The King’s head was on a spike. The queen’s and the princesses’ heads were next to his. The pink of their tongues looked embers glowing in an ash-covered piece of coal.
Everyone was cheering.
I imagined all the times that the King stood in that balcony over the public square and spoke to us.
Now a severed head told his story. His graying skull wagged in the breeze as a crow pecked at his eye. A sentinel shooed it away.
I cheered right along with them.
In Solon’s hand is a small golden locket, trimmed with small rubies and amethysts. My family has never been rich. That was the most expensive thing that I ever owned. An angel on a golden chain. My mother’s locket. I pawned it.
“I know who you are and the skills you possess,” Solon says. “I also know your priorities.”
After my parents died, I sold the locket to pay for food for my brother and Kyra. Before I began stealing. Before I had to steal.
My mind races. “But how,” I begin.
“Friend Hawk,” he says, shushing me with a finger in the air. “We have been watching you for some time now. I know your movements and your motives. You are the man we need for a special job.”
I gulp. My life deals in secrets. I have taken it for granted that I operated without anyone knowing. If Solon was watching me, what the guards must know!
“A job?" I ask. "What do you want?”
“It’s not what I want. It’s what we need. Everybody! What everybody needs!” Solon works himself up, stops and takes a deep breath. “We need you to recover the King’s crown and his scepter.”
“The crown and scepter? But why?” I ask.
“There is deep magic within those elements." Solon says. "If we are to right the kingdom, they need to be taken away from the New Guild. Think about it! What makes their rule so powerful? Just money? We have plenty of money, my associates and I, but we cannot control the will of men with it. Sure, we can buy pieces of a man’s loyalty, but we cannot rule based upon it. Neither can they. Not for as long as they have been ruling.”
I’m silenced. Something inside of me shudders at what I’ve just heard. Is there really something deeper at work?
“I can’t help you,” I say. “I have to find a way to save Kyra. I have to get home and take care of my brother.”
Solon looks down. “We tried to get to him before the guards did, but they have taken him as well. They left a note that I have here.”
Kyra's capture punched me in the stomach. This news of my brother kicks me while I am down.
The note reads: “Hawk, you failed to bring the Nyx plant in time. You will not fail this time. Bring it to the meeting place before dawn in three days, or they both will die.”
“When did you get this note?” I ask Solon.
“Yesterday,” he says. “But you know as well as I that the Nyx you stole from the healer of Dragon Plaza was the only one within a month’s journey of here.”
I can’t save my brother Seth or Kyra. My anger burns the words in my mouth before they reach my lips.
“There is a way to save them, yet,” Solon says. “Steal he crown and scepter for us. Then we can overthrow the very guards who have taken everything from you."
Kyra. Seth. My parents.
"Here, this belongs to you,” he says.
Solon hands me my mother’s locket. It’s cold to the touch. I remember my mother while I handle it. The simplicity of life back then. I remember her laugh, her spirit.
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