Aurelia is a Courtesan, not an Assassin. Her world is turned upside down, however, when she kills a high-ranking Senator in self defense. Given his status, and the political power his family wields, Aurelia knows she will be executed without a trial...
¡Ay! Esta imagen no sigue nuestras pautas de contenido. Para continuar la publicación, intente quitarla o subir otra.
Countdown: 2 days, 7 hours, 4 deaths
As Aurelia walks through the streets of Glascoast, she notes how empty the polis is. It should be busier than it is with Tournament coming up, even at this late hour. There should be merry-making, partying. There should be people wearing their team's colors running, raucously and drunkenly. There should be vendors open, selling merchandise to wear at the arena two days from now. But there is silence.
Graffiti has appeared, outside of Midcity, onto the streets of respectable neighborhoods. The PLP slogan is everywhere.
The tension in the polis is heavy, oppressive, even on the empty streets, even without another soul in sight.
Aurelia lifts a hand to rub at her neck, the muscles tight, bunched together in a tangle of knots like the line of an inexperienced fisherman. She closes her eyes, and feels the scrape of callouses along the flesh of her trapezius muscle, the warmth of breath at her ear.
She melts as the fingers at the junction of her neck and shoulder squeeze just so, feels the brush of silk against her shoulders as soft lips replace the fingers. The hairs on the nape of her neck raise at the contact, and she hums contentedly.
She knows that touch better than she knows her own name, better than she knows the lines on her palm or the freckles on her nose that she has tried to bleach out with products more times than she can count. In this moment, it is a pleasant touch, one that makes her toes curl the way they did at the start.
"Marcus," she breathes, reaching back to thread her fingers through his hair, soft as chinchilla fur, golden as the ripe wheat fields of Rivergate. Her fingers slip through the air, and when she opens her eyes, she is alone.
Despite the heat of the night, she is suddenly cold all that way down to her bones. She frantically looks around, searching for Marcus' familiar form, longing for and dreading the sight of his apparition at once.
Once she realizes that she is well and truly alone, she staggers, lurches forward, plants her hand against the white-washed wall of a residential apartment complex, and vomits all over the coral cobblestones. She coughs, wipes her mouth, gets her bearings.
The neon sign of the bar flashes in the distance.
When she arrives, it takes Aurelia several tries to turn the key into the lock of The Backstage Bar due to the trembling of her fingers. She feels lightheaded and nauseous; the world is blurry at the corners, and all she wants is the burn of liquid down her throat, the fog of drink, the peace of oblivion.
She misses him; by Ila-Ama, the Old God, and the splinters of the universe, she misses him as much as she hates him.
She hates herself for it.
When the lock finally clicks, she stumbles inside, eager for the night to finally be over.
The memory of the ghost-Marcus' fingers against her shoulders, the apparition's breath against her ear, and her reaction to it, disturbs her far more than her conversation with Lana does. She shouldn't miss him. The memory of his hands should make her shudder with fear, not tremble with need.
