How I Accidentally Built a Kingdom

Later that night, Daniel and I were sitting on the bed in our room.

Daniel was sitting on the edge of the bed, with me sitting behind him, resting my chin on his shoulder.

The poor man was clearly shaken by Cat’s words.

"She won’t actually kill you, you know." I said to him, rubbing his shoulders.

"I know that," He said, his voice sounding quite dejected. "I just really wanted your family to like me, but it seems I was quite unsuccessful in that endeavour."

"She’ll come around," I whispered, hugging him from behind again with a slight smile.

"I’ve been trying to figure out what I did wrong for her to hate me like this... but I can’t."

"I mean we only met today, I couldn’t have screwed up so badly in that short time, could I?"

The smile on my face slowly faded away.

The man had probably spent almost the entire time since he left Cat and me alone thinking over every action and word he spoke while he was there.

It had been my fault for not telling him more about our history.

If he had known more about us, he might not have felt like everything was his fault.

"I think it’s time I tell you some more about my past." I said.

"You don’t have to if you don’t want to talk about it." Daniel said, placing his hands over mine.

"No, I want to." I said, turning him by his shoulders so he was sitting cross legged on the bed in front of me.

"First I tell you that Cat isn’t actually my sister," I started. "Not by blood anyway."

"She’s not?"

I only shook my head as an answer.

"Neither one of us knows who our parents are." I said.

So I told him everything.

I told him how Cat and I were orphans who grew up in the same orphanage.

If that’s what it could be called.

Actually it was basically just a training ground for the next generation of top assassins and warriors.

We had been undergoing combat training since we were eight years old.

As soon as we were fifteen years old, we were sold to the highest bidder, as their newest conscripts.

Luckily for us, Cat and I were sold to the same man.

Unluckily for us, the master we had been sold to was the cruel type.

He had a particular fondness for torturing young girls, at least he had kept the amount of torture, and the damage he would do to a minimum.

We were valuable commodities after all.

We were supposed to be his loyal little soldiers.

My darkness affinity had made me the perfect assassin, whereas Cat’s fire affinity had made her the perfect soldier.

The sheer amount of damage she could do on a battlefield quickly made her invaluable to any army she fought for.

Before we had even reached the age of seventeen, we were well known, and feared by all in the kingdom.

The more we killed for our master, and made his enemies fear him, the less he would torture us.

Which of course led to us giving it our all, trying to prove ourselves as valuable as possible just so the torturing would stop.

Eventually we had become so valuable to him that we were even given our own rooms in his mansion.

We were served by his house’s servants like we were the ladies of the house.

We were given only the best of everything, be that clothes, food, education, anything that our hearts desired.

As long as we kept performing our duties to our fullest of course.

The amount of lives we had taken between the two of us was astronomical.

But at least we had made a better life for ourselves.

That was until our master started noticing the changes adulthood had brought to our bodies.

At first it had only been glances, and uncomfortable touches, but soon it became worse.

Much worse.

One night he came to my room in the middle of the night.

He had entered without knocking, walked over to my bed, and pinned me to the bed—

As soon as I reached that part of my story I could see the purest of rage in Daniel’s eyes.

For the first time since I had met him, the look in his eyes actually frightened me a bit.

"What is this man’s name?" Daniel asked, his voice almost freezing my blood. "Where is he?"

I reached out, cupping his cheeks between my hands, forcing his eyes to lock with mine.

"He’s no longer a threat to any young girls." I answered.

I had tried to escape his grasp, but he had been prepared.

Earlier that night, he had had the servants drug my food.

The effects of the drugs kept me from reaching out to my shadows, or even from using most of my strength.

As he was busy ripping my clothes from my body, the door to my room burst into pieces, and there stood Cat.

Fire was running all along her arms.

Her eyes looked like two orbs of blood.

Before the man had even had a chance to react to her sudden presence, she was upon him.

Apparently he had not drugged her, targeting only me that night, because she used all of her strength to pummel him to the brink of death.

After which she grabbed my hand, and we fled from the room.

Just before leaving though, she turned back to him, and he had burst into flames.

As we ran through the mansion his screams of agony had followed us.

That same night we had fled from that kingdom to this one.

Here we had started all over again.

After a while she had opened her luxury soap shop, she had always liked the finer things in life more than I did.

And I had continued being an assassin, this time though I had worked for myself.

Taking only the contracts that I wanted to.

Slowly my reputation had grown into the ’Shadow Killer’.

Until the day Daniel had saved me from the backstabbing retainer of a client.

"And this last client you worked for, who was he?" Daniel asked.

Somewhere through my story he had shifted us to lay down, pulling me into his side, so my head was resting on his chest again.

"He’s a duke of this kingdom." I answered.

"I see."

"His name?"

"Duke Charles." I answered again.

I was so comfortable in his arms at that moment that I slowly started to drift off to sleep.

"Duke Charles," I heard Daniel whisper just before I fell asleep.