Eros

Breaking Point - 40

"Farus Everflame." Julian completed her, and nodded. "Good choice. Farus is the man you are going to kill tonight."

-

"Kaido, Kaido please, you gotta' help me out here." Alora pleaded as Kaido sank onto her shoulder, nearly pushing her to the floor beneath him.

She tightened her arm around his torso, shifted her other hand up the railing, and stepped up another stair. His head dangled low, his eyes were half-lidded, and a weak groan hummed in his throat.

Alora pulled him after her, feeling her stomach knot beneath the weight of his body. The pressure finally eased when he stepped up after her. She glanced up, and sighed her heart out. Twelve more stairs.

Once Kaido was done torturing the lord to death, he broke her shackles, and they fled.

The few guards in their way had met their demise at his bare hands just as quickly as the ones in the torture chamber did. As they left, only a few shouts sounded and no arrows came. Kaido had shown no sign of weakness when they ran through the streets, but the second the inn's door closed behind them, he collapsed.

She felt like lying down on the floor and falling asleep. The echoes of pain beneath the bandages that wrapped her back and the stinging along her collarbone were sufferable. It was the exhaustion that settled deep to her core. Dragging Kaido up to her room left no breath in her chest and her mouth full of silent cusses.

The first light of dawn breached through the window's shutters, casting gentle light across the bed. Kaido fell on the mattress like a sack of rocks. She fought the urge to do the same, and went downstairs to fetch some ragged cloth and a bucket of water.

She put them beside the bed and grabbed Kaido with both hands. He had lost every bit of consciousness by then, and turning him onto his back proved harder than she expected.

Her eyes scanned him from head to toe. Dry blood matted his black hair, streaked his shin, and crusted over his torso, but she found no active bleeding to attend to.

She dipped the cloth in the bucket, sat on the edge of the bed, leaned in, and pressed it to his stomach. Slowly and gently, she tugged it down across his skin.

The crimson crust peeled off, revealing the firm flesh of his muscled abdomen, but no wounds. She cleaned the rest of his torso, and found no trace of harm. His skin was flawless, not marked even by the pallor of a scar.

Her eyes trailed to his blood painted hands. The image of those hands tearing in and out of Ogoni's body and decorating the floor with his entrails made her shudder. Then another image came to her mind. A man lying beneath the night skies, his stomach mutilated into pulp. Jim.

"I guess we are not so different after all." She whispered, and brought the wet cloth to his hand.

Her nerves soothed with each long stroke across the coat of blood. Stripe after stripe, she uncovered his veined, sinewed forearm, calloused palm, and lean fingers. Sleep crept to her through the mist of serenity, whisking her away.

-

Julian told her to come to the martial court at noon. She exited the palace royal through a maze of smooth marble corridors, and the royal garden spread before her.

The air was warm, but wind from the sea stirred it to freshness, and the trees and flowers planted alongside the road flourished. A broad structure with an entrance blocked by two massive doors of wood loomed before her. They seemed sealed, but when she got near, she noticed one of the doors was ajar, parting a gap large enough for her to slip through.

"Vanessa Warhawk?"

Her gaze snapped sideways. Beside the entrance, stood a well-dressed man, his features a severe mask and his hair groomed.