The reflection of the Queen: Exile

Chapter 6

My decision was made, but I was already regretting it.

I had never realized how bad the security at Fyodor's house was, even though I snuck out with Rodion quite often. He used to be the one who guided me to dodge the few watchmen, and I didn't know how the night watches were organized. It was surprisingly easy to wait for the watchmen posted on the walls surrounding the mansion to pass me by so I could get to the exit leading to the general's training grounds.

To avoid being seen by the guards, I walked away until I entered the streets with the intention of making a detour until I reached the entrance. The asphalt looked like gold and onyx, reflecting the shadows and lights coming from the windows of the buildings and the occasional lantern or torch. I had taken a small bag of pepper from the kitchens, but I doubted it would be enough to defend me from whatever might happen. Restless, I wrapped the dark hood I had brought with me tighter around me and began to walk briskly. It must not be long before midnight.

Another thing he didn't like about that city: there were no challenges.

He threw his head back and sighed. He did not exhale the mist he was used to from the cold Ethryant nights. No, that night the air was warm and sticky. He had traveled to many different places, but there was only one that made him feel at home.

He missed that in Krysthei, the capital of his native kingdom, he used to move by jumping from rooftop to rooftop, climbing, perching on towers and ramparts. That habit had become ingrained in him as a consequence of a troubled and rather difficult childhood, but it was one of the few elements of his past that he had decided to keep. He moved through the city swift as a flash and stealthy as a shadow. After many years of practice, he had a map of Krysthei engraved in his mind, but not of the streets, but of its rooftops and buildings. He was sure that in Cavintosh they would consider it an eccentricity, but that word was one of many capable of describing Ethryant.

There it was too easy. The buildings constructed by the Insurrection were much lower than those of the kingdom, and easier to reach, so he was able to do it almost by instinct. That stupid island seemed created to bore and irritate him.

That must have been what happened to the people who fled to that island so many years ago. Although all who lived there had been, it no longer had any of Ethryn, that particular character for which they were known throughout the Northern Continent.

He leaned over the edge of the roof he was perched on when he heard footsteps in the street. He barely had to wait before he spotted a young woman wrapped in a hood walking briskly in the direction of the path before the gates of the house.

His mouth twisted into a devilish grin. He hadn't been able to resist meeting her that night, outraging her was too much fun to pass up the opportunity to do so. Maybe that wouldn't be so easy to win her favor, but he knew what he was doing. He squinted to make sure that it was indeed her. Despite the hood, he could recognize that adorable heart-shaped face with golden skin, a frown that, in truth, he found charming, and lips pressed together with concern. Those lips also remained tight when she held back something she wished to say, but they could quickly turn to a sly smile that promised venomous words and unspoken secrets. Persie seemed for the moment...complicated. She was contradictory and aloof, but something told him that wasn't her way at all. Whatever lay beneath the cracks that Insurrection had etched upon her, he wasn't about to leave without finding out.

With the lightness of a feather, he gave himself momentum to drop to the ground a couple of feet behind the young woman. She seemed to notice, because she slowly turned around until her dark eyes pierced him with her gaze.

"You're on time, gorgeous."

I had grown accustomed to Markov's silent appearances, so I wasn't startled to hear a noise behind me even though it was dark. I frowned to find him leaning against the wall of a building as if he had been there for hours. The dim lights were pulling golden glints from his hair.