Chapter Text
“How can we take vengeance for an act that never happened? Ye have to call it off.” Rayla pressed.
His mind was already racing. They couldn’t . They were bound to take vengeance for a death, but if the original victim was not yet dead, their mission was impossible. They would fail tonight, no matter what actions they took, because their task could not be completed.
“Rayla, you know it doesn’t work that way. We bound ourselves. There’s only one way to . . .” Runaan broke off. There was only one way for them to release themselves. If the victim they fought for called off the mission, then -
“Runaan, please,” Rayla begged. “There has to be another way. This is a miracle, a chance for peace!”
Peace? “The humans struck down the King of the Dragons,” Runaan snapped back. “And stole his only egg. What chance is this for peace?”
“Because we want to give it back,” The small boy holding the egg replied before Rayla could, gray eyes wide and earnest. “If we bring the egg back to its mother, maybe she won’t be angry anymore! We can have peace again.”
He was just young and naive enough to believe it, too. “No. Give me the egg. We will take it back to Xadia ourselves.”
“Nope. Sorry. The gesture that matters is if it comes from us.” The older boy argued, though as Runaan bared his fangs he saw his gloved hands shaking. “We want to do this. To make up for what our people have done to the dragons.”
This was rapidly going sideways. Rayla couldn’t stop him, but she could slow him down long enough for the boys to escape with the egg if he tried to take it by force. Aside from that, if anything happened to the egg and the Dragon Queen discovered they had not recovered it, her wrath would come down on Moonshadow Forest as well as Katolis. It had to make it back to Xadia. Worse, it had to at least leave the castle with these human children.
They would have to leave the king alive to make it work. If they killed only him the news would reach Xadia before they could return, and the consequences for the assassins’ families could be severe. No sending the shadowhawk, then. If the mission simply was postponed, the dragons would at least wait for the next full moon before they reacted, assuming something had delayed their journey.
“Runaan, listen,” Rayla pleaded again.
“Wait here.” He said shortly. “I will gather the others. This . . . changes things.” He glanced over the children, one frightened but too naive to understand what danger he was in, one terrified, and then-
He turned away from Rayla’s face and added the rest over his shoulder. “A vote must be taken. Stay here. Stay hidden.” He leaped back up onto the crenelations and ran for Andromeda’s pathway.
Runaan sent Andromeda to fetch the others and fell back to Rayla’s position. He could not risk her trust in him failing, and her bolting again. Luckily, she and the human children, and the precious dragon egg they carried, all remained where he had left them. For once.
The other assassins weren’t far behind, and when he spotted the shades begin to approach, he showed himself again, dropping onto the rampart path with her. He stood across from her as before, but faced the approach of the other assassins. He did not draw his weapons. They would know not to attack.
“What is this?” Callisto was the first to speak, shimmering back from Moonshadow form on a crenelation just ahead of the human children.
“Is that what it looks like?” Andromeda asked in awe, her eyes already fixed on the dragon egg as she landed on Rayla’s other side.
Skor landed in a crouch and his eyes fixed on Rayla, his teeth bared, but he didn’t move towards her. Ram landed beside him and ignored her entirely. “You can’t just disrupt the entire plan once it’s already begun, Runaan. It’s a path to failure.”
“No plan survives direct contact with the enemy.” Runaan replied dryly. “And circumstances have changed. Dramatically.” He gestured at the egg. “Rayla, tell them what you told me.”
“Me?” Rayla almost yelped, but she gathered herself when he raised an eyebrow at her, and turned to the other assassins. “The egg of the dragon prince wasn’t destroyed. It was stolen. These human princes found it and now they wish tae return it in hopes of makin’ amends for what was done, an’ foundin’ a new era of peace. We can’t take vengeance for an act that never happened, we have tae help them get the egg home to its mother!”
To its mother.
Runaan’s lips thinned, thinking of the same thing he imagined Rayla was, and the betrayal of the girl’s own mother, which had led to all this. “She is right,” He said firmly before any of the others could reply. “No matter what actions we take tonight, we will fail. We are bound to take a life for a life. If the death we avenge has not yet happened, the life we take is not an exchange. We will not be unbound.”
The other assassins exchanged glances, and Skor finally shimmered back from Moonshadow form to press his lips into a thin line. Ram jumped down from the crenelations. “So we kill the king, and then take the egg back to Xadia.” He said, eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“We would rather you didn’t,” The older prince said, and Callisto’s mouth twitched up at the corner.
Runaan shook his head. “No. If we kill the king and word reaches Xadia that we completed only half our mission, and abandoned the rest, you know the price our families will pay.” He met Ram’s gaze until the boy dropped it, eyes widening with realization. “Likewise, if word reaches the dragon queen that we did not recover the egg when we had the chance, consequences could be far worse.”
“So why not just take the egg back ourselves?” Callisto asked practically. “Why do we need the extra weight? They’re children. They won’t be able to travel as fast as we can. They’ll slow the whole mission down.”
“Perhaps. But they believe they can make amends for what was done to the Dragon King, and Rayla believes in their cause.” Runaan said, and looked at each of them in turn. “And she may not be able to stop us. But she can hold us here long enough for them to escape with the egg - or at least raise the alarm to ensure that we fail at all of it.”
“She wouldn’t.” Andromeda said, but her brows were furrowed.
Rayla flicked open her butterfly blades, her face hardening. “Care tae gamble on that?”
“Having the human children with us would provide an advantage movin’ back through Katolis.” Callisto said without quite looking at anyone.
“What possible advantage could there be in that?” Ram demanded.
Skor looked through his hair at Callisto and bared his fangs. “We don’t. Take. Hostages.”
Callisto shook their head. “No. We don’t. But they don’t know that.” He looked up at Runaan. “We have willin’ volunteers to make confrontation we have on this side of the border easier.”
Runaan nodded. “We do not judge. We do not decide right and wrong. We take life only when it is necessary to prevent greater evil. The king in that tower has committed a terrible crime, but if we kill him now, when this egg lives, and fail to bring it home, we bring down the wrath of both human kingdoms and the dragons upon our home. I believe our best course of action is to assist the human princes in their gesture of peace, for now. If we lose too much time . . . we may reevaluate.”
“We’ve got a week.” Skor said flatly.
“He has a point,” Andromeda said with a frown. “We didn’t even make the trip here in a week with just the six of us. How will we make it with those two slowing us down?”
Callisto tilted their head and jumped down to the ramparts. “Then it may be useful to us to bring them, even if the peace doesn’t work.” He said, and shrugged when they all looked at him. “To carry the egg.” He added with a meaningful flex of his wrist, where the assassin’s binding was already fitted where it had been loose.
“I believe our best course of action is to leave.” Runaan said bluntly. “We cannot risk losing time or resources in an attack. We take the egg and the children and bring them back to Xadia as quickly as possible, to minimize the damage this disaster may cause, for dragons, humans, and Moonshadow elves alike.”
“You’ve always led us well.” Callisto said simply, meeting his gaze, and then looked over at Rayla. “And what Rayla’s found here changes things. We took an oath. That oath is impossible. Our only path to freedom for our people at home is to make certain this egg gets back to the Storm Spire.” Callisto took a long, deliberate breath, and met Runaan’s gaze again, and presented their bound hand as they had when they took the oath. “My breath for freedom. I am with you, Runaan, and Rayla.”
Runaan nodded, something in his core eased at having one of his most trusted warriors at his side. Callisto had served as his second on this mission and would continue to do so. He turned his gaze to the next noise, a rustle from Andromeda.
She was looking at Rayla, and then the egg, and shook her head in disbelief. “I pledged my eyes for truth,” She said simply. “This is the truth. We have to make sure the world knows it. I am with you, Runaan, Rayla, Callisto.”
Skor finally jumped down from the crenelations, the last of the company to do so. He looked at Rayla, then at the egg, and finally to Callisto. His face did something complicated there before he looked back to Runaan. “I swore my strength for honor. These boys will honor the dragons with this, or we all die trying. I doubt your motivations, Runaan. I doubt their convictions. But if this works?” He shook his head. “Then perhaps some humans have honor in their hearts after all, and we can work with that outcome. I am with ye.”
Runaan nodded slowly. He had expected nothing less. Skor was one of the oldest assassins in the Silvergrove aside from himself, and his trust was hard-won, his loyalty even harder. He was proud to have attained it, enough to make this work - and fortunate. If Skor had fought back, he was strong enough to have proved a real problem.
He turned his gaze to the last member of their group. Ram stood slightly apart from the rest of them, and the young assassin’s gaze moved openly towards the king’s tower before lowering to them. “I pledged my blood for justice .” Ram growled. “There is no justice to that king being left alive after what happened to the King of Dragons.”
“A life for a life? Is that justice?” Rayla protested, and took a few more steps towards him.
“If you kill him, it just becomes a cycle,” The older prince argued, more firmly than she did, and Runaan’s interest in the boy grew. “The humans strike back again, and then so do you, and it never ends! We have to stop this, and it starts with getting this egg back to where it belongs.”
Ram bared his fangs at them and looked at Runaan with a challenge in his eyes.
Runaan shook his head. “It’s too risky to start that fight. If we are to recover the egg, we must leave. Quickly. His justice can come later. But Ram, life and death are a cycle - but life must always come first.”
Ram glanced toward the egg again when Runaan gestured at it, and his clenched fists slowly eased. He closed his eyes and let out a slow breath. “My blood for justice.” He said slowly, but he nodded when he opened his eyes again. “I am with you.”
“My heart for Xadia.” Rayla agreed, and looked to Runaan hopefully. “So we’re doin’ this? All of us, together?”
“Yes.” His heart ached seeing how eager she was to have them all on her side, as if this were a game she were excited to play. There was a new depth in her eyes now, though. She knew what she had risked for this. “We will need to slip out undetected. Andromeda, Skor, Ram, retreat the way you came in. Callisto, find us an exit the children can traverse. You, Rayla and I will guard the egg and the princes.”
“Oh, we can just go down through the halls and leave through the courtyard.” The older prince said. “All the guards are pretty focused on the tower right now. There’s no one down there.”
No one? At all? He’d encountered no guards on his entry path, either. Runaan frowned. “Has anyone seen guards outside of the tower?” He asked suspiciously.
“No.” Callisto was the only one who replied verbally, but all the assassins shook their heads.
Alarm bells rang in the back of his mind. What angle was this? Was this a trap to begin with? Why wouldn’t the humans be trying to block every entry point? “Rayla, when did you enter the castle?”
“Oh, uh, I dunno?” Rayla answered, clearly caught off-guard by the question. “An hour or so before sundown, I think? Maybe a little longer.”
“There was still sunlight and you saw no guards ?”
“Yeah. I thought that was a bit weird.”
Weird indeed.
“I can, maybe clear this up.” The older prince - Runaan really needed to use his name - said. “The Crownguard are concentrating where they know you’ll hit the hardest. They don’t think they can stop you from getting in, spreading out to cover the entrances will spread them too thin. They’re just all blocking one location instead.”
It still didn’t feel right, and Runaan was inclined to distrust humans’ word on anything, but he had nothing else to go on. “Go.” He said shortly to the trio he had sent ahead. “But stay on high alert. Do not engage. Just leave. Meet us at camp.”
They nodded, and split up. Andromeda dropped back down into town, and Skor and Ram darted to other stretches of the wall. Callisto looked to Runaan with a quirked brow. “We’ll likely not be able to slip through the halls unnoticed. Especially not you.” They pointed out.
“We’ll go down through the halls. I’ll keep an eye on the humans.” Rayla volunteered. “We’ll meet ye in the courtyard below.”
Well, she struggled with orders, but she rarely failed at things she’d volunteered for. Runaan nodded shortly. “We will meet you there. Move quickly.”
She nodded, and turned to usher the human children back inside. Callisto gave him a look that Runaan firmly ignored as he turned to the castle walls again and aimed for the courtyard. She would succeed in this. While she had violated his trust, and his orders, she believed in this, and so he believed she would do it. It had nothing to do with his soft heart, no matter what Skor or Callisto might think.
Fortunately, the other assassin remained silent as they followed on Runaan’s heels. Whatever they thought of his agreement, they would not discuss it here.