Bleeding Ink

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

As soon as her white leather boots sounded against the marble floor of the throne room, breaking against the silence of the crowd standing around the perimeter, all eyes turned to her. Of course, they couldn't see her face. Not when the Lady in White kept her true identity a closely guarded secret. The hood of her cloak concealed every one of her features, hid her hair she had braided down her back, every bit of her covered in her white leather bodysuit. She didn't need any weapons, not when she herself was one, yet still kept a dagger sheathed against her left leg.

If anyone saw what she truly looked like and not what the rumors had said which spread across all of Laria over those last one hundred and twenty-five years, they would have been able to easily identify her as the foreign female mage named Addie who called Krahzara her home, the one who lived in one of the wealthiest districts, who spent every bit of her blood money on their goods and threw in extra coin anytime she could. They praised her generosity, loved her not only for her money but her kindness as well. If only they knew how she'd come about that money, usually paid from the Empress of Krahzara's coffers or one of the wealthy lords or ladies from her court. This job, though...this one she would have done for free just for the sheer pleasure it would be in taking this piece of scum's life.

To everyone else, Adeena Lucerra Brandt was dead, killed when she was just four years old by the head of the assassins of the Guild of Starlight.

Throughout Krahzara and even in the kingdom of Searis when she went for short trips to get away, she went by Addie. No one knew her by her fully name, save for just a few. Two of which were looking at her as she made her entrance. Empress Sophea nodded as she looked back at the male knelt in front of her, but Crown Prince Malik was still staring at her. Since she was a child, he had been her best friend and yet he still had to look away whenever she was here for a job.

"How do you plead?" Empress Sophea demanded as she sat on her gilded throne.

The male, who had been rotting in the palace dungeon for the past eight weeks, grinned at her. "Not guilty."

She raised a brow. "Are you sure? Because the children, whose ages range from six to sixteen, you sold to the highest bidder would beg to differ."

"And they were good. Oh, so good. Had to try them out myself before I knew what they were worth."

Adeena's stomach rolled as she tried to swallow back the bile that rose in her throat. Children. They were just children.

These were the kind of executions she didn't mind. Not when the person more than deserved to suffer for the suffering they'd caused others. And oh, would she make him suffer.

Her dark magic spooled in her palms as she stepped forward out of the crowd. They all seemed just as eager as she was for her to end this male's life.

The silence was what clued him in as he whipped his head around, dull brown eyes searching...before finding the Lady in White standing just a dozen feet behind where he was on his knees, two guardsmen on either side of him.

Now, he seemed to understand he wouldn't be met with a blade.

"No," he moaned as fear paralyzed him.

Adeena's chuckle sent shivers down everyone's spines, including the empress.

"I'm afraid your fate has already been decided," Sophea told him as he turned those fear-filled eyes back to her. "And I'm sure the Lady will take great pleasure in ending your life. She despises people like you even more than I do."