The Target of His Heart (An Assassin's Creed Fanfic)

Ch. 25: Anxiety and Promises

The Next Day...

July 12, 1191

The brightness of the sunshine had entered my room much more quickly than I had anticipated last night. Its rays fell upon my skin, warming me up and waking me from my dreamless, restless sleep. My forest green eyes fluttered open, but quickly shut when the sunlight hit my face and blinded me for a moment. Feeling a bit annoyed both at the sunlight and at everything around me, I turned to lie on my back and stared at the ceiling with nothing but a glare in my eyes. I knew exactly what tomorrow was. Tomorrow was the day I was to be married to Abel. My eyes narrowed even more than before, almost as if I was staring at the bastard of a fiancé. As always, I did not want to go, especially when the man I was to be marrying was going to be standing at the altar waiting for me. After months of asking, Abel was capable of bringing my father here as well, which was very unfortunate seeing as I did not want him to be around. However, I found out from my maid that Robert de Sable and Maria Thorpe were going to be there. As much as I saw them as my mentors during the time that Amal was missing, I did not want them to be there either. I did not want them to see how painful it was for me to even be standing next to him. Instead, I wanted to go in search of Altaïr, Ada, and Alexandra in Acre. Unfortunately, from what I heard from my maid, she heard Abel talk about how he planned to personally eliminate them one by one the day after the wedding.

"He said he wanted to make you watch them suffer," she told me yesterday while combing through my hair, "in order to show you what it meant to betray him."

"I will not let him," I murmured as I glared at my reflection, clenching my fists. "I will not let him hurt Ada, Alexandra, or Altaïr!"

I watched her glance down at me, her blue eyes filled with kindness and a look that seemed...nostalgic?

"This Altaïr person..." She asked, her voice so very sweet and soft, kind of like the feather of a dove. "He is an Assassin, no?"

"Yes." I spoke without hesitation. "He is an Assassin..." My gaze fell to the floor, "as am I."

I sensed a small smile grace her lips from under the cloth-like material.

"It is good you feel so determined to save him along with your friends," she said, "but you should know this: Love can make a person do the craziest things in life."

"And you should know this, my dear maid?" I wondered as I looked up at her, a smirk gracing my lips. "Falling for him, with the circumstances as they are, should be crazy enough to consider me a madman." I thought my words through for a moment, before speaking in a sheepish tone, "Or, eh, a madwoman, I should say."

The maid giggled and said, "If you do get the chance to save him and your friends, try not to do anything that will cost you your life."

Smiling lightly at the memory, I threw the covers off of me, and groggily got out of bed. The sun's rays continued to blind me for a moment, but I soon got used to it. I slowly turned my head to notice something familiar on my dresser, something that I dreaded seeing. Frowning, I realized immediately what it was: my wedding dress, one Abel had picked out for me. Sighing, I walked over to it to examine the details of the material much more carefully. When I did, I realized it was nothing in comparison to what Abel had gotten for me. It was a nice dress, beautiful at that. It had short sleeves and covered my breasts rather well, unlike the one Abel had gotten for me, which was much more revealing than this one. I knew it fit my waist and then dropped down to just past my ankles, but not enough for me to go stepping on it. Bows lined the bottom with an appropriate amount of space lining it and was raised just enough to see the lace like material underneath it. Glancing next to it, a small white choker with a diamond set in the middle sat next to it. It had glowed in the sunlight and brought out its beauty, yet a smile did not grace my lips. Although I admitted the outfit truly looked beautiful, I was not happy at all. Knowing that I would be forced to wear it for Abel did not make me happy at all.