The Hunt

"She likes mysteries huh?"

I shot Lyon a glare as I joined him on the roof. "Shut up before I hit you."

He grinned. "How long before she 'solves' you, huh?" I lunged at him and he playfully dodged before leaping across the small gap between our roof and the ones next to us. "You're getting slow Saph! Age catching up to ya?"

"That a challenge?" I followed his leap and poked him in the chest. "Race you to the bridge?"

His answer was to sprint off across the roofs for a head start. Despite both of us being at a full sprint we were silent, years of training keeping our footfalls light and quick, and even though we were racing each other we still kept our eyes open for any sign of Ceil.

I skid to a halt as Howling Bridge came into view and grabbed Lyon's cloak as he sped passed me. "Hold it!"

"We aren't to the bridge yet," he complained.

"I was thirty paces in front of you Lyon you would have lost anyway."

"Curse you and your daemon powers," he grumbled. "Alright then why did you stop?"

"Did you see signs of him anywhere?"

"No. The man works for Deilos so you would think he'd have quite the entourage."

"Exactly," I motioned for him to follow and jumped off the roof, into an abandoned alleyway. "He should have came here with guards but every time we've seen him he's been alone."

"Do you think he ditches them just to torment us?"

"That or he has a much smaller entourage than we thought."

"Which makes him a lot harder to spot," Lyon crossed his arm over his chest for a moment until his face lit up. "Come with me!"

He grabbed my arm and led me over the bridge that separates the Slums from the rest of Lyca and quickly leapt back onto the rooftops. I continued to follow him, confused but I trusted him enough to wait to ask until we stopped running. Eventually he halted on a roof overlooking Alley Market, a small maze of alleyways that was usually home to shadier business deals.

"And you brought me here because?" I asked and sat down.

He joined me. "There's no way Ceil isn't here on some sort of shady business and this is the shadiest part of town. He's bound to show up here looking for info. I mean it's what we would do."

I couldn't argue with his logic, Alley Market was the best place to gather information as well as getting your hands on things that weren't entirely legal for lower class citizens to have.

"And now we wait," I grumbled and flicked a small piece of debris off the roof. "Its the worst part of the job."

Lyon nudged me with his foot. "Then let's pass the time."

I stared at him suspiciously. "With what?"

"Tell me about Zierra."

"Nope!" I groaned and pulled my knees to my chest, burying my face in my knees. "I am not having this conversation with you."

"And why not? Mysterious girl shows up and you start acting like a teenager? I wanna know what's going on."

"Nothing is 'going on' Lyon. I saved her life and now she wants to hire us. That's it."

"If that's it then why are your ears red?" He laughed and poked the tip of my ears.

"See this why I didn't want to talk about it with you," I swatted his hand away. "I knew you would tease me about it."

"Okay, okay!" He held his hands up in surrender. "I just want to know what it is about her that has you so riled up."

"You're eyes work don't they? Like, you've seen her."

He nodded. "I know she's beautiful, Saph, I'm not blind. Elves are always beautiful though and you've seen your fair share of them, hells you work with one. So what is it about her that's different than the rest."

"Well for starters she's Izafera's daughter," I mumbled.

Lyon paused, his face mirroring the same shock mine had when I found out. "She's the Aeris heir? What's she doing out here?"

"That is a long story and not mine to tell. I'll let her give you all the details on that mess."

"So what else? Because I know you aren't shallow enough to care that she's royalty."

"You're really not going to drop it are you?" I leaned back on my hands and huffed when he shook his head. "She almost died last night. They had her bound and blindfolded but she remained completely calm. She killed three of them before the other three managed to subdue her. Then, when I freed her, she managed to actually disarm me and pin me to the wall with my own dagger."

"Psh! Hells I can do that."

"You're a trained assassin who's worked with me for years and knows my weaknesses. She's never met me before in her life and was blindfolded."

He let out a low whistle. "Alright I'll give her that one. That's impressive," he motioned with his hand for me to continue. "Anything else besides the fact that she can kick your ass?"

I stood. "She caught me off guard, I'm sure I'd win an actual sparring match with her," I helped him to his feet and pointed into the crowd of people. "The rest will have to wait. That cloak is Deilos's colors."

He followed my gaze to a man about Ceil's build wearing a hooded black and gold robe. "He's not alone either."

Standing just a few feet behind him was another cloaked figure, trying to stay far enough out of the way to not be a nuisance but still keeping close enough to jump in if needed. We followed them down an abandoned alley and met with another person, also cloaked.

"You're going to have to tell me what they're saying. My hearing isn't as good as yours."

I focused in on them, relaying what I could hear as soon as I heard it. "Its definitely Ceil, I recognize that holier than thou tone."

"It was risky dropping in on her like that," the mystery figure Ceil was meeting was definitely a man, his deep voice carried and it had an almost animalistic growl to it. "The Mistress of Death isn't an idiot. She will come looking for you."

"Oh I'm counting on it," even though I couldn't see his face I could hear his madman grin in his voice. "I simply want her to know that her secrets aren't as safe as she thinks they are. But we aren't here to discuss me. You were given a job and from what I hear you're not having much luck."

"A couple of my guys had her yesterday but she escaped. They were found dead, one impaled on a damn fence!"

Wait a second!

"We think your quarry came to her rescue."

"Oh I know for a fact she did. I saw them together this afternoon."

"And you didn't capture her?!" His mystery friend growled loud enough to be heard without acute hearing.

"Cease your yelling! Capturing her isn't my job, it's yours. The king needs the elf clans of the northern woods to unite so he can make use of their archers in exchange for them keeping their precious forests. Their princess ran and it's your job to bring her back."

My eyes grew wide as things fit together. "There's no way," I whispered.

"Tell me Hart, are you waiting for her to fall into your lap or are you really this incompetent?"

I stumbled back on the roof a bit. "Its Hart!" I hissed to Lyon who let out a noise of surprised disbelief. "They're working together! I know why Izafera suddenly changed her views. I need to tell Zierra."

I watched as Ceil's bodyguard stalked up to him and whispered something even I couldn't hear into his ear. He glanced back in our direction and gave them a nod before they whipped around and sprinted towards us.

"Shit we've been found out!" I growled.

"Let's split!" Lyon called as he sprinted away. "I'll meet you at the bridge!"

I ran the opposite direction he went and heard the sound of quiet feet behind me. Of course I'm the target. I leapt off the roof, hoping to lose them in the alleys, but was eventually cut off by the hooded figure.

"How did you get ahead of me?" I demanded and drew my daggers.

"I was always faster than you Sapphyre," the voice that came from the figure was familiar and it made my blood run cold.

My daggers fell from my hands but their sound was muffled as my world started to blur and I realized I was crying. The figure lowered their hood and I stared into black eyes that mirrored my own daemonic ones.

"Vivian."

She smirked. "It's been a long time little sister."