Into The Shadows

CHAPTER 7

"Can I ask you something?" she asked, finally giving into her hidden curiosity. He didn't respond.

"Do you have a real eye?"

He stiffened, and turned once more, his red eye glaring heavily at her, narrowing until it burned into her eyes.
"Yes," he said simply, through gritted teeth.

Ah, so he did, but why was it covered?

She stared at his face, yet his mechanical features stayed still.

Oh.

She grinned to herself.

That's why.

"I think I know why you're hiding it," she said, infusing a tone of charm into her voice as she often did to lure her marks to her.

His eye snapped to her, and while the pupil was only a slightly darker shade of red from the rest, it still narrowed at her, though the rest of his face remained engraved in stone.

"You do not know anything about me, or what I hide," he growled.

She blinked innocently.
"I think you conceal your human parts, to hide what you feel," she started, a theory already forming in her head. "I think that something is making you afraid, making you..."

Her words were abruptly cut off as he viciously wrapped his fingers around her neck and slammed her into a wall. In spite of the pain and her near inability to breathe, she didn't let her grin falter. She was hoping to goad him into telling her why his hatred was so deep. She knew that this was the only way she would be able to understand him in order to work with him.

"I think that something happened," she wheezed, grabbing his wrist with both of her hands to loosen his grip. Her feet left the ground, and the tips of her shoes brushed the stone. He squeezed her neck even tighter, and she could feel herself losing consciousness as she gasped for air.
"Farniir!" a familiar voice shouted, and he looked to the side. Mist followed his gaze, and saw Stanton in the doorway, a knife in his hands and a snarl on his face.
"Release her," he growled. Farniir loosened his grip in surprise, offering her a brief moment of reprieve. Mist glanced at Stanton, and shook her head as little as she could. Just as she knew he would, Stanton's sharp eyes missed nothing, and she saw his posture relax slightly.
Mist reached up and clutched his wrist with one hand, and quick as the Shadows, brushed his brown hair away from his real eye with the other. In that instant, he glared back at her with his human eye that was a beautiful clear hazel, in spite of being bloodshot.

In triumph she realized that she had figured him out at last. It suddenly all made sense, and like a puzzle the pieces clicked together. She was well-known for being able to read people, and the saying 'the eyes are the windows to the soul' was very true for her. Without his human eye showing, no one could see his weakness, but now she could. She grinned even wider at the realization.

"I'm not going to fight you, you know," she said, forcing her shoulders to relax even though she struggled to inhale. "But to do this we all need to work together."

He glared at her once more, his mechanical grip tightening again. But he finally dropped her, and she suppressed the urge to gag as he stood still.
"Your Empire does assassinations, correct?" he asked. Mist rubbed her neck and nodded, noticing that Stanton had slowly edged away.

"Indeed, but we only do them for a high bounty," she said. He glared at her once more, then blew the hair back in his face.
"One of your assassins killed the recent Empire Leaders, my parents," he said. She raised one eyebrow.

Really? That's what all this was about?

"I'm sorry?" she said slowly, as he moved back to the balcony and stared blankly out into the distance.
"You are not, and I know that you do not care, he said. "I don't know why I bother, pathetic thief," he spat. She blinked, then laughed lightly.
"I don't understand the grief of losing my parents, that's true," she said, and he raised his eyebrow at her. "The people of my Empire do not have connections to our parents. They raise until we are ten years old, then we never see them again." He looked almost horrified, but it was hard to tell when the only thing she could see in the dim light was his mechanical eye.