum-tha-pums of her heart beating impossibly faster.
