Rise of the Assassin (Child of an Alpha Series Book 1)

by Kaitlyn Taylor

  “Why was Micah not affected by it if the poison works just by smelling it?” Juda asked.

  “They were in separate rooms,” I assumed. “The poison must’ve been released in his mother’s room and nowhere else.”

  “Why keep Micah alive though?” Juda continued. “I’m glad that he is, but the assassin loves taking innocent lives so that he grows stronger. Why not kill Micah, too?”

  “You’ve got a point,” I muttered. I’d wondered the same myself, but I didn’t put a whole lot of thought into it. What does the assassin have planned for him? My father and I briefly mentioned it, but I never thought he would actually be in danger. I just assumed the assassin would be back, but since he was now in the castle, I thought he would forget about him. I didn’t know why I just assumed the assassin would forget about the boy who possibly saw him kill his mother.

  “What if he didn’t know Micah was there?” I said excitedly. “If the assassin thought only Micah’s mother was there, then he wouldn’t go looking for Micah. What if Micah saw the assassin but is too scared to talk about it?”

  “Did you ask him if he saw anything?” Kota inquired.

  “I don’t think so,” I admitted, after thinking back to the first conversation that I had with Micah. “I asked him what happened to his mother and he told me she went to bed and then never woke up. The only other thing he said was she seemed fine before going to bed.”

  “I think we need to ask him, but I also think we need to be delicate about it,” Deja added. Her face was pale, bags under her eyes. As soon as we were done here, we needed to find Uncle Gabe and have him check on her. Something didn’t seem right.

  I glanced over at Juda, who seemed to be deep in thought. I could tell she was trying to work something out, but I was not in the mood for secrets, even if they were just as much a secret to her as they were to the rest of us.

  “What?” I snapped at her.

  “If I had perfected a poison that only needed to be smelled for it to take effect, who would I use it on?” she asked without making eye contact with me. She was still processing it all as she talked, so I didn’t say anything witty or sarcastic, but I really want to. We all stayed silent, hoping she would give us the answer instead of making us go down a list of all the people the villagers have threatened to kill. Our fathers would be the first names on that list. “I’d take out all the people in power and their heirs and any other offspring so that I could rise as the one and only leader of Medova.”

  “Execution Day,” Deja mumbled.

  I had finally caught on to what Juda was thinking. After listening to the assassin rant at the cottage and finding out about the poison, it all made sense. I was really frustrated that I didn’t see it before now.

  “He’s going to release the poison tomorrow where we’ll all be,” Kota said, her eyes big as she realized the horrifying truth.

  Execution Day was a large event put on once a year and saw the attendance of the alphas and the council members, as well as their families. Anyone who’d murdered someone or harmed a child in any way was sentenced to death. Even if the murder was an accident, our mentality was an eye for eye. The alphas were very strict on people who abused children. Whether it was physical or sexual abuse, they did not tolerate it, and did not hesitate to hand down the sentence. Our justice system was simple: for any crime you committed, it was one year in the dungeons. So, if you murdered someone or abused a child, you stayed in the dungeons until Execution Day, when you would be executed. If it was something like stealing, then you would do your one year and be released. If you did it again, you were back in the dungeons for a year. I’d never heard the alphas discuss a change in the way we handled stuff like that, but I also know they liked to keep secrets so maybe I knew nothing at all.

  “We need proof, otherwise the alphas won’t believe us,” I said quietly as I started to pace. I did this when I couldn’t make up my mind on what to do next. My sisters knew this, but that didn’t stop them from hounding me with questions.

  “How the fuck are we supposed to find proof?” Juda snapped.

  “If we had the journal, we could’ve checked to see if there was anything written about it, but now that it’s gone, where are we supposed to look now?” Nova asked.

  “I don’t know,” I finally shouted. I took a few deep, slow breaths. “I don’t know how we’re supposed to find proof in time to stop the executions from being so public, but I know my father will not stop something like that without proof. If you stop an event like that, it tells the villagers that something’s wrong. The alphas would rather die and take us all with them before letting the villagers know that we’re fucked.”

  “If we don’t say anything, we’re fucked anyways,” Deja moaned, coughing dramatically shortly afterwards, throwing herself forward and spitting out blood. She continued to cough, and the blood turned into a puddle on top of her blankets.

  I didn’t tell the girls that I was leaving, but when I saw that the blood wasn’t stopping, I knew we couldn’t wait any longer without getting Uncle Gabe and maybe even Uncle Alex. Something was seriously wrong with Deja, and I couldn’t understand why. Her father was the best healer in Medova. She should have been getting better by now, not worse.

  I ran down the hallway, passing Levi and Liam on the way. As soon as I turned the corner and ran along the long hallway towards my father’s study, I started to call for my uncles so that they knew there was an emergency.

  “Uncle Gabe!” I called first. “Uncle Alex!”

  The door to my father’s study opened before I got to it, both my uncles looking worried as they exited the room. My father and the rest of my uncles came rushing out behind them, all of them curious to know why I was causing so much noise.

  “It’s Deja,” I breathed heavily as I forced the words out. “She’s coughing up blood. She’s getting worse.”

  “Where is she?” Uncle Alex asked.

  “Her room,” I answered. “The girls are with her right now.”

  Uncle Alex didn’t wait for me to finish. He pushed me aside and threw out his hand, palm facing the hallway. A bright white light formed in a circle before our eyes, swirling around. Uncle Gabe ran through first and then the rest of us followed. Uncle Alex closed the portal and then rushed to Deja’s bedside to help Uncle Gabe in any way that he could. I found the girls standing off to the side with Uncle Ben and Uncle Chris, tears streaming down their faces as they watched Deja struggle. She was screaming now, holding her stomach tightly even though her father was trying to get her to let go so he could figure out what was wrong.

  This is where Uncle Alex came in. At first, he held Deja down, but when Uncle Gabe realized she was in too much pain to stay still, Uncle Alex spelled her to sleep.

  “I don’t understand,” I said to my father quietly. “I thought Uncle Gabe said she would be okay.”

  Uncle Alex moved the blanket from underneath Deja and dropped it on the floor to get the puddle of blood out of the way. Uncle Gabe had lifted up her shirt to get a better look at what he was dealing with. Both he and Uncle Alex reacted the same way: they seemed surprised to see anything at all. From where we stood, I saw dark lines that looked like veins spreading away from where the hole used to be. I could tell by the look on Uncle Gabe’s face that this was not normal.

  “Have you seen anything like this, Gabe?” my father asked, speaking for the first time since he entered the room. His energy wasn’t stable, which worried me because he didn’t get like that often. He was worried this couldn’t be fixed, but he didn’t want to say it out loud.

  “She’s been poisoned,” Uncle Gabe answered. He seemed defeated, almost like he was questioning himself. She had a hole in her stomach and showed no signs of poisoning, so of course he’d focused on the gap in her abdomen.

  “She was fine yesterday,” Kota reminded us, tears continuing to fall down her cheek.

  I glanced up at my father, who seemed to catch my attention simultaneously. “It’s just like Micah’
s mother.”

  “She was dead the next morning though,” he pointed out. “This appears to be killing her more slowly.”

  “What can we do to stop the poison, Gabe?” Uncle Alex asked.

  “We need to figure out what she’s been poisoned with,” Uncle Gabe answered. He reached down to his boot and pulled out his blade. He then reached his hand across the bed to Uncle Alex and said, “Give me a cup.”

  All Uncle Alex did was flick his wrist and a cup landed in Uncle Gabe’s hand.

  “Hold up her wrist,” Uncle Gabe told him. “Make sure her blood doesn’t touch you. Until we know what this poison is, we need to be careful.”

  Uncle Alex did as Uncle Gabe told him, holding up Deja’s wrist while Uncle Gabe put a small slice into her skin. The blood dropped violently into the cup, thankfully splattering nowhere else in the process. Before Uncle Gabe could look at the blood in the cup, Deja started to move again, which shouldn’t have been possible after Uncle Alex had spelled her. She started screaming again, this time much louder than before. Uncle Alex tried once more to put her to sleep, but it wasn’t working.

  “I’ve got her, Gabe, just figure out what poison it is!” Uncle Alex shouted as he put his palms down on Deja’s shoulders. He couldn’t hold her shoulders and her feet, and the more he held her down the more she kicked. Uncle Ben and Uncle Chris ran to the foot of the bed, attempting to hold down her feet, but she was making it hard for them. I couldn’t tell what Uncle Gabe was doing during all of this, but I saw him hover his hand over the cup, his palm turning bright yellow and then smoke started to rise from it. He seemed horrified by this, but I could tell he was able to determine what was attacking his daughter’s body.

  “What is it, Gabe?” my father asked as he walked closer.

  “This poison…” Uncle Gabe glanced at his daughter for a second. “The ingredients for this poison are so rare that I thought one of them no longer existed. I can create a mixture that will save her, but I need one last ingredient from giant territory in order to do it. Everything else we can get here.”

  “What is it?” Uncle Chris asked as he continued to hold down Deja’s left leg.

  “The black petals,” Uncle Gabe told him. I had seen these flowers when we’d gone to visit Juda and her family. The petals will grow in any territory, but each territory had one color that would not grow in the others. It was strange and no one could figure out why it was so, but it didn’t matter at the moment. We needed the black ones to save Deja’s life, and that’s what was going to happen.

  My father took over for Uncle Chris while Uncle Gabe took over for Uncle Alex. My sorcerer uncle then opened another portal and I watched as he and Uncle Chris disappeared. They weren’t gone long but it still required Uncle Alex to open and close another portal in a short amount time. That took up a lot of energy, even if you were the alpha.

  During the time that Uncle Alex and Uncle Chris were in giant territory, my father called Levi and Liam in. He tasked them with getting the rest of the ingredients Uncle Gabe would need to make the mixture as well as fetching my Aunt Caroline so she could be notified of Deja’s condition. He then tried to get us to leave the room, but when he saw me shaking my head, he made the smart decision to give up trying to make us do anything that we didn’t want to do.

  “How can we help?” I asked Uncle Gabe, who looked worriedly down at his daughter as she continued to cry out in pain. It was the worst time to ask him anything, but if we were going to stay in the room we might as well make ourselves useful.

  “Draw a bath and get some clean clothes ready,” he answered. “She’ll need to have the blood washed off of her and then these clothes will need to be burned. I don’t know if the blood on them is toxic or not so it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

  My father and my uncles continued to be careful not to touch her blood while they held her down. It was becoming harder to do since she had coughed up significantly more blood since waking up from Uncle Alex’s sleeping spell, but they were cautious of it, and they found a way to care for her and protect themselves at the same time.

  Deja screamed again, and Uncle Gabe turned towards her in an attempt to calm her energy. At this point, only that mixture was going to help her.

  “How do you think she got the poison?” Uncle Ben asked. “Surely, you would’ve seen signs of it when you were patching her up yesterday.”

  “It’s slow acting, but I’m positive she was affected after her return to the castle,” Uncle Gabe answered. “It’s like it’s eating her from the inside out, preventing her from healing, which is why her wound looks like that. She had to have inhaled it. If she ate or drank anything with poison, it would’ve killed her already.”

  My father looked up at me as we both realized the fear we had earlier had actually happened. Not only did the assassin perfect the poison, but one of his loyalists infected Deja with it during her weakest moments.

  My brothers and my uncles returned from their short missions at the same time. Uncle Alex and Uncle Chris returned to Juda’s side to hold her down, while Uncle Gabe created the mixture. It involved a lot of smashing and grinding of plant-like ingredients, as well as the black petals, but it didn’t take long for him to complete. He moved quickly, returning to Deja’s side with a glass full of a green liquid.

  “Tighten your grip,” Uncle Gabe warned, fear and worry splattered across his face as he looked down at his daughter. “This mixture will burn the poison out, but it’s not going to be pleasant for her.”

  Just before Uncle Gabe was about to lift Deja’s head to have her drink the mixture, the door opened, and my mother and my aunts ran in. We probably should’ve retrieved Aunt Caroline a lot sooner since it was her daughter who was poisoned, but that wasn’t the priority. Saving her daughter was. My mother ran to my side while Aunt Caroline ran to Deja’s.

  “What’s going on?” my mother asked me.

  “She’s been poisoned by one of the assassin’s loyalists,” I told her quietly so that I didn’t worry Aunt Caroline. “Uncle Gabe is about to give her a mixture that should cure her.”

  “How did this happen?” she asked, shaking her head in disbelief. “Our home is supposed to be the safest place in the territory, but instead you and Declan are attacked and Deja is poisoned. We need to do something about this. I’m not going to stand by and watch as my children’s lives continue to be threatened.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” I assured her. “For now, we just need to make sure Deja starts healing.”

  Just as I finished what I was saying, a loud wail came from Deja. It was different from her screams from earlier, almost like the mixture was killing her quicker than the poison. Watching her suffer like this was almost too much to handle. I rushed into the bathroom, where the girls were drawing Deja’s bath. I should’ve left with them when Uncle Gabe told us to, but I wanted to stay by Deja’s side and see her through the worst. Surrounded by her uncles and her parents, she had more than enough support, but I felt guilty for running away.

  “How the fuck did this happen?” Juda snapped as she threw down the towels she was cradling in her arms. “There’s no way Uncle Gabe missed this when he was patching her up.”

  “It was definitely after we got back from the castle,” I said, sitting down on the chair in front of the looking glass and resting my elbows on the counter.

  “Could it have been Micah?” Kota asked. I turned on her, ready to set her straight. She threw her palms out at me, silently convincing me to hear her out before I threw a tantrum.

  “He’s a kid,” I responded in a gentle tone. “A kid who lost his mother the same way we were about to lose Deja.”

  “Luna,” said Nova, “he was there when you and Declan were attacked, and he was in this castle when Deja was poisoned. I don’t think any of us are saying he did it by himself, but something isn’t adding up.”

  “What if the assassin convinced him to do his dirty work in exchange for not killing him?” Kota asked. They could al
l see my mind processing the theories they had thrown at me. I didn’t want to believe them, but they were right. I started to pace back and forth. I didn’t know what to do from here. Micah needed to leave the castle, but I didn’t know how to go about it. The emotional side of me wanted to accuse him of all the things my sisters had just listed off, but then the tame side of me wanted to approach this in a way where we could get information out of him.

  “We need to tell the alphas,” I said, admitting defeat, my insides roaring with denial. I didn’t want to give the alphas the satisfaction, but I didn’t know what to do, and judging by the looks on my sisters faces, I didn’t think they did either.

  “They could kill him if we do that,” Juda reminded me. “Execution Day is tomorrow. If they decide he’s guilty of the crimes, he’ll be up there with the rest of them, and they have every right to do it.”

  Nova shook her head. “My father wouldn’t kill a child. I don’t think any of them would.”

  “Two of us have been attacked,” Kota said. “I don’t think there is anything they won’t do when it’s their own flesh and blood being threatened.”

  “I don’t think we have a choice,” I said softly as I thought about Micah and how scared he looked when he first told me his mother died and that he had been living in the stables ever since. That part definitely didn’t add up. If his mother died unexpectedly, why wouldn’t he tell someone? Surely, he would’ve told someone in the village. His mother knew everyone who sold goods at the market and he grew up knowing all of them as well. Why stay silent?

  “I can’t believe I fell for his sob story,” I said angrily, swiping at the hot water as I passed the tub. “I had so much respect for his father that I thought it was the right thing to do to help him. Our sister almost died because of my weakness.”

  “He’s the one who took advantage of the kindness you showed him,” Nova pointed out. “You gave him food and a bed, and this is how he chose to repay you. You’re not to blame for what happened to Deja. It’s Micah’s fault for infecting her.”