“Don’t even think about leaving this room,” he snapped, standing up and stomping towards the door. I chuckled loud enough for him to hear me, knowing I was adding fuel to the fire, but I couldn’t help myself.
It was late; the sun had gone down a while ago. I got up from the couch and started releasing the curtains to cover the windows. I was halfway through when Ivy appeared, horrified that I was doing what she normally was supposed to do.
“I’m so sorry I’m late, Miss Luna!” She rushed over to me and insisted that she finish with the curtains. “I was so distracted by getting everything set up for Micah that I didn’t realize what time it was.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I assured her. “How is Micah doing?”
“He’s quiet,” she answered as she reached the last curtain. “But I gave him some dinner, which he appreciated, and I sent him off to bed. I think he’ll be okay.”
“Thank you for helping him,” I told her once again. “When things settle down, I’m going to look into his mother’s death. Something’s not adding up.”
“Do you think she was murdered?” Ivy asked, quickly catching on to my thoughts.
“He said one day she was fine and then the next she died in her sleep,” I told her. “I knew his mother. She was healthy and took care of herself. I’m not going to jump to murder just yet, but there’s something suspicious about it.”
“Is there anything else I can do for you, Miss Luna?” She asked, after turning down the bed for me.
“That will be all for tonight, thank you,” I said. I watched her make her way for the door. “Don’t worry about opening up the room tomorrow. Focus on Micah. Make sure he gets breakfast, and if he wants to go out to the stables, please let him.”
“Yes, Miss Luna.” She curtsied and then left the room for the night. I felt bad about not getting into bed after Ivy took the time to pull the blankets back, but I couldn’t go near it without picturing Declan.
I went to the closet across the room from my bed, grabbed a blanket and a pillow and then went back to the couch. I made myself as comfortable as I could, and then I shut my eyes. With everything going through my head, I expected to be up for a while, but the second my head hit the pillow and my eyes shut, everything went black.
When I woke the next morning, I was surprised to see my father sitting across from me. His head was cocked to the side, clearly confused by where I’d chosen to rest. I sighed, dropping my head back down on the pillow dramatically.
“Go away,” I said, my voice muffled from the pillow.
“Why did you sleep on the couch?” he asked.
“It’s where I fell asleep,” I lied. “Leave me alone. I’d like to start my day without your shady ass playing me as if I were a pawn in a game.”
“After speaking with your mother,” he continued, “it has come to my attention that maybe I went about getting the journal from you the wrong way. Even though you were out of line, I never should’ve used Declan to distract you.”
“What do you want from me?” I asked as I realized his apology was a weak attempt at getting me back on his side. “You have the journal. All the information you want or need is within those pages.”
His voice changed. “There is over twenty-five years of entries in that book, Luna…” No longer was he speaking calmly like I’m sure my mother told him to. I had never witnessed this side of my father before. He expected me to obey his orders and was angry when I didn’t, but he never used me like this. He didn’t threaten me the way he had yesterday.
“Well, I guess you better get reading,” I told him. “That’s what we did when we found it in the cottage.”
“If you won’t help me with the journal,” he mumbled, “can you at least tell me why there is a young boy staying in one of the guest chambers?”
“His name is Micah,” I said. “He’s Joel’s son. Apparently his mother died a few weeks ago. He’s the one who’s been staying in the stables. I figured it was our duty to help him get back on his feet.”
“How long is he staying here?”
“Until I can find a suitable home,” I replied. “I’m not going to throw him out on the streets of the village.”
“I’m not asking you to do that,” he assured me, but at this point I wasn’t sure what was truth and what was a lie. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea to ask the staff to look after him. We were all fond of Joel, but he was part of the staff. Their job is to help us run the castle smoothly, not take care of the ex-stable keeper’s son.”
“Micah is a child,” I reminded him, horrified by how he was talking about Joel. “He needs our help and you’re making it sound like it’s an inconvenience. You’re constantly telling me how fortunate we are for having so much and now you’re mad because I’m sharing what we have with a boy who just lost his mother.”
He threw his hands up as if he were the peacekeeper. “I’m not mad.”
“Helga complained to you, didn’t she?” I assumed so when he said it wasn’t fair for the other staff to help with Micah. “I swear to the Spirits, that woman is toxic among the staff. She doesn’t treat any of them right and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t do anything but give orders.”
He shook his head. “Helga is a difficult woman to deal with, I’ll admit that. But she is not wrong in this case.”
“I will find Micah a loving home,” I said as I rubbed my eyes. “Since I’m the only one who seems to care that he’s taken care of.”
My father rolled his eyes. “Don’t be like that, Luna. I care about what happens to him. I just don’t think you should task our staff with taking care of him.”
“I want to look into his mother’s death.”
He sighed. “Why?”
“Something doesn’t add up,” I said. “I don’t know what it is, but I want answers and I know Micah does as well.”
“I’ll send the healer over to their farm and see if he can determine how she died,” he offered. “Will that satisfy you?”
“If you want to look at it that way, then yes, I will be satisfied,” I answered angrily. “But if it turns out that she was murdered, you need to promise that you will investigate it.”
“Of course, I will,” he promised. “Why is this so important to you? Murder happens more often than I’d like to admit, but you’ve never been this passionate about it before.”
“I can’t shake this feeling,” I started to answer him, but then I stopped. I hadn’t said the words out loud yet, even when I was talking to Ivy. There was a part of me that wondered if I was only having these thoughts because I was obsessed with the assassin. “I think the assassin has something to do with it. I know it’s crazy, and it doesn’t make any sense, but every time I think about how she died I can’t help but think it was him. He needs to take an innocent life in order to use dark magic. Well, Micah’s mother was an innocent life.”
“It might not be as crazy as you think,” my father said, disappointment in his tone. “In some of the earlier pages of the journal, he spoke of a poison that one only needed to smell in order to be affected. At the time, it didn’t work. He wrote about his frustrations regarding the failure, but that was over twenty years ago. What if he perfected it?”
“Who knows how many people he’s killed over the years?” I whispered as I realized just how bad the situation was. We thought all this time that it was only five a year because that was how many were left for us to find, but what if there were others that we were never meant to find? The number of innocent people brutally stripped of their life could be more than we ever could’ve imagined.
“Anyone who has ever reported someone missing could actually be looking for a dead body,” my father spoke softly, realizing just how much deeper this might actually go.
“How did we not know about this?” I asked him, not meaning to accuse him of anything, but the more I spoke the more questions I had. “You say people have been reported missing, but why haven’t we looked into whether the two were connected? What
have we been doing all this time? I don’t understand how we let this happen to the people.”
My father shot a glare at me. “Pointing fingers isn’t going to do anything helpful, Luna.”
“You had no problem pointing fingers at me yesterday,” I reminded him.
“We made mistakes, Luna!” he yelled this time. He took a deep breath. “We did look into the disappearances, but there was nothing. No proof that they didn’t leave on their own, and there was no proof that anything bad happened to them. There was no way for us to know that the assassin had anything to do with this. We had no reason to look into whether there was a connection. The bodies were never found.”
“We won’t know anything for sure until the healer is able to examine Micah’s mother’s body.”
I dropped my face into my hands as I tried to figure out how my life got here. Just three days ago I was seventeen, with four months until the next set of bodies were to drop at the alpha gates. I turned eighteen and everything happened all at once; my family had never been more divided. My relationship with my father had never been so strained; never had I been so disgusted by my brothers’ actions. I never once thought that things could get worse than five innocent lives being taken each year, but here we were, life laughing in my face once again.
“You’re right,” my father agreed as he stood up from the couch. “I think it’s best that Micah stay here until this is all figured out. He will need a permanent home lined up for when this is over, but if his mother crossed paths with the assassin, then there is a possibility that Micah did as well.”
“You think the assassin will come back for Micah?” I asked, upset with myself for not realizing the danger Micah could still be in.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I’m not going to take the chance. There’s enough blood on my hands and I refuse to have Micah’s on mine as well.”
He started to walk towards the door without telling me what we were supposed to do. Once again, he was leaving me out of it, learning nothing from the past two days. I was going to stop him but I decided it wasn’t worth it. He was never going to include me. I would have to continue doing things on my own.
Before my father could close the door, Ivy slipped through with two large buckets of steaming water on a cart. She greeted me and then walked by me the way she did my father. I caught my father looking at me, the only thing between us was a silent understanding that he was going to do what he needed to do, and I was going to do what I needed to do. He wasn’t going to like it, but I was past the point of caring. Doing things their way didn’t stop the innocent people from dying. Trying to do things my way couldn’t be any worse than that.
I heard the water being transferred into the tub, and the thought of a hot bath replaced my thoughts of disobeying my father again. I turned towards the bathroom, smiling when I saw Ivy’s face. She placed the buckets back on the cart and then she walked past me again.
“It’s nice and hot for you, Miss Luna,” she sang as she reached the door.
“Thank You, Ivy,” I told her as I started to remove my clothes. Before she could disappear, I asked her if she had seen Micah this morning, and just like I knew she would, she had already taken care of him and sent him on his way for the day.
“If you’re ever out on the grounds today and you see him, can you remind him to be careful?” I asked her. “I don’t want to give Helga another reason to complain about him.”
I didn’t want to worry Ivy with what was really going on, though she was smart enough to know that something else was definitely happening that we were keeping from the staff. Since Helga did complain about Micah, I wasn’t exactly lying to her. It still didn’t feel right being dishonest to her when she had been nothing but open with me.
Ivy shook her head in disappointment. “I had a feeling Helga would say something. I don’t think she’s ever happy and I think it’s a shame.”
“Do any of us really know what happiness is?” I asked as I stepped into the hot water. I sat down, letting the steam rise above my body. This was the first time I could actually relax, especially after sleeping on the couch last night. That might have been my choice, but it wasn’t comfortable.
“I think happiness is different in everyone’s eyes, Miss Luna,” she said. Even though my back was to her, I could tell she was smiling as she talked. “When my parents were both alive and all our days consisted of working on the farm, I was at my happiest. We didn’t have much, and some days there was not a lot of food, but my parents never showed that we were struggling. I don’t ever remember a day where I wished that we had more, because I already had everything that I wanted.”
“I think you’re right, Ivy,” I told her as I rubbed the bar of soap up my arm. “Even so, it wouldn’t hurt for Helga to pull the stick out of her ass.”
“Yes, Miss Luna,” Ivy chuckled. “She might be a little nicer to everyone then.”
“If any more trouble comes up about Micah, come find me immediately and I will take care of it,” I told her as I stared into the water covering my body.
I didn’t know what made me change my tone, but I was distracted by something and just as quickly I forgot about it. I was reminded of the night of my birthday ball when the assassin knocked Declan and I out and I woke up with no memory at all. The assassin said he had loyalists everywhere, and even though I didn’t believe for a second that Ivy was one of them, I couldn’t help but wonder who in the castle were on his side.
I wasn’t safe in my own home. I knew that now, especially after what had happened to Declan and I, but for some reason it was only just now hitting me. I didn’t want to walk around the castle wondering which one of the staff or the council members was plotting against my family. All I wanted to do was scream, but nothing was coming out. My whole body was shaking, but I had no idea if it was because I was cold or if it was fear. I wanted to so badly to wake up on the couch again and see that the week I was having was all a dream. I just didn’t know how my life became so stressful, seemingly overnight.
Chapter Eleven
When I left my room, I ran into Nova, who had just exited Deja’s room. Our fairy sister was still sleeping, and after everything she went through yesterday, it was probably best that she stay in bed a little while longer.
“Did you work things out with your father?” she asked. I assumed she must have seen him come into my room.
“Maybe,” I said, unsure of what to think about our conversation. It was enlightening, but I didn’t know where we stood as father and daughter. “I definitely know we have a bigger problem.”
“What does that mean?” She cringed at the idea that there was something worse than what the assassin had been putting us through lately.
“Is Deja awake?”
“Yes, but she’s still weak,” Nova answered, annoyed that I changed the subject so suddenly.
“Go find Juda while I find Kota and meet us back in Deja’s room,” I told her. “I’m not trying to explain this twice.”
I didn’t have a lot of information regarding the poison my father had told me about, but they still needed to know. If the assassin truly did perfect the formula, we all were in danger. If all we had to do was smell it to be infected, then no one was safe. We needed a way to protect ourselves.
I found Kota in her chambers and instructed her to come with me. She dropped the book in her hands onto the couch and hurried to the hallway, catching up to me quickly.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Deja’s room.”
She didn’t ask any more questions after that. Deja’s room was only a few doors down, but it seemed so far away. Deja was sitting up in bed, propped up on the pillows with her head tilted back. She really must not be feeling good, so we needed to keep this quick. Nova and Juda piled in behind us, all of us spreading out around Deja’s bed. Nova and Kota sat next to Deja while Juda and I sat on the edge.
“What’s so important you didn’t want to tell it twice?” Juda asked. I
glared over at Nova for telling Juda my exact words. She shrugged, wearing an apologetic grin on her face.
“This is important, so if we can keep the sarcasm to a minimum, I would really appreciate it,” I announced.
“Are you going to follow that rule?” Deja asked, sounding weak and tired.
“I think we all need to try,” I said calmly after realizing just how bad of shape Deja was in. She seemed to be worse than she was last night, which had me worried. I figured after a good night’s sleep she would regain at least some of her strength back, but she seemed to have lost more of it.
“The alphas started reading the journal,” I began. “They didn’t get very far but they got far enough along that they read about a poison the assassin was trying to perfect that would affect people by them smelling it.”
“Imagine how bad that would be for Medova if people no longer had to hide poison in food or drinks,” Nova said. “It’s genius if he does perfect it, but it’s also dangerous for the territories.”
“We think he might’ve succeeded,” I continued, hesitating to tell them that the assassin possibly found a way to make it work. “We’re still waiting on confirmation from the healer, but my gut is telling me that he has.”
“The healer?” Juda asked. “How is he going to confirm it?”
“He’s going to do an examination on Micah’s mother,” I answered. “Supposedly, if the organs are black then they’ve been poisoned.”
“Who’s Micah?” Kota asked.
I had forgotten that I hadn’t mentioned the boy I found in the stables to them. I quickly explained who he was and that he was staying in one of the guest chambers for the time being. When I got to his mother’s death, I was glad to see confused faces. The way she died just didn’t make sense. How does one go to sleep in perfect condition and then not wake up? The only answer was someone did something to her.
Rise of the Assassin (Child of an Alpha Series Book 1) Page 17
