The Last Dahlia

013

Tonight, the king of Dahai would be throwing a sumptuous feast in celebration of the end of the annual sparring championships, and also the marriage of his precious daughter to the crown prince of Gi. The banquet hall was packed to the brim, the sounds of joyous laughter and chatter emerging from within.

Elsewhere in the palace, someone was busy teaching someone else a lesson.

"Let me go! Put me down!" a man screeched. He was hanging upside down from the branch of a tree, blindfolded and suspended from the legs by some coarse rope, wearing absolutely nothing but his undergarments round the bottom half of his body.

The Dahai palace had several secluded corners, including this particular corner at the south-east of the palace gardens which was overgrown and poorly tended because it was so far removed from the chambers of the royal household that hardly anyone ventured to walk this way. With the banquet underway in the main hall, all the more there wouldn't be a single soul chancing upon this sorry sight.

Yuehwa sat on the grass patch in front of the tree, a long whip in her right hand. Watching in amusement as the man continued struggling to free himself, she said, "Did you actually think you would get away with taking advantage of the princess? That the king would have no choice but to hand his precious daughter over to you?"

"Who the hell are you? I demand you set me free right this instant!" the man barked loudly, his current situation doing nothing to douse his arrogance. "Do you know who I am? I could have you slaughtered for this!"

"I'm sure you could," Yuehwa replied nonchalantly. "Unfortunately for you, I don't really care. It remains to be said whether or not you manage to leave this place alive." Raising her whip into the air, she swung it straight at him. The man howled in anguish as the whip sliced through the skin across his chest, leaving an angry red mark behind.

"To think that someone like you might become the king of a kingdom one day," she mused, "is slightly disturbing."

Her whip went lashing out again, and the man let out another ear-piercing scream.

"Drugging a girl and forcing yourself on her? Despicable." She whipped him again. And again. "There are some things that you shouldn't ever do if you consider yourself a human being, but clearly someone like you doesn't understand that. Today I'm going to teach you the lesson that your father failed to teach you after all these years. You messed with the wrong person."

"Don't overdo it. You don't want to leave a corpse for the king of Dahai to wake up to tomorrow morning," Shoya said calmly. He was lying along the branch of a nearby tree, partly watching the show that was unfolding before his eyes, partly cleaning his flute with a piece of scrap cloth.

"It's you!" the crown prince of Feng yelled angrily as he recognised the voice. "You're supposed to be on my side damn it! I hired you to fight on my behalf! What the hell do you think you're doing now? I demand you kill this bitch and rescue me right now!"

"I think our deal ended when the tournament ended, Your Highness," Shoya replied. "Besides, even if I wanted to rescue you, I'm not sure I'd know how."

"You're supposed to be the White Scorpion. What do you mean you don't know how?"

"Clearly he thinks very highly of you." Yuehwa rolled her eyes as she looked at Shoya. Picking herself off the ground, she walked over to the man hanging from the tree, yanking down the blindfold that was covering his eyes. "Maybe if you realised who it is that you're calling a bitch, you might be a little less pompous?"

She took out a single red dahlia from within her sleeve and waved it in front of his eyes.

The crown prince gulped, cold sweat immediately beginning to form across his forehead. He was looking into the eyes of the Phoenix, the one that they called the most vicious of all assassins across the five kingdoms. If ever the red dahlia was seen, it meant that someone's life had just been unceremoniously cut short.