Chapter 34 - Lance - Falling

                                    

                                          
The ceremony took a lot out of me. The words came out of my mouth on memory, and the song just...filled me. I heard his voice starting the song long before I did, and that made it hard to not break down and tell someone else to start. It hurt, and when Fauna's voice faded out, I felt completely and utterly alone with the last words. 
I felt alone at the top of the raised stage, flames heating my cheeks while my tears ran in contrast down my cheeks. I felt alone even when there were hundreds of bodies surrounding me on every rooftop, their candles lit in tribute and blown out in the final farewell. 
Everyone stayed until sunrise, even Darius kneeled there all night. At first, I refused to let him come when Fauna told me, but he wanted to pay his respects, wanted to say thank you, so I let him. It's not often that my father was thanked for helping others with their situations, and he deserved one last one before he left. He deserved a lot, but we can only give so much to the dead.
I saw the papers Darius threw into the fire. I don't know what they said or who they were from, but I had a strong guess.
Adeline was the best of us. She became the warm hand we needed when we couldn't feel Mom's. When she told us she was the late Queen, I didn't know what to think. It had been years since the people had last seen her, so no one really pieced it together. The Jades rarely went to hear her stories when she came into town, and only me and my sister got them at the house, but everyone simply loved seeing her in the halls. She became another mother to everyone, so when she died, there was no questioning that we'd perform the ceremony for her. That ceremony had a different melancholy to it than this one. Then, I hadn't known her well enough to really be in mourning for more than a day or two before getting into training again. With this...
My father was a part of my heartbeat. He told me where to go, what to do, taught me how to walk and fight until I couldn't and to even then push my own limits. Seeing the Jade fire lit from the castle sent my stomach plummeting, but I refused to think of what we'd run in to find. I thought the fighting around the keep was bad yet manageable and assumed we would make it out with minimal casualties, but the second that first Jade's face froze when he asked where our father was, I saw it all over again. 
The blood, the empty eyes, the silence, the roaring of my mind, and the iciness of my veins. I sprinted up the stairs begging for him to a singular bruise at the most, untouched at the absolute best. 
I grew up thinking he was untouchable - unbeatable. He sparred with Rykiel and won every time. He fought with grace, precision, and unmatchable strength, and he could see all the loops before they could even be used or considered. How could someone kill a person who would plan for them to come?
To me, a young boy who looked up to the man his father was, I thought he'd live forever, but I also knew better. I watched my mother get torn to bits over and over again, her skin torn, stitched together, and torn again until the white linen sheets were soaked in her blood and her heart finally gave out. I heard her screams until she lost her voice and swore the ground shook every time she did so. When she bled it looked as if it rippled around her. 
I didn't want that feeling back. The helplessness, the living while they don't, the sudden loss of tension in my body when I realize they're gone. I keep defaulting to him. Questions asked of me and what to do next would be handed off to him, leaving me to just listen and learn. Now I have to give the answers, and I feel as though I'm continuously giving them the wrong ones and he's rolling in his grave cursing the day I became his son. 
I sent Blaise off with Fey and the Prince and waited another hour before walking to the flame just to avoid anyone and everyone. There's very little that I had to offer him to burn, but I scavenged my rooms before coming up here and found what I had been looking for. Mother never wrote her songs down and never read a single note, but I did. I used to sneak down to the Melodic Orchestra amphitheater during the day and have the conductor teach me the notes. It'd only be for an hour or two a day, but I memorized what notes matched up with the ones on the piano. He only taught me the basics, enough so I could copy them down onto a paper to later remember. He swore not to tell anyone of our lessons, that he simply appreciated the passion I had for the art. His name was Ezrah, and he helped me write out the notes to a song my father taught me. It wasn't like my mother's long and heartfelt ones. It was an old tavern song that old drunks sing entirely off-key and kilter, but my father secretly showed taught it to me when mother wasn't around.
I didn't just love the song because it was vulgar and didn't make any sense whatsoever, I loved it because he taught it to me. The quick pace that I liked setting made it even better. Mother wasn't there to scold him, but I could still see his inward cringe when I'd sing the vulgar words louder and louder each time. 
If he didn't want me screaming it at the top of my lungs, then he shouldn't have taught it to me.
Since the song was so quick and I couldn't keep track of what notes I was pressing or how fast, Ezrah help me record the notes down. He did ask one day why it sounded so familiar, and my thirteen-year-old ass just smiled wickedly before jumping into the song, my voice bouncing off the walls. He was completely horrified at the beginning, eyes wide and jaw fully dropped. Then he just shook his head and joined in, voice clanging with my own as he riffed off of me on the keys. I knew that I didn't need to write down the song to remember it, but simply looking at the notes scattered on the five lines cheered me up when I needed it. So I grabbed the papers from where I kept them beneath my pillows, replayed the song over and over in my mind throughout the night, and then watched them burn in the fire. In a way, I released both my mother and father into the next life. When mom died, we buried a few of her items with her, but we didn't have anything of true meaning to give. The hidden cabin was only stocked for survival, not a life. We never burned something for her, and tonight I burned my father's favorite song my mother gave me the ability to play. 
I knew Rykiel was waiting for me downstairs, waiting to give me updates and take in new orders. I knew that my father would want me to, but it was another hour of watching the flames wave before I finally walked away. The house was quiet, everyone getting in a few hours of sleep before they had to take their shift. The lights will stay dark until dusk is in full swing again, and just staring into the gloom had my eyes burning again. It felt as if the walls themselves were mourning the loss of its builder.
I got through another two hours of trying to find space for the few hundred assassins that returned home. Those who have family in the city will stay there when they need rest and come back for their shifts and training. Others will be sharing rooms both underground and on the levels of the keep we can squeeze them in. More can be put into the abandoned rooms of the inn or pay for a room of their own. I know the owners of the building, and though their customers may not like it, they'll house us. I'll send them a few thank you goods to them for their kindness, but they've always been kind. My father never really told me why our neighbors were so quick to offer a lending hand in housing assassins of all people - let alone the most highly trained, and I never really thought to ask or do my own digging to find out. 
After the headache my father also passed on to me, I met Reynald and Julyan at the front gates. Reynald is a skilled spy, able to get in and out without being noticed or acknowledged while he does so. He'll be tasked with shadowing Charles to see if he can come up with any evidence of our suspicions. He's one I've always kept an eye on simply because I didn't need him sneaking up on anyone as Rykiel does. He's hard to miss too with his bright eyes and mocha colored hair that's streaked with bolts of blonde. Hard characteristics to forget, and yet he has a way of hiding it all. Even as he waited in the morning sunlight that put a spotlight on the keep, his eyes looked dark and his hair turned to mist beneath his hood. 
Julyan, on the other hand, had his hood down and lounged on the steps with his face turned toward the warmth. His appearance is so welcoming that you can't help but be drawn to it, especially once you find out he's got a sense of humor that sometimes turns into a flea on your skin. Despite his friendliness, however, Julyan's like another Will with his skill for torture, but the difference is that Julyan's loyalty is unquestionable. He actually doesn't like torturing and making people scream, but he's downright good at it. He may run to the bathroom to hurl his guts after he's done with someone, but he's never once held back. If I can trust any two people to not stab us in the back, it's Reynald and Julyan. They've never given me or my father a reason to doubt their loyalty, and Rykiel holds them both in high regard. 
I never really connected with anyone growing up aside from my sister and Will. Everyone else was either too scared, or too smart to try. A few did, but it never lasted long. With the masks and the clear boundaries my father set around us, friendships weren't really within full reach between assassins conditioned to learn the ins and outs of anyone and everyone. They saw the masks and told stories about scars or shameful deformities our father never wanted people to see. A missing lip, a snipped nose, a half-mutilated cheek, or an absent jawline. The list went on, and the more we heard added to it, the more my sister and I accepted our lonely fate. 
Reynald and Julyan were mixed between mine and my sister's ages and we often saw them within training and about the keep, but they had their own friendships, and we had each other. Before today, we only spoke when the time asked for it, which is why I had to make my choice based of off the words of those I have spoken to and trusted. Which is hard considering my trust is thin and weary. But they swore into the Jade Assassins and they know code, but in case they forgot, I reminded them of it before we jumped into the sewers and made our into the castle through the tunnels. 
I knew they were memorizing each turn and mapping out where we were in correspondence to the streets above, but it wouldn't matter. Not yet, anyways, and hopefully never. They had their assignments and I gave them leave to get their familiarity with their new location before they found their tasks and made my job easier. Not that it feels easier. If anything, it feels like I'll be getting less sleep. 
When Darius and Fey told me about Eleanor and Charles, I didn't exactly believe them at first. Then Darius mentioned how Lord Roland left with a limp that no one knows how he got and the Eleanor managed to stay behind, and I looked into it. We can't be entirely sure, and as much as my sister puts her faith in Darius, I still needed more proof. I wasn't going to start my first days as...as the Jade King taking leaps I didn't know I could land. 
Julyan will be taking over inspecting people's mouths for the poison, disguised in the stupid bulky guard uniform. Gods I hated that thing. It was thick and let no air in whatsoever. If I have to put those shitty pieces of metal on again, I'm going to scream. Loudly. Not to mention that my sister is never going to let that go.
I saw the orphans the same time she did having spotted them while I tried not to shift in my seat for the hundredth time. I recognized them from when they were given a loaf of bread to share by a baker. They looked curious as to what the commotion was about, but I could see the way the eldest kept her hands close to her siblings. When she and Darius walked up to them, I wasn't sure what was happening. I went to go ask the Queen, but she was smiling proudly at the sight and I held my tongue. She had that smile all throughout the day as they played in the flower fields. I had a smile of my own watching as my sister talked with Roseia. We were about to have a shitty night, and still, she smiled and laughed. It's what my father would be wanting her to do, and for that, I thanked the Gods that they did, even if it was hard for me to do so.
When I got back to the castle and found Mira and Levi smiling and Claritia showing Roseia how to knit, I couldn't help the smile that came. More joy, more smiles, more laughter that pushed away the sorrow and weight. The Dozen were all inside as well. Alex and Alister were trying to juggle apples of their own, failing miserably when they ended up chucking one at each other. Mira and Levi laughed harder when they chucked their second apples at Mal and Ozzie talking in the corner. The children thought a game had started, but the teenage idiots were being bad influences and starting a fight much like the younger siblings would be having over a stolen toy.
"How is it that my sister left you three orphans, and you ended up with five children?" I ask Kat as I take a seat next to her. I had been watching her too as she contented herself with patching up a piece of cloth. Her needlework is that of someone well practiced in fixing up messes not of her own making. 
She waves a lazy hand to the children both short and tall that now sprint in circles around us. "Oh, this is nothing. I care for about eight others on top of this on normal days."
"I'm guessing that one of them is my sister?"
"I'm fairly sure it's eight because of your sister. She brings them all at ease when she's not being an asshole."
"What's that like?" I joke, watching as Gabe throws Mira in the air before catching her and doing it again at her request.
"What's what like?" Her hands pause their unwavering woven patterns and she looks at me with a drawn face and pinched brow.
"Seeing my sister when she's not being an asshole?"
She laughs, shaking her head while keeping an eye on Levi as he gets chased by Ethan and Al. The meager fight forgotten, they now play a game of chase. "It's...not as fun," she admits. "I'd prefer she makes snark comments and speak with brutal honesty. I know that no one may ever admit to it, but things have changed since you and her came along – in a good way. Darius and his friends seem to smile more, Thomas has finally stopped being so guarded when people are around, the castle feels safer with guards around every corner and not just in the main halls, and the Queen...she doesn't seem so scared to have the baby now."
"What do you mean?" I glance at the strong woman I've come to know. Her gentle fingers hold Roseia's as they make another knot with the string. Nearly nine months pregnant and she still refuses to be put on bed rest. She never led on to fearing for her child's life aside from that one moment in the garden when she asked me what I'd do to protect her family, nor have either of us brought it up as if too scared that doing so will truly will it into being. 
  Kat sets down her threaded needle and cloth on her lap, watching Roseia do the next knot on her own. "Well before you came, she tried asking Siscilla if she could somehow delay the birth. I'm not sure why, but she just seemed so afraid of what would happen if she didn't give the King another son. He'd never hurt her, never has, but she still hates the idea of letting him down. Now...now she's been begging Siscilla to try and speed up the pregnancy. She wants to see her child's face and treasure it, no matter what gender it is. She's happy. Safe."
"And what of you?" Her wistful expression contorts back into confusion. I've seen Kat become more of herself around everyone over the passing days, but there's a difference between seeing things, and someone telling you what's really changing or blossoming within them, and I want to hear her say it. I think a part of her needs to hear her say it too. "Has my sister changed you?"
"Oh, she's changed me alright." She purses her lips and adverts her eyes from me again, as if admitting it is some sort of shameful thing. I go to tell her it's not, but then she continues. "I'm not as afraid to speak up then I was before, and having her tell me that I could go to her for anything – for safety, a shoulder to cry on, a hand to hold, or for advice – it really made me feel like I could finally breathe for once. Like I didn't have to hold my breath when someone walked into the room or looked at me when I walked through the halls. I'm...I'm the person I always wished I could be but was always afraid to rise to the surface. The unpredictability was frightening, so much so that it kept me in my shell, safe from the potentiality of doing it all wrong. Now I live for the adrenaline rush of it all. Now, I live without questioning it and me."
I took a few minutes to let her words sink in. Thought about how we came here to protect and defend ourselves and somehow found ourselves slowly finding the meaning to friendship again instead. There are so many walls that we've built to keep ourselves separated from the outside world and focused on the mission at hand. We've cut ourselves off from letting courselves try and find more joy in our dark world, and it's been slowly tearing away at us. Listening to Kat talk, I realized that it's not the loss of my parents and love that makes the abyss pulse within me, but the lack of bliss and ecstasy we didn't grant ourselves to mend it.
Watching as Kat now finds herself living the life she had only dreamt of living before, I let my walls fall. I let the comfort of the Queen and Siscilla's words from two nights ago sink in entirely. I remember how I thought I'd be going straight to bed and alone, only to have found myself being supported by two women and visited by a third who was so strong she could do anything her heart desires. I feel my heart sink with the thought of Kat standing on the temple's roof, and her falling forward with nothing but the ground to stop her from continuing to descend. My chest heaves when I think about how I nearly let the death of my father leave Fauna in this world alone. Darius and the Dozen would be there to keep her from falling into darkness, and I'm grateful for the friendship they've given her, but I would've left her if grief had overrun me - if Siscilla and Claritia and Kat hadn't been there.
It made me feel things I hadn't felt in a while as I watched my little sister chase everyone in those tunnels with her tangled hair and wild grin, and I knew that those broken pieces of her were slowly healing just as they were slowly healing for me. Before I walked in to find her looking hilariously like a wet dog, I had pulled Kat aside while everyone ran into the sitting room. I waited for the laughing to start before turning to her.
"You know that you can come to me too, right? If you needed something." She opened her mouth to say something, then closes it, changing her mind. "I may not be my sister, but I don't break promises either." She nodded, her eyes not meeting mine. It was a sorry effort at trying to gain more of her trust, but I needed her to know. 
I nodded to myself and started walking towards the laughter before someone noticed we were missing. I made it to the couch before her hand grabbed mine. When I turned, I found her eyes glossy. Then I felt another thing I didn't think I'd feel after my father's funeral. My head cleared, my attention instantly, singlehandedly on her. She was crying which meant she was in pain, and I hated seeing her in pain. I hated it so much it woke that dark and calm place within me that began numbing my senses, pushing aside pain and grief. In that moment, I would've held a knife to my sister's throat if she had threatened Kat in any way, and that scared me most of all because I didn't know what it meant.  
Her eyes fell to where her hand still held mine before she could notice any of it. "Promise me something," she whispered, voice shaky. It felt like an earthquake took root in my chest.
"Anything," I swore.
"Don't let me jump."
I turned fully toward her, now concerned for an entirely different reason. I tried lowering my head so that she'd look at me, but she shut them closed. "Kat."
"I'm just...having nothing to live for and still keep waking up day after day with nothing but my own thoughts...it's hard to live like that." Tears started slowly falling, and it hurt to have to hear the next words. "Every day I think about...I've had no one to talk to, no one to teach me how to stay standing when all I want to do is fall. I've been alone. And with you and your sister and everyone in that room now telling me that I'm not...I don't know why, but the thoughts now run through my head every time I feel happy because it doesn't feel real - it doesn't feel like something I should have - and I don't want that. I don't want to do it, but I don't know how to turn it all off and it's highly overwhelming and disgusting and I want it to stop so I can feel happy without something in the back of my mind telling me it's fake and I don't deserve it and...and I'm sorry. I'm dumping this on you and it's stupid and I just want to be happy - really happy, it's just...impossible."
Her shoulders slumped in utter defeat, and suddenly I was looking in a mirror of hopelessness.
She was broken when she was three years old, and no one has bothered to try and pick up the pieces. Sure I lost my mother at nine, my love at seventeen, and my father two days ago, but I still had people there to keep me grounded. I still had my sister who was so stubborn that she'd pull me out of bed when I had been locked in my room for days. I had my father and Mary and Adeline to say goodnight to. Even two nights ago I had people come from the most unlikely of places to tell me that they were there. But Kat...she didn't have anyone. She had that small room she grew up in, and her own thoughts telling her that she was worthless, and for that – for all the pain that she's lived alone with for fourteen years, I wrapped my arms around her and prayed that I was perhaps enough for her. I sure as shit didn't feel like it. 
Her arms didn't go back around me since they had been pinned between our chests, but I didn't need them to be. The hug felt like a rather pathetic attempt at comfort, and I struggled to come up with something else that might make her understand. As someone who rarely trusts in another, I know that actions prove what words can only ever weakly claim, but until I could prove to her through my actions enough times for her to see how I feel, I had the only thing my sister and I trade in for real value.
"If you fall, I promise to catch you. Every time. For as long as you need."
Promises are soul binding to me and my sister, and a promise never felt to easy and so right than the one I gave Kat.
We stayed like that for a while. The sound of the room next door quieting making us pull apart. I knew that I had done the right thing in making that promise when I saw the small flicker of light in her eyes. Since then, she's been constantly glancing at me as if making sure I'm still there and that I won't go back on my word. It's funny to watch her look up, look back down, then slightly panic and look back up again. The Queen's been pretending like she doesn't notice, but she's slid knowing looks in my direction a few times. Looks, I pointedly ignore and pretend not to notice myself. I walked away for two minutes to use the bathroom, and when I walk back in I find them both staring at me wide-eyed. Claritia puts her face carefully back in neutral, but Kat still looks like she's seeing a ghost.
"What?"
"Nothing. We were just talking." Claritia says, going back to knitting her blanket.
"I should um, I should go. I should go," Kat repeated as if needing to convince herself. "Clarice might breed – I mean need, me." She stands quickly, giving Claritia a glare before walking out fast enough to make me nervous.
I debate going after her but choose against it when I hear her say Thomas's name and his usual quiet reply. As long as she's not alone. "You going to tell me what that was all about?" I ask the Queen, taking a seat on the couch.
Her eyes never lift from her work once. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Mmmhmm."
  I look back at the doors, listening to try and hear through the foyer and the hallway to where Kat may be. Nothing comes, but I sit in the chair the rest of the night wondering about how someone as strong willed and outspoken as Kat was ever so silent and unnoticed in the castle. I don't know how anyone could miss her, but she was dulled at a young age. The thought of her being brought here and told that her childhood was over before it began ran stakes through my gut. Someone as lively and bright and...beautiful as her should be allowed to embrace and embody it and show it without shame. 
  I'm not entirely sure when it all changed, but Katarina has become the brightest thing in the room. Even now as she's gone and the Queen distantly hums a song while the fire crackles, the needle and thread she left on the table seem to glow with something I can't place. Not even the center of the fire seems as blinding, and it warms me more than it too. 
  Staring at the thin and pointed metal, my awe turns into something else. 
Fear. 
Because I've felt this more than once, and every time I've felt it, it's torn me more than patched me up - or sewn me together. I've been injured more times from this feeling than I have any weapon or fist. Years I've spent carefully avoiding it and living up to the rumors and title of the Sinister Fox, just remind myself of what being anything else can cause. Pain. Loss. 
My father is gone, a warning one of his last words. My sister is all I have left and I am now in charge of over five hundred other lives outside of this castle. Only hours ago I burned the last of my father away, my eyes puffy from crying and throat sore from sobs while my body ached from a night mourning in the cold. I should be empty and running on nothing more than the reminder that I have a duty to uphold and a sister to protect. My sister should be the strongest motivator and the biggest wholehearted feeling of love I should be feeling. Yet despite it all, and far more impacting than Claritia and Siscilla's words, Kat has given me hope for the future, and hope is just as strong and just as brutal as love, and for me - for my sister and I - hope is far more dangerous. 
That's why I fear what Kat pumps in my veins and shines in my vision because I've felt hope and I've felt its absence and I don't want it to go this time. I don't want her to go.
I'm not sure I'd survive it.