“On your knees,” Lyla said to the servant girl’s back. Alima. That was her name, Lyla recalled. An Orichalcum level on her first mission but she was still too green for what the work required. And too scared it seemed, to have what it would take to reach higher ranks. Lyla was almost doing her a mercy by ending her life now.

  Isabel stood a few metres to the side, holding a torch, the flame swaying gently in the breeze. They were deep in the shadows of the forest, trees huddled close around them, long grass crawling up their ankles. The Rhianian camp was a few hundred metres to the east – far enough away that no one could see. The soldiers might not think anything of it – they were long used to the horrors of war but the refugees had been through enough already. No need for them to witness this. And there were children there too. Lyla knew what it felt like to witness things no child should witness.

  Alima stared with wide blue eyes at the bodies that already littered the area - the other eleven spies, as well as Lyla’s former colleagues from the Shadow’s Delta squad. She looked a few years younger than Lyla, short black hair framing a slim face, hands trembling as she gripped the edges of the same sort of linen dress that Lyla had hated wearing. Had she gone through the same kind of program? Seeing the bodies shouldn’t have made her quiver so much.

  “Please, Miss,” Alima pled, her voice shaking. “Please let me live. I promise I’ll run far away. I’ll leave the Empire. I won’t tell anyone about this.”

  “Shadows aren’t meant to plead for their lives,” Lyla reminded her. “Now, kneel.”

  Alima wasn’t going to kneel. Lyla could see it in the slight tensing of her legs, the minor shifting of her weight. With a sigh, Lyla drew a dagger and drove it into the middle of Alima’s spine just as she was getting ready to run. Before she fell, Lyla gripped the bottom of her jaw, kicked the back of her knees, before pulling the dagger free and drawing it across her throat. She gurgled, hands reaching up to clasp at her throat, eyes rolling upwards as she fell. Lyla caught her head and lowered her gently to the ground before turning to Isabel.

  “That was the last of them.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Lyla nodded as she wiped her dagger clean on the linen dress before sheathing it. She looked around at the dead bodies, before correcting herself just in case. “The ones that I knew of.”

  “Do you think there are more?” Isabel asked, moving closer to Lyla with the torch.

  “It’s possible, but unlikely. These ones were under Talghar’s authority, but the Empire may have sent others that we didn’t know about.”

  Isabel pursed her lips, narrowing her green eyes at Lyla. After a moments silence, she said, “A problem for another day. You’ve done well, but the work isn’t over.”

  Isabel planted the torch into the ground, the light from the flame dancing across the figures that lay around them. Lyla knew what the next part was – preparing the message. She looked over the still bodies of her former colleagues. Talghar – that ridiculously proportioned body seemed flat now. Aloise – no more than three years older than any of them but who had had a motherly nature all the same. Sagar – quiet, discreet but always ready to help whoever needed it. Urien – loud and brash, covering the soft vulnerability beneath that he thought he hid so well. And Danyll. Tender. Gentle. She would never share his bed again.

  She had been with the squad for two years, but they remained colleagues more than friends. Even Danyll. They may have shared a bed at times, but that was all. They never shared their hopes or their dreams or their memories. Not for lack of trying. She had wondered if the rest had had similar experiences to her. Were they orphans too? Did they know their families before joining the program? They had never wanted to discuss it. They were soldiers of the Empire. They went where the Empire said. Did what the Empire needed them to do.

  There was something in her eyes. A little dirt perhaps. She brushed it away.

  “I’ll leave them to you,” Lyla said. “I’ll move the others.”

  Isabel simply nodded. She didn’t linger on it, but there was a look in her eye that she knew. Lyla had a final glance at her former squad and turned away. She recalled her training. Only the mission mattered. She bent down and lifted the limp body of the servant girl to her shoulder. She walked over to another body – a soldier. As she picked him up to her other shoulder, she briefly wondered if she should have removed his armour. She really didn’t need the extra weight on her.

  She sighed as she activated her [Shadowstride] and burst west through the forest, trees blurring past her as she ran at impossible speeds. It would cost her most of her stamina for the six or seven trips she would need, but she expected to sleep after they were done here. Plenty of time to recover.

  She shot through gaps in the trees that seemed too small, branches whipping at her face, scratching at her hands. In moments, woods gave way to open grassland. With the lack of obstacles, she was able to push herself a little harder, a little faster. The two bodies bounced on her shoulders as her boots hammered across the ground, kicking up mud and grass behind them, air cutting at her face.

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  Tarnov appeared in the distance, eerily quiet and dark. Fifteen miles covered in less than five minutes. Five hundred metres from the town’s walls, she slowed, dumping the bodies in the low grass. She briefly glanced at the town, but she was far enough away that even if the city guard were watching, they’d see nothing. The moon wasn’t out tonight. She turned and sped back to where Isabel waited.

  She made the trip five more times. Two more servant girls, eight more soldiers – minus the armour. She’d learnt from the first trip. It seemed a small thing, given her strength and abilities but never make things harder than they needed to be.

  Isabel joined her on the final trips, bringing the bodies of the Delta squad with her, along with some swords and several wooden shafts to be used as torches so the City Guard would be able to see the message at this time of night. Dawn was still a few hours away.

  As Lyla dumped the last two bodies, she dropped to the soft ground a few metres from where Isabel began her grisly work. Lyla stretched out her legs as she rested on her hands and took long, deep breaths as she recovered some of that lost energy. She definitely needed that sleep. Maybe she’d get to have a meal and a hot bath first, too. Or maybe that was hoping for too much. Who knew what Elliott or Isabel had in store for her? He might send her on that mission immediately. The one that might cost her her life. She laughed quietly to herself. Every mission she’d ever had might have cost her her life.

  “How long have you known Elliott?” she asked Isabel, as the maid unsheathed that monstrous axe. She avoided watching what Isabel did next. The Delta squad might have only been her colleagues. Nothing deeper than that. But they had spent two years together, watching each other’s backs. Lyla was just fortunate to not be part of the message Isabel was preparing.

  “Just over a hundred years,” Isabel answered as she brought her axe down. Lyla looked towards the town. A century? Isabel and Elliott looked no older than herself.

  Such longevity among humans was rare though she had been told to expect her own age to be extended. It was related to their individual power she was told. Starforged would live longer and the stronger they became, the more that could be extended. The problem was gaining that strength.

  “How old were you when you met him?”

  There was a moment of silence as if Isabel was thinking. Lyla didn’t want to glance around and kept her back to Isabel. She heard her raise the axe again and heard it come down with a thud into the dirt.

  “I was eight when he found me.”

  That caught Lyla’s attention. Isabel had been a child too. “Where did he find you?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Just interested,” Lyla responded. She didn’t need to know to work with them…or rather, for them, but she didn’t want colleagues. She wanted friends. She wanted a place.

  There were some squelches from behind her. The odd grunt from Isabel.

  “What’s your story?” Isabel asked her instead. “How did you end up in this line of work?”

  “I was forced into it. I was raised with other children, trained, made a weapon. A soldier of the Empire. That’s my story.”

  “You never knew your family?”

  “No.”

  “This squad of yours was the same?”

  “I don’t know. I think so, but we never spoke about it.”

  “You didn’t care to know?”

  Lyla kept her eyes on the town. Those squelches from behind her were rather distracting and she was fighting to not turn around and see what Isabel was doing.

  “I did, but they didn’t care to share. I only ever had two people that I could call my friends. But I haven’t seen them in almost a decade. They had the same story as me. Never knew their families. Never knew their parents. Just raised from birth to become soldiers for the Empire.”

  “Did you share this with Elliott?”

  “Yes. Not the bit about the two friends. That didn’t come up.”

  “Did you share it before he agreed to let you join us?”

  Lyla thought back to the conversation she’d had. “I think so. Does it matter?”

  Silence. Then a thud as the axe came down on the dirt behind her. Another squelch.

  “He found me in a warehouse,” Isabel said finally. “Along with other children. He was almost sixty by then. Already quite powerful. If you hadn’t guessed by now, Elliott eliminates threats. But often times, those threats come with nasty secrets. In my case, it’s not too different from yours. Child trafficking. I’m not sure what it’s like on this world, but the rich and powerful have a disgusting fascination with children where I’m from.

  “I was lucky that he found me.” Suddenly, Isabel laughed. It was a rich laugh, with genuine warmth. “Maybe not so lucky at the time. He had no idea what to do with such young children!” She laughed again.

  “You’re lucky too. If you’re loyal to him, he will become your greatest friend. Your cause becomes his cause. Your enemies become his enemies. Don’t let him down, or you’ll answer to me.”

  Lyla remained silent but slowly nodded. The way Isabel spoke of Elliott, she could feel the connection. It wasn’t loyalty. There was genuine affection there. Genuine love. Familial love. She’d felt it earlier too. When she had been speaking to him with Elsie there. There was something about the doll that mattered very much to Elliott. Elsie was a big reason for her being alive, and Elliott seemed like the kind of man who wanted to make that little doll happy.

  “Who is Elsie?” Lyla asked.

  “That’s for Elliott or Elsie to tell you. Now, come – help me put the torches up. You can do that side, if you don’t want to see.”

  Isabel came over and dropped several of the wooden shafts next to Lyla and gave her a lit torch. Lyla began lighting the other torches, then planting them in the ground around the message Isabel had prepared. She got the briefest glance of it. Of the remains of her former colleagues. A small pain shot through her heart at seeing them. Perhaps they weren’t just colleagues to her.

  Then she saw Isabel planting torches on the other side of the message. She had been a child like her, thrust into a terrible position. Lyla had felt a brief connection with her over their shared stories, but she did wonder whether she had swapped one tyranny for another.

  “Would Elliott let you live your own life?” Lyla asked, as she continued arranging the torches in a circle around the bodies.

  “Yes,” Isabel answered. “Elliott values one thing above all others. That you choose your own path. I’m not with him because I have to be. I’m with him because I choose to be.”

  Lyla liked the sound of that. She had chosen to follow Elliott. Those two friends she had spent her childhood with had often questioned their pasts, like she had. Maybe now, she’d finally have the chance to find those answers. For all of them. And maybe at the end of it, she’d get to choose the life she wanted to lead.

  “Done,” Isabel said. Lyla planted her last torch too. She steeled herself and had a look at the message Isabel had prepared. The way the bodies had been arranged. The placement of her former colleagues.

  She remained tight-lipped as she spoke.

  “I think it will work.”

  Discord: