Rise of the Legion

by Chloe Cullen

It took a lot for Thoren to feel truly angry, and tonight it had happened to him twice, which was a rarity. Once when Ione had snapped at Cori with those harsh words. And now, when Cori stood in front of him, telling him he was stupid for needing time away from his responsibilities, just like she had.

  Thoren said to her, in a deadly calm voice, “you’re not the only one who is allowed to be messed up by what happened two years ago. You know that, right? You don’t own the horror and the sadness from that day. I lost people I loved, too. Including you.”

  Cori stared at him, as though processing his words. When she didn’t say anything, Thoren made a small, irritated noise in the back of his throat. With a shake of his head, he started walking again, his steps quick with anger.

  That was when two cloaked and hooded figures stepped out of a darkened alley and ran straight into Thoren.

  ***

  Thoren had shocked Cori.

  Firstly, by telling her that he had chosen not to enter the trials to become one of the Five, because he had aspired to that for as long as she could remember.

  And then he had told Cori why, shocking her again.

  Cori had known, of course, that the losses from the Massacre would have affected Thoren. They affected everyone. But for her own selfish reasons, she hadn’t bothered to understand just how much of an effect it had on him. Now she knew.

  Cori didn’t know what to say. She felt like she needed to apologise, but before she could muster the words, Thoren had turned his back on her and started walking away. His steps were angry ones, scuffing along the cobbles as opposed to the usual silent strides.

  Cori was about to start after him, intending to keep a few paces behind him to give him some space while she tried to find the right words, when two dark figures emerged from the shadows, swathed in black cloth, running at full speed. The breath left her body out of shock as one of them collided with Thoren, causing him to lose his balance as they both toppled to the ground.

  For a moment, Cori was transported back to that marble hall, those black cloaked Shadow Soldiers converging on her friends and family, blood everywhere.

  Her heart thumped, and she felt a scream rising her throat, her hands scrambling for her dagger before she stumbled back a step, her heel catching on something, and she fell backwards, hard.

  Her dagger skittered away from her, pinging across the cobble stones, and she stared up in horror as one of the figures loomed over her, their black cloak shielding their face.

  The figures hand reached up, and Cori cringed away, before the hood was pulled back and revealed a young boy that was staring down at her, a look of concern on his face.

  “Are you okay, ma’am?”

  Cori looked past the young boy, to see Thoren getting to his feet, and helping up a young girl whose hood had come away from her face during the fall she had taken. Thoren looked over at Cori still on the ground, his forehead pinched with worry.

  “I’m fine,” Cori said, and pushed herself up, aware that her hands were shaking, and she could feel a burning heat flowing through her cheeks in embarrassment.

  “I’m so sorry,” the young girl was saying to Thoren, “we shouldn’t have been running so fast.”

  “It’s alright,” Thoren said, his voice low but gentle, “just be a bit more careful or someone might get hurt.”

  Both young kids nodded, and then looked to each other before grasping hands and skipping off together, disappearing into the shadows, a quiet giggling rising in the silence around them.

  Cori watched them go, a strange nostalgic feeling hitting her at the sight of them together, it was so much like she and Thoren had used to be when they were much younger.

  When silence fell around them again, Cori couldn’t meet his gaze, knowing there would be a question lingering in them. Slowly, she walked over to where her dagger had fallen, and plucked it up from the ground, checking the hilt for any damage before shoving it jerkily back into the sheath at her hip.

  Cori walked on. They weren’t far from the large Palace gates now, and she could see each tower of the Palace against the inky black sky, their windows lit with candles and twinkling in the darkness.

  There were no words she could say. She knew the only reason Thoren had been caught off guard and not heard the children coming before he was toppled over, was because of her. Because he was distracted by his anger at her – and that was dangerous. What if it hadn’t been children flying out of that dark alley, but someone much more nefarious? Cori certainly wouldn’t have been any help, falling over and losing her weapon in the space of a heartbeat, cowering away. She cringed, feeling that embarrassment all over again.

  Thoren remained quiet beside her for some time, but she could sense him looking to her every few paces, as though making sure she was alright.

  “I’m fine, Thoren,” Cori said, when she could no longer take his scrutiny.

  He looked sidelong at her. “It’s okay if you’re not.”

  Cori considered that for a moment, and she considered what he had said to her about his own sorrow. “It’s okay if you’re not, too,” she said quietly, and Thoren looked over to her in surprise, “I’m sorry for what I said earlier, for whatever that’s worth.”

  “Thank you,” he said after a moment before he cleared his throat and seemed to purposefully look away from her.

  They walked on in silence, eyes returning to study their surroundings, and even though there was much more than needed to be said, she felt some form of ease settle between them.

  ***

  As they were midway through Thoren’s patrolling shift, they finally ran into Trey.

  Cori had known Trey her entire life. He had been a fresh initiate when Cori had been born, and he’d been instrumental in Cori becoming the kind of fighter she had during her time with the Legion. Trey had been like a son to Cori’s father, who was his mentor right up until Trey ascended to become a Legion Five warrior to replace her father when he became the President. The relationship between Trey and the Oakheart’s had always been familial, close, and Cori had looked up to him just as much as she had looked up to her own father.

  She had been nervous at the thought of seeing Trey again for the first time in so long, wondering if he would hold any resentment toward her for leaving without a word.

  The streets were quiet as Everton neared its eleventh bell, and Thoren and Cori had quietly walked beside each other for the past few hours, keeping their ears and eyes peeled without any sign of trouble.

  When Cori spotted Trey ahead of them and walking in their direction, she felt her muscles stiffen with anxiety, but she was also excited to see him again.

  “There he is,” Thoren muttered under his breath, “usually he can’t wait to leave patrol.”

  Cori barely spared Thoren a glance, instead she watched Trey move towards them, and as his features grew closer in the darkness, surprise hit her with a sudden force.

  Trey looked the same… except there was something vastly different. He looked… darker. Harsher, somehow.

  As they neared speaking distance, she stretched her lips into a smile, which faded quickly when it wasn’t returned. Cori drew in an unsteady breath as they met on the cobbled sidewalk, and Trey ran his eyes over her, assessing, and then moved away from her with a dismissive raise of his eyebrow.

  “I’ve just been with the guards at the Palace gates,” Trey said, his voice low and gruff. It was such a familiar sound that it almost brought tears to her eyes, mostly because… he didn’t bother to greet her, not even a little.

  Thoren opened his mouth at Trey’s words, then looked over at Cori, seeming to sense her distress. He knew how close they had used to be. Cori pressed her lips together and looked away from both of them, as though she were evaluating the darkened shop fronts next to them.

  “Any trouble?” Thoren asked after a moment’s hesitation.

  “No sightings. We were discussing the extra Legion protection for the parade,” Trey answered, “I’ll see you tomorrow at shi
ft change.”

  Thoren nodded as Trey began to walk away from them. Cori turned to watch him stride in long steps towards the Legion Compound.

  She could feel Thoren’s eyes on her and knew that he was pitying her. Cori didn’t want or need his pity – not when it was her fault in the first place. But she could still try to fix it.

  “Trey!” Cori called out, and he paused to turn back towards them, “wait a second,” she said loudly to him before looking to Thoren, “is it okay if I leave patrol for the evening? I’ll be in the training hall in the morning.”

  Thoren nodded with understanding. “Sure, go ahead. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Cori inclined her head once, and then jogged towards Trey, who had turned away from her again but hadn’t moved.

  “Hey,” she said with as much cheer as she could muster. Trey barely looked her way, just nodded his head and continued to walk. Cori matched his pace as they walked back down High Street towards the Compound gates. “So… I guess I wanted to catch up with you. It’s been a little while.”

  Cori remembered Trey’s easy, goofy grin, which had always seemed so out of place on his large, muscled frame. He had always known how to make Cori laugh, even during the most gruelling of training sessions.

  He didn’t look as though he was in a laughing mood now.

  “It has,” he said, eyes trained ahead of them.

  Cori let the words float awkwardly through the air as she tried to think of what to say next.

  “Well… how are you? I mean, I know I’ve been gone for a bit – but I want you to know that had everything to do with me, and not with…” Cori swallowed to stop her rambling and took a deep breath to clear her mind. “What I mean to say is that for a long time I felt like I couldn’t trust the Legion anymore after what happened. But that was wrong, and I… I’m back now.”

  She looked over at him hopefully, and she heard him sigh through his nose.

  “I’m glad that you’re back, Cori,” he said, though the gruffness in his voice was still there, a layer of anger that simmered under the words he spoke, “but I do wonder what your father would think of you now.”

  Cori stilled, shock rippling through her. “What?”

  Trey paused and finally turned to meet her gaze, and she was taken aback by the coldness she found in his eyes. Trey had never looked at her like that in her entire life, nor had she thought he was even capable of it.

  “You abandoned the Legion in their greatest time of need. Gods only know what you did with those two years, but we needed you here,” Trey said, each word like a hot iron against her skin, “after everything your father dedicated to the Legion, and his family before him, I can only imagine that he would be ashamed of you.”

  Trey could have pushed her to the ground and spat on her, and it would have hurt less than those words.

  Before Cori could summon any kind of response, Trey had turned his back on her and was already paces away. She watched his figure retreat silently as her surroundings began to lose focus through the tears in her eyes.

  14

  THE ASSASSIN PART TWO

  It was past one morning bell, and the last place the Assassin wanted to be at this time of the morning was to be sitting in this house, in this chair, in front of this man.

  She sat straight-backed in the plush, velvet covered chair. It was much too comfortable to account for her rigid posture, but she was staring at her Master, Mr Teller, and he was very displeased with her.

  He sucked on his teeth; eyes boring into hers with a cold frustration.

  “What do you mean, no?” he inquired, folding his hands in front of him, eyes narrowing at her.

  Regardless of her thundering heart, she forced her spine and shoulders to relax, slumping back in the seat and throwing her legs up onto the expensive wooden desk in front of her. Mr Teller eyed her black boots, a sneer on his face.

  The Assassin smirked at him. “It’s been a long night, Master, as you well know. I need to rest my feet.” She casually picked at her teeth before speaking again. “And I said no, because I can. I don’t know how many times we must wade through this tedious conversation.”

  Mr Teller breathed out loudly through his nose. “I need it done, and you are my Assassin. What would you suggest I do?”

  She lifted one shoulder, her face betraying no emotion. “Perhaps be more careful when writing a contract in the future.”

  Mr Teller stood suddenly, and although the Assassin’s heart leapt in her chest, her body did not flinch. He placed his hands on the desk in front of him and leaned over it to get closer to her. She could smell the scent that he liked to wear permeating off him and clogging her nose, an unpleasant mixture of peppermint and musk.

  “He has been caught cheating in two of my establishments, and he needs to be dealt with,” Mr Teller said in a low voice that was laced with a mild fury, “he made off with over 150 gold coins just yesterday.”

  The Assassin raised her brows in surprise and let out a low whistle. “He sounds like the kind of man I could get along with.”

  Mr Teller’s jaw jutted out while staring daggers at her. She just chuckled at his expression, even if she knew that she was playing a dangerous game with him, toeing at a line that should not be crossed.

  “You will eliminate him,” Mr Teller told her.

  Now it was her turn to stand from the chair, removing her legs from his desktop and rising in a slow, calm manner. He watched her as she also placed her hands on the desk and leaned towards him, just enough to be intimidating, but not so much that she shared breathing space with the repugnant man.

  The Assassin cocked her head to the side and stared at him for a moment. She watched him move back just the tiniest bit, but it was enough to show his own fear of the girl in front of him. She lifted a corner of her mouth at the small retreat and held his gaze before she spoke.

  “You may only give me orders if it is befitting of my contract. Otherwise, save that kind of imperative talk for the courtesans you keep in your employ,” the Assassin told him in a quiet, deadly voice, “I will only say it to you once more: I will not end the life of anyone who has not ended the life of another.”

  Now her Master smirked back. “The man you killed for me a few nights past had not taken a life.”

  The Assassin seethed at him before snapping, “that vile man destroyed those young girls in different ways. He ended their innocence, and so I ended him. That is a fair trade. It is not a fair trade for a few coins he swindled out of your less-than-intelligent card dealers.”

  The sketched pictures she had taken after killing the man still sat in one of her back pockets, and she could almost feel them burning through the material into her skin. Their smiling, young and innocent faces that had no idea what the man was planning for them as he drew their likeness for a copper coin. He would never get that chance again, and it gave her a grim satisfaction.

  “Fine,” Mr Teller snapped at her, relenting and taking his seat once more. She shadowed him, falling back into her own seat. “I will then ask you to pay him a visit and retrieve what he took from me.”

  The Assassin gave him a single nod in agreement. “That I can do.”

  “And rough him up a little as a threat.”

  She snorted before standing and picking up her belongings to ready herself for departure. “Done.”

  He watched in silence as she threw the black cloak around her shoulders and secured the piece of material that covered the lower half of her face.

  “Why must you make these meetings so difficult for both of us?” he asked coyly, his eyes raking down the curves that were not hidden by the tight-fitted slacks and shirt that she had crafted specifically for ease of movement. Her stomach roiled at the glint in his eyes now that the argument was over.

  “You make it much too easy, Master,” she said his title with contempt, her voice slightly muffled through the cloth covering her mouth, “ignorance brings out the difficult side of me.”

  Mr Te
ller laughed a low, rumbling chuckle, and leaned back in his seat with folded arms across his broad chest as he assessed her from top to bottom.

  “You are something else,” he said, his amber eyes twinkled as he continued to stare at her, “I do hope you will extend your contract with me in the coming weeks – having you around certainly makes life… interesting.”

  With a clenched jaw, the Assassin swept forward and plucked up the small pouch of silver pieces Mr Teller had thrown upon the desk for her when she first arrived, her payment for services rendered.

  “Then I’m afraid life is about to become very boring for you.” She slipped the pouch of jingling coins into the pocket of her cloak, gave him a mocking half-bow, and moved towards the exit.

  She heard him chuckle again at her retreating form, and just as she was closing the door behind her, she heard him mutter, “we’ll see.”

  15

  Cori felt like she was being punished for the time that she had spent away from the Legion, having missed out on training for two years.

  Thoren had been in the training hall the next morning when Cori arrived. She’d felt as though she needed to drag herself from her bed that morning. There had been a weight on her chest from Trey’s words the night before making her feel like sleeping all day was the best idea she’d ever had. But she had promised Maveron and Thoren that she would return to training, so she’d gotten out of bed and prepared herself.

  By the time she was dressed and walking with purpose towards the training hall, Cori felt a surge of excitement at the thought of getting back to some of her old routines. Every morning two years ago, Cori had gotten up at dawn and would start with some cardio in the training hall before she did anything else.

  Thoren had the same idea for Cori, to get her back into good habits, only to a much higher degree than she had anticipated.

  The moment Cori had arrived and Thoren had spotted her, he made his way to her and without so much as a good morning, told her to run twenty laps of the hall.

  “Excuse me?” Cori asked him incredulously, “do you have any idea how long that will take?”