A Revenge So Bittersweet

Chapter XXVI: Unravelling

How I didn't immediately fall unconscious was anyone's guess. I barely came to terms with the headsplitting, throbbing pain that clouded my vision in white when rough hands pawed at my maid garb beneath my too-flimsy cloak. Fear spiked, overwhelming my better judgment with the belief that he - this common thug - was after more than I could willingly give, but no, our next exchange put that worry to rest and raised another.

"Stop this!" I demanded, as though we were in the throne room where law could be the words that dripped off my tongue.

"Where is it? Give it here and walk away with your life!"

It was a little late for those sort of empty promises. Were I the trusting sort, that fist to my skull earlier would have banished any credence I might have granted him.

"You'll regret choosing me as the target for your malfeasance!" I spat and hoped it was true.

We grappled over my body, him to get closer and me to get away. Later, I would reflect on the new bruises he inflicted and his slight bitter scent, not of putrid filth but of fresh ground herbs permeating off his clothes. Later, I'd have a few knights pay that shopkeeper an unfriendly visit for her role in detecting my poorly concealed affluence and sending her husband to rob me blind.

Now, however, I couldn't think, acting only on raw, unfiltered instinct. In attempting to break his hold, my fingers smarted from colliding with something hard and cold at my waist. My eyes widened, as did his, at the identical realization that I kept a dagger on my person for situations exactly like these.

"Don't you dare-" he snarled.

"No!"

Our mutual attention shifted to each trying desperately to get that blade first for fear of what the other might do with it. I was quicker. My elbow swung out to deflect his arm and I managed to grasp the hilt with my opposing hand, drawing it out into the open, blade singing as it pulled from its metal sheath.

I didn't mean to do it, though I might have done it anyway, given the opportunity. We were simply too close for any other outcome. I swung wildly to, again, push him away, and felt the sickening squelch of my improvised weapon sliding through sinew and flesh, like cutting into an orange - a little resistance, then nothing at all - until scraping over his collar bone.

The man howled in agony, face twisting a beet red, veins threatening to burst just below his skin, and he took his pain out on its obvious source. The back of a boney hand struck hard at my cheek, whipping my face to the side so violently that something in my neck cracked. Still, I refused to let go.

We stumbled blindly towards the rubble, where my shoulder blades gathered new bruises against a half crumbled wall. Blood staining his plain tunic, the man then grabbed a fist full of my hair. He bared his teeth, lost to hurt-induced-rage, and prepared to slam my so-breakable skull into the ash-coated stone.

This time, I did make a conscious choice, and re-sheathed my dagger in his belly, aimed up towards his lungs, then jerking lower, gutting him in a way that I'd never been forced to do even to a fish.

Pitifully, that was the only point where he tried to flee, when it was far too late to make a difference.

Standing over his twitching body trying to catch my breath, I imagined I felt him die, a bright soul snuffed out once and for all.

I'd never deliberately killed anyone before. It was a far cry from my dreams.

Bizarre that I wouldn't dream the one death at my own hand.

"A funny place to find a Descended. Their queen, no less," a soft, overtly feminine-sounding woman remarked nearby. "Funny company, too."

I whirled, adrenaline spiking once more, my stained dagger cutting the air where I heard that too-close voice. How had her footsteps not alerted me before she entered my immediate orbit?