Graze Her Heart

Chapter 1

She was crouched in a dark corner of the temple.
Jasmine insence wafted through the air.
A slight smile tilted on her full lips.
Who were they trying to fool? This was about as much as a temple as a brothel was.

Listening for any activity, she moved.

She moved like the breeze. She moved like shadows.
Even if you knew how to look for her, she was invisible.

She was trained to move like that. Never making steps too loud. Never disturbing the air around her with her inaudible, even exhales.
She flirted with danger and embraced the shadows she was raised in.

Gliding from one pool of cool black to another she made her way to a door.
A large heavy teak door. Keeping to her discreet moving, she pressed her ear to the door, listening for sounds on the other side.

Her slight crooked smile reappeared in a flash and disappeared just as quickly.
She had put wolfsbane in the wine this morning. The maids were all too busy trying to avoid drawing any attention to themselves to pay any heed to the young girl.
The entire guard and then some were in a state of coma-like sleep for the next four hours.
She was going to make the most of it.

Nonetheless, anxiety rose up in her. She pushed the fear far within her, so deep she breathed a calm that took years of meditation to achieve, in a matter of seconds.
She was a predator and she was done playing prey.

Her hand gravitated towards the knife she stole from Krenin.
Krenin too, was distracted.
Too distracted trying to bend the girl into steel to realize his own was missing.

Pushing open the door soundlessly, she gave the room a once over. Her line of sight zeroed in on a lump splayed over a large bed in the dead center of the ostentatiously decorated room.

Cringing at the stale scent of wine, she shifted near the man cautiously. Watching his ugly chest move up and down she approached him.

The man was sculpted almost artfully if you ignored the bulge of his stomach, he was comparable to a pregnant body builder. Many of those muscles had worked the girl's punishments. The man had taken her from her home. From her mother. From all she ever loved.

Not willing to take risks, she reached into her pocket. Palming a vial of crushed angel's trumpet, she smiled to herself and delighted in the quiet irony of it all.
The flower was lethal, small, unsuspecting.
Like her.

Covering her nose and mouth carefully with her free hand, she popped the cork of the tube and held it under the mans nose.
The fumes rose with his ridiculously loud snores.
Satisfied the man was put in a permanent coma or hopefully, starting his decent to the raging fires of hell, she reached down to his neck and swiftly cut a cord with her stolen knife.

Clutching the necklace, she backed out of the room.
She closed the door, careful to not make any sounds that sober guards would hear.

Leaning her forehead on the closed door for a moment, she let out a breath she didn't know she was holding in.

She had a plan. An intricate plan of escape, and she was going to make damn well sure it followed through.
Twelve years.
Twelve years of blood, pain, and submission. It gave her the tools to overcome and eliminate the ones who gave those very same tools to her.

Spinning on her heel purposefully, her mahogany eyes clashed with cerulean blue and all her plans flew out the window. Every muscle in her 5'3 frame tensed. Her back straightening and her face falling into indifference by muscle memory.
Show nothing.

A silhouette in the shadows. Her breathing sped slightly before being corrected to its even rhythm. How long was he watching her?

Clothed in black, he looked like he was born of obsidian. But his eyes... His eyes held stars, held constellations, held universes.
And they were staring at her. Like she was a cosmic anomaly.