ᴍᴏᴏɴʟɪɢʜᴛ ᴀꜱꜱᴀꜱꜱɪɴꜱ「 ˢᵒʳᵘʸ ᵛˢ ˢᵒᵏᵉᵉᶠᵉ 」

8 [intruder]

Sophie froze at the voice.

It was the same one in her dreams, in her memories. It was the same one from last night.

It was the voice that matched with big azure eyes, and hair so black it looked blue.

Ruy.

As he stepped closer into the room, she began backing up. Because this wasn't happening. This had to be her dreaming again because how could he have gotten past Sandor and the rest of the goblins? How could he have the confidence to walk into her room all cocky and not expect retaliation?

He stopped walking when she stopped walking, or well when she couldn't walk anymore because her back was against the wall. This was potentially a bad position for her.

"Ruy," she finally had the courage to say—she had to watch the way she spoke. It was like talking to a radioactive bomb, one small wrong thing and it would explode, "what are you doing here?"

Ruy looked around her room with a small smirk on his face, "Oh hush now, I'm not here to do anything illegal, I just wanted to see where the Great Sophie Foster lived—and I wasn't let down."

"Let me make the question more clear, what do you bloody want from me?" She began dwindling with her fingers, not yet tugging out all her eyelashes, so that was a good thing. "You drag me out of my bed last night to have a meeting with your leader and then he just leaves with no explanation."

"Yes," Ruy is causally walking closer again, "and I'd like to reschedule a meeting at his behest."

"Now why in the bloody hells would I go there again, just to waste my time." Not to mention that I'm grounded and literally cannot leave this house.

"And like I said before, you just need to hear him out."

His voice was a hushed whisper now, he was so close that she could feel his breath on her face. And it wasn't necessarily disgusting like when Fitz tried to do something similar.

"And...and why would I do that?" Sophie choked out. She was nervous and his proximity was not helping her.

"Because," he picked up a lock of blonde hair that must have slipped from the bun she threw her obnoxious hair in, and began playing with it. "you know you want to. Because I know for a fact that everything that happened last night intrigued you to a point where you won't let this go. Because," he let go of her hair and pointed to her temple with a calloused finger, "tonight, when you remember, you will want the answers, and you will go to Elysian."

Then he gave her that crooked smiley smirk thing that Keefe often gave her. It made an innocent and younger halo of light shine over the darkness shrouding the boy.

But as he began leaving the last word of his sentence replayed in her mind.

Elysian?

Elysian!

It was the name of a place in Kenric's cache.

"That doesn't make any sense!"

"But nothing in this world makes sense, I thought you knew that." He called from over his shoulder, stepping up on her window seat connected to the still wide open window.

Then he jumps.

Sophie rushed to the ledge, and where she should have seen a dead elf, there was a mess of scattered flowers. Her favorite flowers. Delphinium flowers.

Deadly to the touch and yet the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. Deadly to the touch yet no matter how many times she'd touched it it never killed her. And that was why she fancied it—it would survive her.