A Blade for Her Name - Part 3
A Contract Undone
It was raining by the time they reached the foothills of Kareth’s Hollow.
Not a soft, forgiving rain—but the kind that carried weight, the kind that remembered the dead. The trail beneath their boots had dissolved into mud hours ago, and the cold made its way beneath cloaks and armor, into joints and breath and silence.
Elira adjusted her pack and glanced sideways. “You haven’t asked.”
Vaelin didn’t look at her. “Asked what.”
“Why I didn’t kill him.”
A pause. The kind that carried more than just thought.
“I know why.”
She waited for him to say it. He didn’t.
Instead, he veered off the path and led them beneath the bent limbs of a twisted pine grove. The trees were skeletal here, their branches scorched from old magic. A rusted ward-tower slumped in the center of the grove, surrounded by runes long faded to ash.
They made camp in its shadow.
The fire crackled with a strange hush, as if the grove had pressed the world down around it.
Elira sat cross-legged, sharpening her blade with slow, precise strokes. Her eyes never left the steel.
“He knew my name,” she said. “But he didn’t own it. Not anymore.”
Vaelin nodded, removing a strip of dried meat from his belt pouch. “That’s why you spared him?”
“No,” she said. “I spared him because I wanted him to feel it. The helplessness. The silence. The same silence he used on the others. Let him rot in it.”
She set the blade down.
Vaelin tossed the meat to her. She caught it without looking.
“You still dream of it?” he asked.
She chewed. Swallowed. “No,” she lied.
The next morning brought a visitor.
He came in silence, through fog and broken light, wearing the dark grey cowl of the Ash Accord—a brotherhood of information brokers who traded truths like coin.
Vaelin was already on his feet, blade drawn, before the man spoke.
“You’ve triggered a truce-breach marker,” the figure said, his voice sand-worn. “The border sovereigns have issued a summons. Your target’s suffering has sparked unrest. The pact is fraying.”
Vaelin narrowed his eyes. “We left Kavros breathing.”
“And in doing so,” the man replied, “you’ve upset the balance. The Eastern houses consider this a personal slight. There will be war… unless the contract is resolved.”
Elira stepped forward, eyes cold. “You want him dead now?”
The broker handed her a scroll. “Not him. You.”
The scroll was a kill order.
Signed in crimson wax, marked with the same sigil as the first letter—the assassin’s symbol Vaelin had burned years ago.
The name scrawled in flowing ink:
Elira. Of the Veiled Bloodline.
Target class: High-risk anomaly. Extraction denied. Termination only.
The ink shimmered as her gaze lingered. It knew her.
Vaelin took the scroll and crushed it in one hand.
“Who issued this?”
The broker tilted his head. “The last remnant of the original contract. Someone who still believes she belongs to them.”
“And you came here to collect?”
The man shook his head. “No. I came here to warn. Others will come soon. Better, faster, less sentimental.”
He turned, stepping back into the fog.
Elira’s voice stopped him.
“Who gave you my name?”
He paused. “It wasn’t given. It was sold.”
They traveled under false stars that night, the real sky hidden by the storm.
Their route took them through Blackglass Valley—a canyon carved by ancient magic, where echoes played tricks on the ear and shadows moved without light.
Elira moved differently now. She didn’t speak as much. Her hands were steady, but her eyes searched too quickly, her jaw clenched too tight. The name being out there had changed something.
It wasn’t fea
It was fury.
At camp, Vaelin watched her run a whetstone along the edge of her bone-handled knife.
“You never told me what it means,” he said quietly.
She looked up. “What?”
“Your name. Elira’s not it. Not all of it.”
She hesitated. The silence stretched.
Then, softly: “It means… the flame that endures.”
He nodded. “Fitting.”
She raised a brow. “And yours?”
Vaelin gave a small smile.
“It means hunter of shadows.”
She snorted. “Of course it does.”
They reached the edge of the Bleeding March by dawn. Across the vale, the high walls of Varnhold rose like a wound stitched from iron and prayer. It was here the original contract was sealed. And it was here it would end.
The kill order wasn’t just about Elira. It was about cleaning up the past—eliminating all who’d known the experiments, the silence spells, the hidden names. Including Vaelin.
Inside the fortress waited the real issuer: a ghost from Vaelin’s time as a double agent.
Commander Rhessin Mael. Once his handler. Now, it seemed, his executioner.
They infiltrated at midday under the guise of traveling monks.
The inner sanctum was shielded by mirrored walls and guarded by acolytes bearing silver brands—each a mark of blood-debt to the Accord.
Elira whispered, “Too many for stealth.”
Vaelin nodded. “Then we burn it.”
Together, they moved like shadows. She breached the inner glyph locks while he neutralized guards one by one. They reached the war chamber just as Mael raised a goblet of crimson wine.
He smiled as they entered. “I was wondering which of you would slit the other’s throat first.”
Elira threw the kill order onto the table. “This ends now.”
Mael gestured to the scroll. “It never ends. You were property, Elira. You still are. You just forgot that.”
Vaelin stepped forward. “You gave me her name. You set the contract. Why?”
Mael’s grin soured. “Because she was always supposed to die for it. And you were always supposed to watch.”
The fight was savage.
No magic. No clever spells. Just steel and breath and old wounds breaking open.
Vaelin fought like a man unmaking the past—his blades an echo of who he’d once been.
Elira was silence incarnate. Every movement exact. Every strike a response to years of stolen memory.
When Mael finally fell, bleeding into the glyph-lined floor, he whispered her true name in defiance—one final curse.
She silenced him with a kiss to his forehead.
A burial. Not forgiveness.
That night, they didn’t speak of the contract.
They stood beneath the ruins of Varnhold’s spire, watching the valley bloom with firelight as the Accord’s archives burned.
Elira handed him a new ledger.
Blank.
“Start again?” she asked.
Vaelin took it and drew his dagger.
He carved her name—all of it—into the first page.
“Not as a target,” he said. “As a vow.”
She kissed him—not as thanks.
But as a promise.
___________________________________________________
All Parts of the Series
About the Creator
Richard Bailey
I am currently working on expanding my writing topics and exploring different areas and topics of writing. I have a personal history with a very severe form of treatment-resistant major depressive disorder.
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