Raven's DarkNess | ✔

Chapter Fourteen

Aoife.

That name stayed with me for the rest of my second week in that pack. It was like as if from the moment Enzo called me that, everyone heard it.

When I told Tinley that Enzo thought my name was Aoife, she said that the name suited me just fine. It was apparently the perfect name for me and since that day, the few people that had been bold enough to call my name in this pack called me that - Aoife.

If only I knew what Aoife even meant. I had never come across that name in my life. Yet, for some reason, I was reluctant to ask Tinley what Aoife actually meant. I was even more reluctant to ask Enzo. After he said that my name would be Aoife, I asked him why and he only said that he assumed my real name started with an 'A' because of the initial on my Assassins' ring. I looked down at the ring and saw how he could have mistaken the 'R' for an 'A' with the way the cursive swirled into itself. Enzo proceeded to tell me that I looked like an Aoife. Before I could ask what exactly Aoife meant or better still, what looking like an Aoife meant, he said he had to leave because there was some trouble back at the mansion.

The whole walk was rushed and so I didn't get a chance even as he bid me farewell at the mansion.

I couldn't decide if I liked the name 'Aoife' or not, but I did like the sound of it. If anything, it sounded sweet, which I was on occasion, maybe but which I had to become for this mission to succeed.

Each time I saw Indigo, I was reminded of what it truly meant to be sweet. She reminded me so much of the etiquette classes I struggled with when I was just a trainee for the Assassins'. I knew how to be graceful, classy and elegant but I always struggled with the sweetness required to tie everything together. My instructors often told me that my version of being sweet was sarcastic at best.

I guess even the great Raven had her flaws.

Looking at Indigo from across the dining table at breakfast and dinner, I couldn't help but admire her mannerisms. The way she held her cutleries was nothing less than graceful but then her hazel eyes were always turned downwards in a way that irritated me. Girls should be confident but it's girls like Indigo that made us have to fold into the narrative of sweetness that heated a man's heart. Some girls were sweet, yes but in my experience, it wasn't common.

Indigo wasn't common.

My instructors would have loved the way she smiled with her eyes and always had a small but never exaggerated smile on her lips. The way she blushed if you complimented her or simply smiled her way. The way whenever she did speak to me, her words were in the softest of tones and had 'please', 'sorry', 'thank you', 'I hope you don't mind', and so many other associated niceness in every sentence.

Yet, she was what I felt like I had to mirror in order to 'fit' into this pack. Being an assassin, I always had to immerse myself into an identity based on my target but with Enzo, I never knew what to think.

He was a humorous man who laughed at jokes and also told them. Despite his lifestyle, he was not a stiff or boring man. He was also thoughtful and no doubt, sweet yet, he was a thinking man. It was like as if his mind worked faster than him. He gave me the sense of a man who in a certain way, craved adventure (something Raven no doubt offered) but was so bound by his customs and duty to his people that he would never let himself actually explore that adventure he very deeply craved. He would play safe because of his customs.

I guess this was who Aoife was supposed to be; a safe bet yet far-reaching enough.

Raven would never get to Enzo but Aoife could. All I needed to do was to show Enzo how beautiful indulging in temptation could be without being too forthcoming about it. Yet, it won't be easy and would take so much time. I've already spent two weeks here and I feel like I am so slow. Yet, for this to work, it would take even more time because not only is Enzo a busy man but I also have to create a vacuum of want in his mind. How I'm going to do that will require time and quite a lot of talking.