Chapter 257: Shadow Assassin

The moment my eyes snapped open and my vision clawed its way back into focus—adjusting sluggishly to the dim, smoky light leaking from the fireplace’s dying embers—the situation crystallized into place with horrifying clarity.

My breath caught in my throat—actually seized mid-inhale like someone had physically grabbed my lungs and squeezed—surprise taking hold of me with the grip of a vice as I stared up at the figure straddling my body.

It was Elvina.

She was directly on top of me, knees planted on either side of my hips with enough pressure that I could feel them digging into my ribs through the thin fabric of my dress.

Her face was contorted into an expression of such absolute distress it looked as though someone had taken every negative emotion known to mankind, distilled them into their purest form, then painted them across her face with brutal efficiency.

Rage twisted her delicate features into something almost unrecognizable—lips pulled back to expose teeth clenched so hard I could practically hear them grinding, nostrils flared with each ragged breath, eyebrows drawn together with such force that deep lines carved themselves into her forehead.

But it was her eyes that truly captured the full scope of her mental state. Those emerald depths—which I remembered as cold and calculating during our match—now burned with the kind of fury that suggested rationality had packed its bags and fled screaming into the night, leaving nothing behind except raw, wounded rage that had nowhere to go except outward.

They were bloodshot now, the whites threaded with angry red veins that spoke to hours of crying, sleeplessness, or both, tears still clinging to her lashes in tiny droplets that caught what little light remained.

Her hair had come completely undone, the careful styling she’d once worn reduced to chaos. Wild strands of black spilled around her face in uneven waves, falling like liquid shadow given form, clinging to tear-damp skin and framing those burning eyes in a curtain of darkness.

It lent her a feral quality—less like a composed noblewoman and more like something cornered, wounded, and dangerous in the way only desperate creatures could be.

The careful grooming I’d seen during our match was gone, replaced by tangles and snarls that suggested she’d been pulling at it with desperate hands, some sections matted together while others stuck out at angles that defied both gravity and aesthetics in equal measure.

In her trembling hand—and gods, was it trembling, the motion so pronounced I could see the muscles in her forearm jumping beneath her pale skin—she carried a wicked-looking knife.

The blade was long and curved slightly, designed more for causing pain than quick kills, its edge catching the faint firelight to throw back gleams that looked almost hungry.

She held it pointed directly at my throat, the tip hovering mere centimeters from skin, close enough that each ragged breath she took made the distance fluctuate in ways that sent shivers flooding through my veins.

My first instinct was to move—every survival mechanism in my body screaming at me to dodge, roll, get away from the sharp object currently threatening your jugular—but the moment I tried, panic detonated in my chest with the force of a small explosion.

My limbs wouldn’t respond. Not because I was paralyzed by fear, though that was certainly trying its best to contribute, but because they were physically restrained. I could feel something wrapped around my wrists and ankles, not rope or chain but something cold and wrong.

My eyes darted down to confirm what my body already knew. Magically condensed shadow stretched from the natural darkness cast by the dying fireplace, black tendrils that looked almost liquid wrapping around my limbs with crushing pressure.

They pulsed slightly with each breath I took, tightening fractionally whenever I attempted movement, the magic responding to my struggles with malicious intelligence.

Oh fuck.

The realization hit me with gut-punching force—I couldn’t use my disappearing ability when bound. The displacement into that alternate reality required unrestricted movement, needed my body to slip between planes of existence, but these shadows held me firmly anchored to this specific moment in this specific place with no escape route available.

I grimaced, the expression pulling at muscles in my face as my brain frantically cycled through options and found each one increasingly unhelpful.

Elvina began to speak, though calling it speaking was generous—it was more like stammering punctuated by barely controlled sobs, words tumbling from her lips in a torrent that suggested they’d been building pressure for days.

“You—you destroyed me,” she spat, the words carrying venom that would’ve killed any lesser man through sheer concentrated hatred. “Everything I had—everything I was—you took it all! My reputation, my patron, my dignity, my future—all of it gone because you decided to humiliate me in front of everyone who mattered!”

Her free hand came up to grip the collar of my dress, fingers twisting in the fabric with enough force that I heard a few threads snap. The knife pressed closer, its edge now touching my throat, cold metal making contact with warm skin in ways that made my heart attempt escape velocity.

“You made me into a joke. A cautionary tale. Something people whisper about and laugh at. Do you have any idea what that feels like?! To have your entire existence reduced to entertainment for people who used to fear you?”

She leaned in until our foreheads nearly touched, her face filling my entire field of vision, those emerald eyes boring into mine with an intensity that felt almost physical. “It’s time to exact my revenge. Time to make you pay for what you did to me. Time to—”

I saw my opportunity then—small, desperate, and absolutely guaranteed to come back and haunt me in ways I’d regret for however long I remained alive after this moment. Knowing full well I’d hate myself later, I lifted my head just enough to close the minuscule distance between us, catching Elvina in a kiss that was more invasion than affection.

My lips crashed against hers with bruising force, tongue immediately pushing past her shocked defenses to invade her mouth with the kind of dominance that left no room for interpretation.

I could taste her surprise, her rage, the salt of tears mixed with something bitter that was probably the residue of whatever alcohol she’d been drinking to work up the courage for assassination.

I let myself feel into the moment completely—not because I wanted to, gods no, but because the theft required connection, needed that spark of genuine contact to trigger the exchange.

Elvina’s eyes went impossibly wide, pupils dilating until they nearly swallowed the emerald irises whole, her entire body going rigid with shock before instinct kicked in.

She pulled back violently, sitting up straight enough that her spine cracked audibly, the motion making her weight shift on my hips in ways that would’ve been interesting under literally any other circumstances.

Her free hand flew up to cover her mouth, fingers pressing against lips still wet from our contact, horror flooding her expression as her brain tried to process what had just happened.

The emotion lasted approximately three heartbeats before fury returned with redoubled intensity, her face twisting into something almost demonic as she raised the knife with clear murderous intent.

But it was already too late.

During that moment of contact—while our mouths had been pressed together and her guard had been completely demolished—I’d already stolen her ability.

Shadow magic now threaded through my veins, foreign and powerful, settling into my core with the weight of something that didn’t quite belong but had decided to make itself comfortable anyway. I could feel it responding to my will, eager and hungry, waiting for direction.

Clenching my fists with deliberate focus, I commanded the shadow tendrils binding me to dissipate. They obeyed instantly, dissolving into smoke that curled upward before vanishing completely, freeing my limbs with such sudden totality that I nearly punched myself in the face from the recoil.

Elvina’s expression cycled through confusion, comprehension, then absolute dumbstruck horror as she realized what I’d done. Her mouth opened around words that hadn’t formed yet, the knife beginning its downward arc toward my exposed throat—

I didn’t spare a single second for dramatic posturing or witty one-liners. My body launched upward from the bed with enhanced strength flooding my muscles, propelling me straight at Elvina with enough force to knock the air from both our lungs.

We collided in a tangle of limbs and fury, momentum carrying us off the mattress to crash onto the floor in a heap of thrashing bodies and muffled cursing.

The knife slipped from Elvina’s grip during the fall, skittering across the ground with a metallic clink that sounded impossibly loud in the confined space.

For one heartbeat we both froze, our gazes tracking toward where the weapon had vanished, before instinct overrode conscious thought and we lunged for each other instead.

Elvina tried to summon her shadow magic, her face contorting with concentration as she reached for power that should have answered her call—but I was already moving, my hand shooting out to grip her throat with fingers that dug into soft flesh.

The moment contact was established, I channeled displacement through my palm, feeling the energy surge from my core down my arm to scramble her internal magic with ruthless efficiency.

The effect was immediate. Elvina’s magic shorted out like someone had cut the power, her concentration shattering as conflicting signals flooded her nervous system. Her body went slack for a fraction of a second, muscles losing cohesion as my interference wreaked havoc on her ability to coordinate movement—

Then fury alone smashed through the bodily effects with force I hadn’t thought possible. Her eyes blazed with renewed hatred, rage providing the kind of strength that made normal physical limitations feel like polite suggestions she’d decided to ignore.

She surged back against me with a violence that felt almost supernatural, her hands finding my shoulders to shove with enough power to send me rolling backward.

We grappled across the floor in a desperate tangle, neither willing to give ground, both fighting with the kind of frantic energy that came from knowing this was life or death with no middle option available.

I tried to maintain my grip on her throat but she twisted away, her knee coming up to drive into my stomach with enough force to make me wheeze. My hands scrambled for purchase, fingers catching in her hair before she wrenched her head sideways, nearly taking my fingers with her.

“You ruined me!” she screamed, the words barely coherent through her rage, spit flying from her lips to land on my face. “Everything—everything—I had nothing left and you—you kept going—”

“Give up!” I demanded through gritted teeth, trying to wrestle her arms down while avoiding the wild swings she kept throwing. “Elvina, stop—this won’t fix anything—you’re only making it worse—”

“Worse?!” The word came out as a shriek that probably woke half the theater. “How could it possibly get worse?! You took my patron, my reputation, my dignity—you let that orc use me like—like some—” She choked on the words, fury temporarily stealing her ability to articulate the full scope of her suffering.

We rolled again, knocking into the bed frame hard enough to make the entire structure shudder. My elbow cracked against wood with a spike of pain that made stars dance across my vision, but I couldn’t afford to acknowledge it because Elvina was already moving, trying to pin me beneath her weight. I got one leg up to brace against her hip, using my enhanced strength to shove her sideways before scrambling after her.

“You attacked me first—in the barracks—you terrorized my friends—you—” I gasped out, trying to inject reason into a situation that had sailed past reasonable hours ago.

She snarled back at me, managing to get both hands around my throat before I broke her grip with a sharp twist that nearly dislocated her thumbs.

Her hands scrabbled across the floor then, searching desperately for something, before her fingers found what they were looking for. The knife. It must have slid back within reach during our struggle, metal glinting in the dim light as she wrapped trembling fingers around its hilt.

She couldn’t pull herself to her feet—didn’t have the strength, her body too wrung out from fighting, my displacement, and gods knew how long she’d been awake before attempting this assassination. Instead she sat collapsed on her knees, posture graceless and defeated, before pointing the blade outward in shaking defense.

“You could’ve killed me,” she said, voice breaking around the edges. “During the match—during the fight just now—at least a dozen times you had openings you didn’t take. Why? Why not just—why make me keep living with what you did to me?”

I said nothing.

Emotions rose within Elvina then, building like a wave approaching shore, visible in the way her entire frame trembled, the way her breathing hitched, the way her grip on the knife wavered between attack and collapse.

A few tears—just a few, subtle and somehow more heartbreaking than full sobbing—slipped down her cheeks to drip from her chin.

“I was born into that family,” she began, words tumbling out in a rush. “The Veylith name—do you know what that meant? What they did to me before I even understood what was happening? Those experiments, those rituals, they didn’t just study them—they performed them on their own children to make us better, to make us powerful enough to maintain their legacy.”

She laughed, the sound hollow and broken. “And it worked. I was stronger, faster, my magic more potent than it had any right to be. But the cost—gods, the cost. I was seven when they showed me what souls looked like being ripped from bodies. Nine when they made me participate. Twelve when I realized I’d become something that couldn’t feel normal emotions anymore, just the performance of them.”

The knife shook harder in her grip. “So I leaned into it. Became the monster they created. Hurt people before they could hurt me. Used my position to crush anyone who threatened my security. Mia—” her voice broke completely, “—Mia was just another slave to me. Just another person I could use to prove I was in control.”

She was degrading herself now, words spilling out in a confession that felt almost religious in its intensity. “I’m a whore. A broken, twisted thing pretending to be human. I abused everyone I had power over because that’s all I knew how to do. I deserved what you did to me. I deserved all of it. The humiliation, the exposure, the—the everything!”

The blade moved then, shifting from defensive position to press against her own throat, its edge dimpling her skin without quite breaking through.

“So thank you,” she whispered, fresh tears flowing freely now. “Thank you for showing me exactly what I am. Now let me finish what you started.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep