A villain's secret

Chapter 7: The beginning

Nox POV
Present day

"You're gonna give yourself wrinkles if you keep frowning like that, kid. And then you'll never be able to find a woman, if all you have left is that personality of yours." Cain, Nox's old teacher, mumbled around the mouthful of food in his mouth.

There was no way he could tell Nox was frowning behind the mask, but the man wasn't wrong.

Ever since they had sat down in the small bar, hidden from view in a building next to the wall of the centre ring, Cain had evaded Nox's annoyed questions about the information he had. Giggly women interrupting them as they cooed and pranced around Cain like birds on a branch from the moment he sat down. A few overly eager girls had tried sliding closer to Nox, wrapping their arms over his chair or leaning in close, only to have a knife struck into the table inches from their fingers. The glint of the blade like lightning was their only warning. None of them had pushed further then that.

"I'm not planning to wait all night for you to tell me something, I'm sure I could force out of someone else." Nox let his words drip with his growing annoyance at the situation. He wanted to sleep. And the man in front of him was in the way of Nox's plans. Lillian would also need more supplies which meant visiting the market in the first ring. And if the bakery was closed before Nox got to it, then Lillian would give him hell. Nox suppressed a grumble at the thought of all the hassle.

"Alright, alright." Cain said before whispering something in the ear of a barmaid sitting on his lap. Her laugh dug into Nox's brain like needles, he didn't know how much longer he could last in this place without killing someone. The woman got up and sauntered away looking for another occupied seat to sit in.

"Your father is looking for you again." Cain's face had turned hard and serious. The same face he had given young Nox when he'd beaten his brutal training sessions into him.

"I'm not hiding. Let the coward come crawling to my door and see where it gets him." Nox's grey eyes swirled with painful emotions. The only sign that Nox wasn't as calm as he seemed. Cain didn't seem to notice any change in Nox and nodded his head with a shrug.

"I think he will use me as leverage against you at some point." Cain scratched his head with a grin before continuing.

"Not that it will work of course. But he's getting desperate to find a hold over you again." A silence spread between them for a while. Cain was one of the few people in the kingdom who knew Nox's history and one of the few people Nox trusted enough to let him live with that information.

"I'm sorry." Nox didn't have any other words of comfort for the man who's days were now numbered. They both knew Nox would not come to save him and the old reaper didn't expect him to.

"Kiddo, I knew from the first day I was unlucky enough to meet you that I was a dead man." Cain laughed as he slouched back casually into his chair, as if the conversation they were having was about the weather rather then his certain death.

"But there are other rumours going around the reaper's guild. Rumours of a rebellion against the crown." Cain's face stayed jovial and casual, his low voice lost in the ruckus of the bar. He was trying not to draw attention to them, acting as if they weren't discussing treason in the capital of their kingdom.

"Will you be taking a side?" Nox asked genuinely curious about where his old teacher would end up if there really was an uprising.

"I will follow the guild and my comrades...wherever that takes me." Cain had grown up in the guild and the reapers were his family. Nox had once envied his teacher's sense of loyalty to the guild.

But Nox knew where blind faith led a person. He had already walked the path of love and pain, he had experienced the connection of having someone you would give your life for, and he had lost it.