Oath of Steel

26 |A Treacherous Truth|

Rosalynde had never been one believing in destiny, nor had she ever sustained the need to seek out the astrologers claiming that all the answers of the unknown doubts had been hidden in the stars.

No, that was for those who couldn't face reality, for those that hid in the presence of veracity.

And yet words failed to form on the tip of her tongue, rolling back down her neck, dying between a barely suppressed chuck of humorous laughter and an insidious remark.

For all she knew he'd been lying to her from the moment they'd entered the Expectancy Chamber - and yet something told her that he hadn't. That he had no reason to fool her - but she wasn't one that could be fooled with tempting words.

His mask betrayed nothing. An insurmountable wall that would have not fallen down even against her modern antics.

No. She wasn't in the condition to push it any longer. The edge had already been touched, and there was no reason for her to sacrifice her life like this - the occasion to serve the Crown in its final form would have arrived.

But the day hadn't still dawned on her.

She broke her stance, eyes pointing towards the pavement while the cold crept under her skin like a serpent. The words spoken from the Black Judge like a rainfall of needles piercing her mind and tearing apart her memories.

Her father had died nineteen years ago. She'd seen his body, mauled by the blades of the Detrian Republic decay by her mother's side in their home. He hadn't replied to her calls as she shook him, hoping to wake him up from the eternal slumber he'd fallen into.

The memory of his eyelids gradually freezing while his flesh turned black still vivid in her mind. She could have painted it like a master craftsman working on its craft, recalling each detail, each shadow the furniture cast inside those walls as the few rays of sun penetrated the barricaded windows while searching for a way to escape from that hell.

Funnily enough, the memories related to her mother were nothing more than a series of empty remembrances flashing inside her head. No emotions, no heart wrenching agony at the sight of her mother's gutted stomach.

The empty bowls of the kitchen rocking on the table as they got pushed by the gusts of the winter winds felt as nothing but a mere eloquent memory, so were the howling of the winds, like hounds unleashed all over her house. They seemed to bite each stone, spitting it out with unprecedented violence.

But all that combined hadn't stopped her from mourning the dead.

She'd learned to distance her mind, to halt the emotions from haltering her future actions - but the fury inside her heart wasn't of the same opinion.

And now it raged, like a caged wolf who'd just been sold to the highest bidder, destined to be kept captive inside golden cage for the rest of its life.

"Why tell me all this? What are you to gain from this?" A simple question, announcing what she knew would have been all but a simple answer at the end of the day.

The Black Judge laughed at that, a cruel timber a knife fending the air made Rosalynde unwarily straighten her back.

"Everything has a price. Every unaware gesture, every spoken word. I gave you something to work on, and now you have all you need to start digging out a past that this world has long buried in a sea of blood," his words weighed more than a thousand of corpses on her back, more than all the kills she'd accumulated thus far.

But there was something hidden behind it, something that he was waiting for her to grasp, something he'd laid in between the revelation.

A Seeker never offered a deal without pondering on the outcome, nor did the gesture ever come out of a pure heart, young and ready to be crushed like a bloom in its prime.