Chapter 1: The Last Dance
The scent of metallic blood clashed with the lilac notes of her perfume.
She stared at his sword as it dripped slowly with the innocent red drops. As if time had taken a moment to take a breath, she squinted at the tall shadow approaching her. The man was too far away to identify, but the flickering red and orange flames soon painted her a face that was all too familiar.
His eyes remained fixed to the ground, but the moonlight reflected his guilt. His mouth opened as if he wanted to say something, but hesitance quickly shut it back up.
With not a single cut seen on his body, she guessed that the blood on his sword wasn't his.
"Zhan Xinyi, being the daughter of a general, can be just as dangerous as being the general himself. You have to be careful. Don't trust anyone. Not even me."
She watched the manor burn.
She watched her manor burn.
In her seventeen years of life, her home never has changed. The servants stayed the same, the furniture as old, if not older than her. Even if she was blinded, her feet could still wander to her bedroom, to the kitchen, to her brother's room.
The manor where she had run around the yards, trying to catch butterflies in her youth was crumpling, just like those beautiful wings in her clumsy palms. The quarters that housed her sleeping family members became a dangerous threat that trapped their lives instead.
That is if that sword didn't take them first.
Xinyi could no longer see the flames, her eyes only recognizing splotches of red and orange. In the distance, she heard someone screaming so hard that she dropped onto the snowy ground, her heart pounding drums in her ears. She could feel the distant fire burning through the thinness of her gown, although it was just the snow yielding to the warmth of her horror.
This was not real.
This could not be real. Her throat felt inflamed and she clutched at it desperately, wondering why it burned.
The screaming came from her own voice. Silence was singing in her burning manor.
The shadowy figure came closer, his sword still clasped in the palm of his hand. What fond eyes she had for him in the past had become frozen like the snow around her. He met her eyes and saw his pained expression, but she knew that that pain wasn't like the retching agony embedded in her heart.
Why didn't she take her mother's words more seriously?
"Xinyi..." he whispered, his voice so soft that the wind almost blew the words away. "Xinyi, it's not what you think it looks like..."
His steps were slow as if he was afraid to provoke her, his sword now behind his back as if its absence could make normality return. However, the scarlet trail of bloody footsteps only proved different.
Her voice was so hoarse that she couldn't scream at the man to get away from her, the same man her heart once pounded so hard for. She thought that her heart pounded so hard because she loved him, but now she understood that it was just a warning she had ignored.
She crawled along with the snow, ignoring the pangs of frost pulsing through her fingertips as she ran away from the man in white...no, as she ran away from the man drenched in red.
"Xinyi, let me explain..."
She halted, her eyes digging into his. Her silence inched him closer to her, her breathing hitched as if the air was poisonous.
He crouched down, casting his bloody sword aside so he could catch both of her quivering hands. For a man who slaughtered her family, his hands were awfully cold.
Too cold. As if they were burning.
Somewhere back in her desires, she remembered dreaming of this moment, the moment where he would hold her hands for the first time and embrace her, but she didn't expect it to be on such a cold night where her heart was frozen over.
"Is this why you sent that letter?" Fighting against the tears, she jerked her hands out of his, reaching into the bellows of her dress to pull out a crumpled, once dry, piece of parchment. "You told me to meet you today under the tree where we first met. I came right on time. When the sun switched places with the moon."
Xinyi threw his broken promises back at him, which bounced off against his chest and landed in the snow.
"Everything was a lie, wasn't it? Wasn't it, Yijun?"
"Listen to me, Xinyi. I can explain..."
"You promised me once," she murmured, gazing off to the moon that hung lazily in the sky. "That if you had the chance, you would whisk me away to play with the white rabbit on the moon?"
His grip on her fingers tightened and he grasped her into a tight embrace, the stench of blood too foul for her to ignore. She felt his head nodding in the corner of her neck, his arms around her waist.
"Xinyi. If you want to go, I will follow you. Whether it be the moon or the heavens, I will bring you there."
The strength she had left to cry dwindled down with the flames eating at her home. It was as if her tears extinguished the fire.
"Yes...my mother loved the moon. She'll love to visit."
His breath stopped and the ache in her heart continued to pulse painfully.
"Xinyi, do you want to go visit the stars and the moon?" He lightly tugged at her arm, his voice wavering.
"I can bring you there. "
The moon was bright. It gleamed against the bloody sword on the white snow and she was entranced, leaning towards it as if she were hypnotized by it. She lightly grabbed the hilt, dragging it back, drawing a trail of blood.
"No." Her pale hands were shaking from the power of his embrace, yet her fingers found enough strength to hold onto the weapon that claimed her entire household. She smiled a nostalgic smile, staring back up towards the light and stars, toward the smoke and fire, toward the faded laughter and her blurred memories.
"Let's go home." His honeyed voice was like a lullaby in the silent night. Her body wanted to fade into that warmth, but her cold conscience was pulling her away.
"Yes," she murmured. She hated this smell; she hated his smell. "Let us go home now."
Winter embraced her body as she left his warmth, her reminiscing thoughts muddled. The shock that registered into his eyes was too late as she swung that sword around, the blade weak in her hands, yet sharp enough to cut clean through her frail body.
Her eyes twinkled as she fell back to the ground, her body crumpling like a broken doll, his screams too far away for her ears to register. The splatters of ruby danced gracefully, adorning the snow like little red flowers.
And that graceful dance had brought the number of survivors from the house of Zhan from one to none at all.
ESTÁS LEYENDO
Assassin of the Lost Souls
FantasíaAfter the man she thought she loved slaughtered her family, she sought revenge. Although Zhan Jiu died by her own hands, his hands were responsible for the bloodstains of her family and the destruction of her home, her life. She swore she would neve...
