It was a long day in history class for Lila. She had an inkling… A little curious question. One that became soul-crushingly answered by the time the teacher was done. She was almost in a state of erratic panic as she left the classroom. Just from the teacher’s face alone, she had cut the resonance with Janus off. Finding him with his arm around Neomi she about ripped him away from her.

“Lila?” Neomi was surprised because Lila was in tears.

Lila was in her brother’s arms and she was upset. Very much upset. Myrri had managed to keep up with her. “Janus… Mom…” She hiccupped and looked up at him with the tears in her eyes. “There’s something they aren’t telling us about Mom. The professor… He said… I was just curious about Auclair. Remember Mom took us there… She took us there and everything was empty but normal looking.”

There was deeper breaths. “Mom and Dad are hiding something. Auclair was obliterated. The professor he said that no one lived and that Mom… That Mom was never found. That was over fifteen hundred years ago. Mom is…” By accounts… She shouldn’t be alive. “They said she was human Janus.”

It had been a typical day for Janus; pretend to pay attention in class and daydream until he could see Neomi again. Well, it had been a typical day until his sister came up to him, tears in her eyes as she sobbed about Auclair and what had happened. He held up his hand, “Before you go rushing into things, let’s just think about this with a calm heart and mind, right?” He took her hand, and the resonance between them synced back up. Janus’ calmness seeped into Lila’s soul.

“She’s obviously alive,” he said. “And there are a lot of things that Mom and Dad haven’t told us. We’ve already caught them in a few white lies…I think it’s time we confronted them over it.” The boy had a devious smile, the same one he always had when he made a plan to get them in trouble.

“Let’s plan a visit to home over the weekend, okay sis?”

Lila was normally so calm about everything. It was something about Auclair that made her heart and soul sting. Something from the original resonance with their parents. She could feel the burning in her heart. Something was undeniably wrong. She wanted to know the truth.

Lila nodded to her brother and wiped the tears away from her eyes. “Let’s then… We’ll ambush them.”

The weekend came quickly and soon they were making the jump back home. “Oh hey… you’re home.” The twins were doing some shady things with a bucket of water. The boys had certainly gotten taller since the last time Janus and Lila had seen them.

“Hey brats where are Mom and Dad?” Lila put her hands on her hips.

“They are having a recital with Camille in the music room. It’s awful,” Damond and Remy replied as they gave up on the bucket and instead went about setting a tripping trap.

Lila took Janus’s hand and pulled him in the direction of the awful music. The violin was practically begging to be broken. Every once in a while a good note would be played. Lila pushed the door open with a lot of force which made Simone turn around in her chair with surprise.

“Excuse me but this is a private concert Lila and Janjan,” Camille who would normally be excited to see her brother was miffed.

“We know about Auclair,” Lila spoke fast. “And we know that you’ve been ly–”

“AND THAT WAS A GREAT PERFORMANCE WASN’T IT DARLING?!” Simone got loud giving the cue that they needed to stop what they were about to say.

“But I wasn’t done,” Camille spoke up. “This isn’t fair!”

“Mommy and Daddy remembered they have something very important to do,” Lewis said quickly as he walked over and scooped Camille up in his arms.  “But I promise we’ll spend more time together later…”  He gave a look to the smug Janus and Lila, and sighed.  “And your brother and sister will sit through the whole recital with us.”

Janus winced, “Y-yeah, we will…”

“See?  It’ll be a great,” Lewis said.  

After about twenty minutes of consoling Camille, Lewis and Simone sat down with the twins in a study on what Janus assumed was the first floor.  With the way their parents had been experimenting with magic and building, there was no real way to tell.  There was tea and coffee, and a fire in the hearth, as if Lewis and Simone were expecting a long conversation.

“Well…?” Lewis asked.  “You said you know…so start talking.”

“History class,” Janus replied.  

“Since when does history class cover ancient civilizations?” Lewis shot back.

“Look, I didn’t say it made sense…”

Lila backed her brother up, “Because I asked about Auclair. We were talking about kingdoms and such. It didn’t take the teacher long at all to find a book. One small book and a small section on what happened to it. Only it just said that hellfire destroyed it and that its lone princess was never recovered.”

Simone looked uncomfortable but one look from Lewis made her settle down. “They are right but they are wrong that I was never recovered.”

“Obv–”

Simone held up her hand, “Because I was kidnapped and tortured by the man who did it.”

Lila’s smug expression faded away. “…but… why…”

“That isn’t the question you both originally had is it?”

“Well… No… We just wanted to know how you and Dad met,” Lila understood what the stinging now meant. The reason why her heart felt so tight whenever she said Auclair.

“But it remains that you still want to know it all right?” Simone didn’t want to scare them as Lewis took her hand and squeezed it. “So we’ll tell you this very long story about a girl and a boy.”

“But you would have been ancient when you and Dad met.”

“No… Not quite,” Simone said it softly. “You see Lila… A man named Alvaro wanted me so badly that he cursed me to live in a cycle of life and death. The worst kind of immortality. He wanted me to bear him a child. I refused to do so. I was sixteen when this curse got put on me. Every day was hell you know. Whenever I would be killed or kill myself I would only regenerate but lose my memories. Almost all of my memories. I had my name and I knew things here or there. When he came for me after he put the curse on me… As I watched my people burn to death atop my castle. As I’m sure my father used his body to block where I was. As everyone I loved died. I could do nothing. To keep him from achieving what he wanted I did the one thing I thought could save me. I jumped.”

“But you were immortal…”

“But I was immortal. A cursed being. Didn’t take him long to find me and do whatever he wanted to me. It started there in the courtyard of the castle. The rape…” Simone was uncomfortable but once again Lewis was comforting her. “And the seven years that followed weren’t any easier. The abridged version after that was… I was saved by a man named Edwin. We had a family. Edwin got old and died. Alvaro found me again. I would kill myself again. I would run away again. I would love again. Rinse and repeat for fifteen hundred years. Until one day he decided I wasn’t being cooperative enough. He killed all of my children, all of their children, and their children’s children. A whole line just gone to the wind. I could remember with all my being when I was close to death so I made myself as close as I could without dying.

I made a deal with a fey queen. I got hellfire. The same kind that was set on my people and I burned his people to the ground. I took a hot iron poker from a fireplace and I made sure that bastard’s wife knew what it was like to be me. She had laughed and turned away letting him do those awful things to me. She deserved everything she got and more. I killed everyone like he did.”

Simone whirled her hand and took a big breath, “And when he found out what I had done he ripped my womb out chained me to some rocks and shoved me in Lake Valerian. Where I drowned for three hundred years.”

“But Dad…” Lila spoke up in shock.

“Yes… Well your father…”

The pub was bustling as people came and went. Jasper was brokering deals and such when young Lewis Dusk walked in. Most likely he was looking for a deal to be made. Jasper slinked his way over. “Oi Lewis my boy,” he put his arm around Lewis giving him a dirty little smile. “There’s a duke here who’s waving his purse around. A lot of silver for one hell of a sad job. He’s being so loud about it that he’s scared off a few of the boys. Would be quite the job for you to take.”

The man was sitting at a table with a guard. He was tapping his foot and acting nervous as he took a drink and drank it all down. “Lewis, I want you to meet Duke Emil Somerset,” Jasper led the lanky teen over to the duke.

The duke was a stuttering mess as he put his mug down and looked around. “I… have a request.” He was soft-spoken but just like Jasper said there was a big coin purse with him. “Please, hear me out.”

Lewis had entered the tavern looking for a job. Part of his ‘training’ from his master was to take every opportunity to apply his knowledge in real time, and that meant work. As an up and coming assassin, he had already made quite a name for himself; talented, but inefficient and messy. He was still young, yet his cold expression gave of a sense of superiority to those around him.

“Jasper, if you don’t stop touching me, I’ll take a hand,” the silver haired teen snapped. Jasper seemed to ignore the threat, and pushed the young assassin towards the table.

Duke Somerset could be called an attractive man on any other day. Lewis knew very little about the man, but he seemed affluent enough to hire a top-rate assassin, but stupid enough to come to the shadiest tavern in Vilpa to do it. The man was obviously scared, but his fear didn’t stem from his surroundings. No, this fear was something that Lewis had seen and felt before.

“You’re desperate,” Lewis said as he sat down across from the nobleman. “A desperate fool is easily parted with his gold…” He was trying to sound more mature than he really was, but the effect seemed to work on Somerset. The man turned his focus onto the teen. “There’s a good man,” the boy taunted. “Now tell me your woes. Who do I need to kill?”

Jasper was watching from afar with a smile on his face. Emil Somerset wasn’t exactly known for being a top dog, but he was very, very rich. That meant that, assuming Lewis could pull it off, Jasper would be rich after this contract. “Come on, my boy…show me the silver,” he whispered to himself. Right on cue, the waitress came by and dropped off the prearranged drinks. He had set things up nicely…all Lewis had to do was seal the deal.

Lewis took his drink; a non-alcoholic berry blend. He was smart enough to keep off the hard stuff when he was working, at least. “Don’t bore me, Somerset…” Lewis gave him a blank stare.

Emil played with the collar of his shirt for a moment before taking a breath. “IwantyoutokillmywifeSimone.” It came out all jumbled up but soon he took the next drink and downed. It stung him but he took a look at Lewis. He had to have been his age when he married Simone. “I want you to kill my wife Simone. My fa-father…” He put his head on his wrist for a moment on the table and stomped his feet a little. “My wife is infertile. We’ve been married since we were seventeen. It’s been five years and she hasn’t gotten pregnant.”

He pushed the pouch of silver towards Lewis. “This is just half of it. I don’t want her to suffer, please. She’s a good woman.” By all accounts, she didn’t deserve this. “Divorce isn’t an option. She has nowhere to go. No family. This is just the easiest way of handling it.” He was trying to justify it. It wasn’t his idea. “The last assassin I hired saw her and refused to do anything to her. Please, you have to help me.”

It had taken Somerset a moment to gather his courage. When it finally came tumbling out, Lewis merely gave the man an uncaring expression. “You…want me to kill…your wife?” Lewis looked at the silver on the table. He had certainly never seen so much in a single bag, and that was only half.

Technically, all of Lewis’ jobs paid rather well Because Lewis lived within the realm of a god, though he hardly had any need for the silver. Instead, he started to use the silver as a measure of how ‘difficult’ or how ‘desperate’ the job and client were. In this case, he could see that the job itself seemed rather easy, and the client seemed very, very desperate. Normally, he wouldn’t accept something so trivial, but he could practically hear Jasper salivating the table over. It was that, and the one detail that Somerset had stated: another assassin saw Simone and refused to kill her.

“Fine,” Lewis said as he took the silver. “I’ll accept the contract. Jasper will work out the specifics with you…all I need is an address and a description. He motioned for Jasper to come and seal the deal. Lewis had little desire to deal with the clerical side of things, which made go-betweens like Jasper a perfect solution.

“Right then, Mr. Somerset,” Jasper said as he walked up and ripped the silver out of Lewis’ hand. “I’ll just need you to sign here, here, and here…”

Emil seemed nervous more so than before but nodded, “Right…” He did all the paper with Jasper. “I’ll leave her in the garden for you. I figure it’s a fitting place for her to die. She loves the garden. She spends most of her time there… It would be no trouble at all to get her out there by herself.”

Taking a breath he told the address to Lewis and Jasper. “Thank you…” He scurried off after that. Getting home he agonized over what would happen to his beloved Simone. He rubbed his face and greeted her as he came home.

“Was it a rough day?” Simone tilted her head. She was wearing a very modest gown in dark purple. Her dark hair was half up as she put her hands in his. “You look awful.” She put her hand to his forehead. “Maybe some tea would do you well.”

Emil leaned in and kissed Simone softly. “Thank you for being you,” his words were gentle even through the panic.

“You really must not feel good,” she offered him a small smile as they moved inside. It was later that night at the deemed time when Emil brought Simone out to the garden. “Fredrick said the peonies can be saved. I was really worried. He just has to dig them up and treat their roots.”

“I’m glad you can save them. They are your favorite…” Emil had her arm in his as they slowly walked outside. “I have a gift for you inside… Just wait here.”

“For me?” Simone was like a girl as she giggled and Emil kissed her.

“I love you, Simone…”

“I love you too… You are being awfully weird,” Simone shook her head at him. “Are you sure you’re alright?” She felt his head again. “Maybe a bath…”

“Yeah, I’ll take a bath after getting your present. Hold tight alright?” He left her in the garden. Simone moved to check the peonies over. She had her hands cupping the flowers delicately.

Thank you.

Those words seemed to ring in Lewis’ ears, even long after Emil Somerset had spoken them. Why did he sound so sincere? Why would he sound so relieved? Everything Lewis’ had learned about the assassination game screamed that this was abnormal, but he pushed those thoughts aside. It was an easy kill: a single target, along in the garden. He wouldn’t even have to see her face.

Lewis had decided to test out his rope dart set. It was a surprisingly simple tool to make, with a rope tied to the hilt of a dagger. The benefits of a throwing dagger mixed with the ability to yank it back. He had experimented around with it during training, but this would be the first time he made a kill using it. A dagger to the back, and a jolt from a magical enchantment, and her life would end. Perhaps his master would find the new toy amusing, and craft a version in His image. It would be a perfect gift.

The assassin shifted through the darkness until he found the woman. His target had her back turned to him, and without hesitating he let the dagger fly. It struck its mark, and seconds later the charge went off, shocking the poor woman.

“Three seconds,” Lewis hissed. It was more than long enough to stop a heart. He yanked the weapon back, catching the dagger by its hilt. “It really was that simple.” He sighed as he walked out of the shadows towards her body. “May you find peace in your next life.” It was a phrase he had heard before by a mentor assassin, and one that had spoken many times before.

He had no idea how truly relevant it was about to become.