KINGSLAYER

♕ 9 | 7 ♕

He found the poorest part of the city—a bit disheveled, likely from an attack during the Red War that had still not been repaired. There were old vagrants on street corners covering themselves up with dirty burlap sacks fashioned into crude blankets. They were lucky Oceana was so tropical. The vagrants in Navrika would have died from heat stroke in the south or hypothermia in the north.

Home. He missed it. But he'd spent too long in an iron collar to think of it as his anymore.

Alexander searched and searched for any street urchins. Perhaps he'd arrived too late; it was after dusk, after all. If they had any sense, they would hide out for the night. According to what Jaylah said, the slaver Tripolou wreaked havoc on these streets, as this was one of the largest cities in the north. So many people. An unending supply of children for him to get rich off of.

Jaylah had not told him where Tripolou took the children he stole. And Alexander did not want to know.

In this, he was meant to be her assassin, to take the information she gave and to do what he wanted with it. It was the most freedom he'd had in years. Alexander knew she only was so generous to him because she hated that Ermalai had him and she did not. He normally would have enjoyed being fought over, but he did not have it in him to be humorous. Now all his jokes were distractions. He did not feel like laughing ever again.

He should have taken Igor's advice. He should have never gone to the City of Luck.

The night grew cooler as Alexander searched for any orphans. He hoped he would not find any, that he'd have to search for Tripolou the hard way. But there was a large group ahead, huddled around a flickering streetlamp with their arms clutched close around themselves. The oldest couldn't have been more than thirteen. The youngest were toddlers.

Stupid. They were so fucking stupid, camping out in the open like that. The oldest ones should have known better.

Alexander watched them from afar, hidden behind a pillar with grape vines carved into it. Given their ages and the surrounding buildings' disarray, they had to have been orphaned by the Red War. Perhaps his own people had marched on this city and slaughtered their pregnant mothers as the Oceanics did in his hometown. Oh, he would never forget their screams of lament as they clutched their swollen bellies, terrified the soldiers would cut the fetuses out themselves. Had they? He couldn't remember.

The oldest girl was cradling a young one that appeared to have a cough. She stayed awake long after the child's cries finally stopped, eyes in the distance. In that moment, Alexander hated them. All of them. He wanted to walk up to her, shake her by the shoulders and say, 'Do you want them to drag you away into dark barracks where you'll die of infection within the first week? Do you want to be used by a master who just doesn't stop even when you kick and scream? Do you want to end up like me?'

Poor as they were, those children were lucky. They had not been defiled. Not yet.

He looked at them, wondering what they would become. Most of them would be dead within the year. Some would be enslaved in the silver mines, some in rich men's homes. Would any choose to weaponize themselves, to become killers that no longer feared shedding blood to make themselves strong? No. If they saw him for what he was, they would scream and run. They were not yet broken, so they would not understand what true desperation was.

The street was tranquil for so long Alexander feared Tripolou would not show himself tonight. Rage swirled in his chest the longer he thought about those kids that could have been a younger him, the man that was going to take them. Anger was so easy. It burned and burned, keeping him going on even when everything else in him was sobbing and begging to lay down and let himself die. He feared for the moment he stopped having enough rage to use.